An explorative action research study toward the design of a digital knowledge organisation as part of an indigenous knowledge management system with a Herero community

Indigenous Knowledge Management Systems are being developed in order to preserve, process and retrieve knowledge. Unfortunately, most of the systems available do not take into account the different cultural ways of organising and sharing indigenous knowledge. Current technology trends and developments have hardly been informed by African indigenous and rural knowledge systems. Either substantial modifications are necessary in adapting technology to the requirements of indigenous knowledge systems, or those systems are inadequately represented through technologies. This dissertation explores different options for organising video recorded indigenous knowledge, in the pursuit of maintaining local communication patterns and practices. Furthermore, methodological perspectives on the challenges and aims of designing products suited to rural practices and conceptualisations in Southern Africa will be explored. We pursue an explorative study following and action research approach. The evolutionary design of our indigenous knowledge management system is informed by a series of interactions, reflections, discussions and prototype evaluations with a pilot community in Eastern Namibia. We have extracted themes out of the discussions and interactions to inform our design and the development of a digital knowledge organisation

An insider perspective on community gains: A subjective account of a Namibian rural communities' perception of a long-term participatory design project

Community-based co-design takes place within a communal value system and opens up a new debate around the principles of participation and its benefits within HCI4D and ICTD projects. This study contributes to a current gap of expression of participants׳ gains, especially from an indigenous and marginalized rural communities׳ perspective. We have collected community viewpoints concurrently over the past five years of our longitudinal research project in rural Namibia. A number of themes have emerged out of the data as extracted by our native researcher, such as the special importance of learning technology, appreciation of the common project goal, the intrinsic pleasure of participation, frustrations about exclusions and other concerns, as well as immediate rewards and expectations of gaining resources. We acknowledge our own bias in the curation of viewpoints, and incompleteness of subjectivities while embedding our discussion within a local contextual interpretation. Through our learning from the communities we argue for a shift in perspective that acknowledges local epistemologies in HCI and participatory design and research. We suggest considering harmony and humanness as the primary values guiding community-based interactions. We discuss several challenges in the collaboration and co-creation of new knowledge at the frontier of multiple cultural, linguist, research and design paradigms. In the absence of generalized guidelines we suggest to pursue local workability while producing trans-contextual credibility

Formulating "the obvious" as a task request to the crowd: an interactive design experience across cultural and geographical boundaries

The exhibition will demonstrate the technologies that were co-designed with Namibian rural communities with the main objective of preserving Indigenous Knowledge (IK) and Cultural Heritage (CH). Set up as a simulation we showcase how rural communities collect information (images, text, audio, video) about their traditional items or events to be crowdsourced to graphic designers. The graphic designers then model the items in 3D format and send back the rural communities for evaluation and acceptance to be integrated into the existing technologies. Conference participants will be engaged in exploring the technologies as well as discussions around the specific usage and design challenges

Moving away from Erindi-roukambe: Transferability of a rural community-based co-design

It has become increasingly clear that situated design and contextualized research needs to undergo a validation phase to determine transferability. Within our longitudinal research project in rural Namibia, we have reached a maturity of methods and product. Yet little do we know about their validity beyond the limited context in the absence of cross-contextual verification. In Erindi-roukambe, the site of our community-based co-design, we have learned to understand and include local perspectives and structures within the dialogic of a participatory action research approach. By engaging with the community over a long period of time local research findings, as well as mutual knowledge have fostered and enriched design decisions. Recognizing that indigenous rural communities in the regional and globally face similar challenges with inappropriate mainstream technology we are currently investigating the applicability of our findings, processes and prototype in other contexts. We have introduced our approach at three other rural sites, two in Namibia and one in East Malaysia. The communities responded well to the technology demonstrating intuitive use and engagement. However, although we have gained promising results we wish to caution pre-mature conclusions on transferability without a more profound understanding of the depth of community engagement, transformation, contextual similarities, and cross-contextual validation

An Ubuntu lens to co-design: Towards a rural community engagement framework

The research aimed to understand the problems encountered when academic researchers engage with rural communities to co-design culturally appropriate technologies in Namibia. There are no existing engagement frameworks to guide co-design with rural communities in Namibia. The methods comprised a literature review, a narrative analysis of several co-design case studies with rural communities, and the collaborative development of an engagement framework with communities through a co-design process, guided by applying an Ubuntu lens. The study contributes practical recommendations, expressed in an engagement framework to guide the community-based co-design of technology and services in Namibia

Framing Technology Design in Ubuntu

Situating technology design in the African philosophy of Ubuntu, emphasizes principles of humanness and connectedness in human interactions. Curiosity, interest and learnings have grown among those who have co-designed with us for the past eight years; whereas those who have just began co-designing endeavours take on it in different and also similar manners. This reminds us of our beginnings and initial aims as co-designers in diverse Namibians milieus. Thus, as we exit the known and arrive to anew terrains, we observe different but also similar values, protocols and behaviours amid diverse co-designer groups; also in the way we evolve as researchers co-designing always with the above. Human values at Ovaherero and Ovahimba rural locales depict and magnified differences and also commonalities that, altogether, come as Ubuntu in the sharing and in the practiced philosophy of African indigenous populations; also of us as researcher co-designers. This paper reflects on how Human-Computer Interaction and technology deal with communities' daily living and humanness in various ways

Framing Technology Design in Ubuntu

Situating technology design in the African philosophy of Ubuntu, emphasizes principles of humanness and connectedness in human interactions. Curiosity, interest and learnings have grown among those who have co-designed with us for the past eight years; whereas those who have just began co-designing endeavours take on it in different and also similar manners. This reminds us of our beginnings and initial aims as co-designers in diverse Namibians milieus. Thus, as we exit the known and arrive to anew terrains, we observe different but also similar values, protocols and behaviours amid diverse co-designer groups; also in the way we evolve as researchers co-designing always with the above. Human values at Ovaherero and Ovahimba rural locales depict and magnified differences and also commonalities that, altogether, come as Ubuntu in the sharing and in the practiced philosophy of African indigenous populations; also of us as researcher co-designers. This paper reflects on how Human-Computer Interaction and technology deal with communities' daily living and humanness in various ways

A UX and Usability expression of Pastoral OvaHimba: Personas in the Making and Doing

In working with novel communities there is an imperative need to finding what triggers initial interests and sustains engagement in the co-design of useful, respectful and enriching technological experiences for the very end-user. Co-planning with ovaHimba communities in Namibia tools such as the persona artefact strives to aiding the co-design of a Crowdsourcing system to collect, store, classify and curate Indigenous Knowledge (IK). Preliminary results and insights, pervasiveness in use, and overall designerly backing of persona artefacts for usability and User Experience (UX) invite an initial journey on, and study of the User-Created Persona (UCP) protocol to elicit design elements relevant to ovaHimba. Findings reveal vital features of humanness, collectivism, and attire likings in the way both, existing technologies impact community members and on how upcoming ones are felt, required and preferred for the future to come. This paper informs latent and explicitly situated aspects of usability and UX prompted by prototypes and conversations. Such findings aim to deciphering UCP to communicate and support ethicalities, and technological interests, requirements and goals of pastoral ovaHimba