A Participatory Approach for Digital Documentation of Egyptian Bedouins' Intangible Cultural Heritage

The Bedouins of Egypt hold a unique intangible cultural heritage (ICH), with distinct cultural values and social practices that are rapidly changing as a consequence of having settled after having been nomadic for centuries. We presentour attempt to develop a bottom-up approach to document Bedouin ICH. Grounded in participatory design practices, the project purpose was two-fold: engaging Egyptian Engineering undergraduates with culturally-distant technology users and introducing digital self-documentation of ICH to the Bedouin community. We report the design of a didactic model that deployed the students as research partners to co-design four prototypes of ICH documentation mobile applications with the community. The prototypes reflected an advanced understanding for the values to the Bedouins brought by digital documentation practices. Drawing from our experience, three recommendationswere elicited for similar ICH projects. Namely, focusing on the community benefits; promoting motivation ownership, and authenticity; and pursuing a shared identity between designers and community members. These guidelines hold a strong value as they have been tested against local challenges that could have been detrimental to the project

A systematic review of the use of telemedicine in the military forces worldwide

Context: Considering the pivotal role of telemedicine in providing healthcare services for remote areas, some of the military medical centers, especially in developed countries, use different types of telemedicine programs. Objectives: The present study aimed at identifying the implemented telemedicine projects in military medicine worldwide and introducing their features. Evidence Acquisition: The current systematic review was performed in 2018. PubMed, Scopus, Embase, and Web of Science databases were searched for articles published from 2014 to 2018 by a combination of related keywords, and the related original articles were then selected based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Data were collected by a data extraction form, and then the data were summarized and reported based on the study objectives. Results: Of the 173 articles retrieved from the first round of search, 12 were included in the study; five (41.66) studies had used the synchronous (real-time telemedicine) method. The United States, with nine studies, had the highest number of projects in military telemedicine. Most studies (n = 7) were performed on tele-psychology and the application of telemedicine in psychology. All selected studies reported the positive effects of telemedicine on providing healthcare for military forces. Conclusions: The proper utilization of telemedicine equipment is effective in saving time for both patients and healthcare providers, reducing costs, supporting in natural disasters, and satisfying patients with military medicine. To achieve telemedicine program objectives, they should be set precisely. Considering the importance of timely healthcare services, it is suggested to utilize synchronous methods and tools such as video conferencing. © 2020, Author(s)

Artificially Intelligent Technology for the Margins: A Multidisciplinary Design Agenda

There has been increasing interest in socially just use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in the development of technology that may be extended to marginalized people. However, the exploration of such technologies entails the development of an understanding of how they may increase and/or counter marginalization. The use of AI/ML algorithms can lead to several challenges, such as privacy and security concerns, biases, unfairness, and lack of cultural awareness, which especially affect marginalized people. This workshop will provide a forum to share experiences and challenges of developing AI/ML health and social wellbeing technologies with/for marginalized people and will work towards developing design methods to engage in the re-envisioning of AI/ML technologies for and with marginalized people. In doing so we will create cross-research area dialogues and collaborations. These discussions build a basis to (1) explore potential tools to support designing AI/ML systems with marginalized people, and (2) develop a design agenda for future research and AI/ML technology for and with marginalized people

A tent, a pigeon house, and a pomegranate tree

An eight-day HCI summer school was run by Kingston University for designing technologies to document intangible culture heritage (ICH) in North-Central Egypt. The school was part of the UK-Egypt institutional link, the Hilali Network, a Newton-Mosharafa project between the City for Scientific Research and Technology Applications (SRTA-City) and Kingston University. The link aimed at advancing HCI education in Egypt by training 18 engineering students from Alexandria University to engage in technology design activities with members from the Bedouin community of Borg El-Arab. The curriculum used interactive material, emphasizing hands-on practice and learning by doing. The Double Diamond design process model was used by the UK. Design Council to structure the school activity. It is a four-stage model, Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver, with every two phases forming a diamond shape. In the first stage, Discover, the students were encouraged to take a conceptual leap from being the engineering student, who is used to solving well-defined problems, to becoming a design thinker, who is co-responsible with the users for framing the design within the sociocultural challenges. In the second stage, Define, the students were divided into teams. Each team had to define the scope of their projects. In the Develop phase, the students used personas to describe their target users as they defined them in the previous stage. They analyzed the data they gathered from the interviews to find insights and identify opportunity areas, and brainstormed to generate ideas about potential solutions