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

Abstract

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