How Are We Impacting Communities in Short-Term International Service Immersion Programs?

The presentation will allow participants to critically examine service immersion and service-learning programs in an international context. While impacting students is an important outcome of international service immersion programs, equally important is our impact on communities. How are we considering the needs of the community partners we are working with? How are we ensuring the sustainability of the programs after our short-term involvement. How are we preparing students for work in these contexts? This presentation will explore these questions in the context of Virginia Tech and VT Engage\u27s international programs and give suggestions for how we can implement more sustainable and impactful short-term programs

Designing for the Infrastructure of the Supply Chain of Malay Handwoven Songket in Terengganu

The growing HCI interest in developing contexts and cultural craft practices is ripe to focus on their under-explored homegrown sociotechnical infrastructures. This paper explores the creative infrastructural actions embedded within the practices of songket's supply chain in Terengganu, Malaysia. We report on contextual interviews with 92 participants including preparation workers, weavers, designers, merchants, and customers. Findings indicate that increased creative infrastructural actions are reflected in these actors' resourcefulness for mobilizing information, materials, and equipment, and for making creative artifacts through new technologies weaved within traditional practices. We propose two novel approaches to design in this craft-based infrastructure. First, we explore designing for the social layer of infrastructure and its mutually advantageous exploitative relationships rooted in culture and traditions. Second, we suggest designing for roaming value-creation artifacts, which blend physical and digital materializations of songket textile design. Developed through a collaborative and asynchronous process, we argue that these artifacts represent less-explored vehicles for value co-creation, and that sociotechnical infrastructures as emerging sites of innovation could benefit from HCI research