tocauthor: Bidwell_N* : Human-Computer Interaction Bibliography Search

Peer-to-peer in the Workplace: A View from the Road Transportation and HCI / Ahmed, Syed Ishtiaque / Bidwell, Nicola J. / Zade, Himanshu / Muralidhar, Srihari H. / Dhareshwar, Anupama / Karachiwala, Baneen / Tandong, Cedrick N. / O'Neill, Jacki Proceedings of the ACM CHI'16 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2016-05-07 v.1 p.5063-5075

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Summary: This paper contributes to the growing literature on peer-to-peer (P2P) applications through an ethnographic study of auto-rickshaw drivers in Bengaluru, India. We describe how the adoption of a P2P application, Ola, which connects passengers to rickshaws, changes drivers work practices. Ola is part of the 'peer services' phenomenon which enable new types of ad-hoc trade in labour, skills and goods. Auto-rickshaw drivers present an interesting case because prior to Ola few had used Smartphones or the Internet. Furthermore, as financially vulnerable workers in the informal sector, concerns about driver welfare become prominent. Whilst technologies may promise to improve livelihoods, they do not necessarily deliver [57]. We describe how Ola does little to change the uncertainty which characterizes an auto drivers' day. This leads us to consider how a more equitable and inclusive system might be designed.

NatureCHI: Unobtrusive User Experiences with Technology in Nature Workshop Summaries / Häkkilä, Jonna / Cheverst, Keith / Schöning, Johannes / Bidwell, Nicola J. / Robinson, Simon / Colley, Ashley Extended Abstracts of the ACM CHI'16 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2016-05-07 v.2 p.3574-3580

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Summary: Being in nature is typically regarded to be calming, relaxing and purifying. When in nature, people often seek physical activity like hiking, or meditative, mindful or inspiring experiences remote from the urban everyday life. However, the modern lifestyle easily extends technology use to all sectors of our everyday life, and e.g. the rise of sports tracking technologies, mobile phone integrated cameras and omnipresent social media access have contributed to technologies also arriving into the use context of nature. Also maps and tourist guides are increasingly smart phone or tablet based services. This workshop addresses the challenges that are related to interacting with technology in nature. The viewpoints cover, but are not limited to interaction design and prototyping, social and cultural issues, user experiences that aim for unobtrusive interactions with the technology with nature as the use context.

Orality, Gender and Social Audio in Rural Africa / Bidwell, Nicola J. / Reitmaier, Thomas / Jampo, Kululwa Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems 2014-05-27 p.225-241

Link to Digital Content at Springer

Summary: We claim that digital platforms designed for people in low-income, low-literacy rural communities to share locally relevant, voice-based content did not widen dissemination because they were incompatible with the nuances of cooperation. We base this on a long-term study of interactions with prototypes to record, store and share voice files via a portable, communally owned display in South Africa. We discuss how men and women used, appropriated and interacted with the prototypes, and how the prototypes and use contexts supported different genres of orality and nonverbal elements of co-present interactions. Rhythm and mimicry of nonverbal elements participated in cooperation and, we argue, that engaging with such qualities enriches creativity in designing media sharing systems.

Community centered collaborative HCI design / research in developing countries Special interest group: 111 / Peters, Anicia N. / Winschiers-Theophilus, Heike / Bidwell, Nicola J. / Kumar, Arun / Ochieng, Daniel O. / Camara, Fatoumata / Dray, Susan M. Proceedings of ACM CHI 2014 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2014-04-26 v.2 p.1143-1146

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Summary: We are proposing a SIG as an extended forum to build a sustainable network and resource repository for practitioners and researchers engaged in community centered collaborative design in developing countries. In structured discussions and an open cross-cultural dialogue, we attempt to build a practical and theoretical foundation based on success and failure stories, challenges and systematic approaches to such HCI. We will explore specific themes around time, trust and values, expectation management and transferability/ sustainability of localized projects. We intend to explore how to document and transform lessons learned into systematic approaches to be deployed in different contexts.

Collaborating with communities in Africa: a hitchhikers guide Works-in-progress / Peters, Anicia N. / Winschiers-Theophilus, Heike / Awori, Kagonya / Bidwell, Nicola J. / Blake, Edwin / Kumar, Arun / Chivuno-Kuria, Shilumbe Proceedings of ACM CHI 2014 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2014-04-26 v.2 p.1969-1974

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Summary: Designing, developing and deploying technologies with local African communities involves a rapport and trust beyond predefined and agreed upon project goals. Pursuing an agenda for community-driven development involves prioritizing and recognizing the role of community members as co-designers and co-researchers. Constraints on time, resources and differing protocols often hinder effective and sustainable collaboration with local African communities. This paper presents discussions started at an international workshop and panel about the key factors in building local community collaboration in Africa, as part of an accruing repository of empirically-grounded advice from local researchers, community members and designers with extensive community collaboration experience.

Walking and the social life of solar charging in rural Africa Practice-Oriented Approaches to Sustainable HCI / Bidwell, Nicola J. / Siya, Masbulele / Marsden, Gary / Tucker, William D. / Tshemese, M. / Gaven, N. / Ntlangano, S. / Robinson, Simon / Eglinton, Kristen Ali ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 2013-09 v.20 n.4 p.22

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Summary: We consider practices that sustain social and physical environments beyond those dominating sustainable HCI discourse. We describe links between walking, sociality, and using resources in a case study of community-based, solar, cellphone charging in villages in South Africa's Eastern Cape. Like 360 million rural Africans, inhabitants of these villages are poor and, like 25% and 92% of the world, respectively, do not have domestic electricity or own motor vehicles. We describe nine practices in using the charging stations we deployed. We recorded 700 people using the stations, over a year, some regularly. We suggest that the way we frame practices limits insights about them, and consider various routines in using and sharing local resources to discover relations that might also feature in charging. Specifically, walking interconnects routines in using, storing, sharing and sustaining resources, and contributes to knowing, feeling, wanting and avoiding as well as to different aspects of sociality, social order and perspectives on sustainability. Along the way, bodies acquire literacies that make certain relationalities legible. Our study shows we cannot assert what sustainable practice means a priori and, further, that detaching practices from bodies and their paths limits solutions, at least in rural Africa. Thus, we advocate a more "alongly" integrated approach to data about practices.

Toward an Afro-Centric Indigenous HCI Paradigm Reframing HCI Through Local and Indigenous Perspectives / Winschiers-Theophilus, Heike / Bidwell, Nicola J. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction 2013-03-01 v.29 n.4 p.243-255

Link to Article at Taylor & Francis

Summary: Current human-computer interaction (HCI) paradigms are deeply rooted in a Western epistemology that attests its partiality and bias of its embedded assumptions, values, definitions, techniques, and derived frameworks and models. Thus tensions created between local cultures and HCI principles require researchers to pursue a more critical research agenda within an indigenous epistemology. In this article an Afro-centric paradigm is presented, as promoted by African scholars, as an alternative perspective to guide interaction design in a situated context in Africa and promote the reframing of HCI. A practical realization of this paradigm shift within our own community-driven design in Southern Africa is illustrated.

Situating Asynchronous Voice in Rural Africa Mobile Usage and Techniques / Bidwell, Nicola J. / Siya, Masbulele Jay Proceedings of IFIP INTERACT'13: Human-Computer Interaction-3 2013 v.3 p.36-53

Keywords: Oral users; Rural Africa; Asynchronous voice; Social media

Link to Digital Content at Springer

Summary: Designing for oral users in economically poor places has intensified efforts to develop platforms for asynchronous voice. Often these aim to assist users in rural areas where literacy is lowest, but there are few empirical studies and design tends to be oriented by theory that contrasts the mental functions of oral and literate users, rather than by local practices in social situations. We describe designing an Audio Repository (AR) based on practices, priorities and phone-use in rural Africa. The AR enables users to record, store and share voice files on a shared tablet and via their own cell-phones. We deployed the AR for 10 months in rural Africa and illiterate elders, who have few ways to use free or low-cost phone services, used it to record meetings. Use of, and interactions with, the AR informed the design of a new prototype. They also sensitized us to qualities of collective sense-making that can inspire new interactions but that guidelines for oral users overlook; such as the fusion of meaning and sound and the tuning of speech and bodily movement. Thus, we claim that situating design in local ways of saying enriches the potential for asynchronous voice.

Walking together to design Forums: Developing Communities / Bidwell, Nicola J. interactions 2012-11-01 v.19 n.6 p.68-71

Gary Marsden, Editor

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Namibian and American cultural orientations toward Facebook Work-in-progress / Peters, Anicia / Oren, Michael / Bidwell, Nicola Extended Abstracts of ACM CHI'12 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2012-05-05 v.2 p.2603-2608

ACM Digital Library Citation

Summary: Nadkarni and Hofman's [8] meta-review of literature on Facebook usage recommends examining differences in Facebook use between collectivistic and individualistic cultures. We discuss early findings of an exploratory study to compare use between participants in America, Namibia, and expatriate Namibians. From this, we identified five key areas of difference: 1) Motivations for joining Facebook; 2) Attitude toward Facebook connections; 3) Self presentation and photo sharing; 4) Communication about death, religion, and politics; 5) General privacy definitions. However, our findings showed no statistical difference in the Collectivism Scale [10] administered among the three groups, despite Namibia being considered a highly collectivistic county [12] and the US being a highly individualistic country [6].

A New Visualization Approach to Re-Contextualize Indigenous Knowledge in Rural Africa Interaction Design for Developing Regions / Rodil, Kasper / Winschiers-Theophilus, Heike / Bidwell, Nicola J. / Eskildsen, Søren / Rehm, Matthias / Kapuire, Gereon Koch Proceedings of IFIP INTERACT'11: Human-Computer Interaction 2011-09-05 v.2 p.297-314

Keywords: 3D visualization; indigenous knowledge; rural; Africa; design

Link to Digital Content at Springer

Summary: Current views of sustainable development recognize the importance of accepting the Indigenous Knowledge (IK) of rural people. However, there is an increasing technological gap between Elder IK holders and the younger generation and a persistent incompatibility between IK and the values, logics and literacies embedded, and supported by ICT. Here, we present an evaluation of new technology that might bridge generations and preserve key elements of local IK in Namibia. We describe how we applied insights, generated by ethnographic, dialogical and participatory action research, in designing a structure in which users can store, organize and retrieve user-generated videos in ways that are compatible with their knowledge system. The structure embeds videos in a scenario-based 3D visualization of a rural village. It accounts for some of the ways this rural community manages information, socially, spatially and temporally and provides users with a recognizable 3D simulated environment in which to re-contextualize de-contextualized video clips. Our formative in situ evaluation of a prototype suggests the visualization is legible to community members, provokes participation in design discussions, offers opportunities for local appropriation and may facilitate knowledge sharing between IK holders and more youthful IK assimilators. Simultaneously differing interpretations of scenarios and modeled objects reveal the limitations of our modeling decisions and raises various questions regarding graphic design details and regional transferability.

Re-framing HCI through Local and Indigenous Perspectives Workshops / Abdelnour-Nocera, José L. / Kurosu, Masaaki / Clemmensen, Torkil / Bidwell, Nicola J. / Vatrapu, Ravikiran / Winschiers-Theophilus, Heike / Evers, Vanessa / Heimgärtner, Rüdiger / Yeo, Alvin Proceedings of IFIP INTERACT'11: Human-Computer Interaction 2011-09-05 v.4 p.738-739

Keywords: Indigenous HCI; HCI theory and methodology; localization; globalization; cultural usability

Link to Digital Content at Springer

Summary: This one-day workshop aims to present different local and indigenous perspectives from all over the world in order to lead into an international dialogue on re-framing concepts and models in HCI/Interaction Design. The target audience is HCI researchers and practitioners who have experience with working with culture and HCI. The expected outcome of the workshop is a) network building among the participants, b) a shortlist of papers that can be basis for a proposal for a special issue of the UAIS journal, and c) identify opportunities to develop a funded network or research proposal.

Pushing personhood into place: Situating media in rural knowledge in Africa Locative media and communities / Bidwell, Nicola J. / Winschiers-Theophilus, Heike / Kapuire, Gereon Koch / Rehm, Mathias International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 2011 v.69 n.10 p.618-631

10.1016/j.ijhcs.2011.02.002

Keywords: Traditional Knowledge / Rural / Africa / Spatial / Temporal / Locative Media / Topokinetic / Topographic

Link to Article at sciencedirect

Summary: Designing interactions with technologies that are compatible with rural wisdom and skills can help to digitally enfranchise rural people and, thus, contribute to community cohesion in the face of Africa's urbanization. Oral information has been integral to rural identity and livelihood in Africa for generations. However, the use of technology can inadvertently displace the knowledge of communities with practices that differ from the knowledge traditions in which technology is designed. We propose that devices that are sensitive to users' locations, combined with platforms for social networking and user-generated content, offer intriguing opportunities for rural communities to extend their knowledge practices digitally. In this paper we present insights on the way rural people of the Herero tribe manage information spatially and temporally during some of our design activities in Namibia. We generated these insights from ethnography and detailed analysis of interactions with media in our ongoing Ethnographic Action Research. Rural participants had not depicted their wisdom graphically by photography or video before, rarely use writing materials and some cannot read. Thus, we gathered 30 h of observer-and participant-recorded video and participants' interpretations and interactions with thumbnail photos from video, photography and paper. We describe insights into verbal and bodily interactions and relationships between bodies, movements, settings, knowledge and identity. These findings have made us more sensitive to local experiences of locations and more aware of assumptions about space and time embedded in locative media. As a result, we have started to adopt an approach that emphasizes connectors rather than points and social -- relational and topokinetic rather than topographic spaces. In the final section of the paper we discuss applying this approach in design by responding to the ways that participants use social relationships to orient information and use voice, gesture and movement to incorporate locations into this "dialogic". In conclusion we outline why we hope our reflections will inspire others to examine the spatial, temporal and social affordances of technologies within the bonds of rural, and other, communities.

Situating digital storytelling within African communities Locative media and communities / Reitmaier, Thomas / Bidwell, Nicola J. / Marsden, Gary International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 2011 v.69 n.10 p.658-668

10.1016/j.ijhcs.2010.12.008

Keywords: Digital storytelling / Mobile devices / Oral knowledge / Rural / ICT4D / Cross-cultural

Link to Article at sciencedirect

Summary: We reflect on the methods, activities and perspectives we used to situate digital storytelling in two rural African communities in South Africa and Kenya. We demonstrate how in-depth ethnography in a village in the Eastern Cape of South Africa and a design workshop involving participants from that village allowed us to design a prototype mobile digital storytelling system suited to the needs of rural, oral users. By leveraging our prototype as a probe and observing villagers using it in two villages in South Africa and Kenya, we uncovered implications for situating digital storytelling within those communities. Finally, we distil observations relevant to localizing storytelling and their implications for transferring design into a different community.

Being participated: a community approach Research papers: different environments / Winschiers-Theophilus, Heike / Chivuno-Kuria, Shilumbe / Kapuire, Gereon Koch / Bidwell, Nicola J. / Blake, Edwin Proceedings of the 2010 Conference on Participatory Design 2010-11-29 p.1-10

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Summary: In this paper, we explore the concept of participatory design from a different viewpoint by drawing on an African philosophy of humanness -Ubuntu-, and African rural community practices. The situational dynamics of participatory interaction become obvious throughout the design experiences within our community project. Supported by a theoretical framework we reflect upon current participatory design practices. We intend to inspire and refine participatory design concepts and methods beyond the particular context of our own experiences.

Field testing mobile digital storytelling software in rural Kenya Ethnographical and field studies / Reitmaier, Thomas / Bidwell, Nicola J. / Marsden, Gary Proceedings of 12th Conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services 2010-09-07 p.283-286

Keywords: HCI4D, digital storytelling, evaluation, probe, rural

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Summary: We describe and reflect on a method we used to evaluate usability and give insights on situated use of a mobile digital storytelling prototype. We report on rich data we gained by implementing this method and argue that we were able to learn more about our prototype, users, their needs, and their context, than we would have through other evaluation methods. We look at the usability problems we uncovered and discuss how our flexibility in field-testing allowed us to observe unanticipated usage, from which we were able to motivate future design directions. Finally, we reflect on the importance of spending time in-situ during all stages of design, especially when designing across cultures.

Designing with mobile digital storytelling in rural Africa Storytelling / Bidwell, Nicola J. / Reitmaier, Thomas / Marsden, Gary / Hansen, Susan Proceedings of ACM CHI 2010 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2010-04-10 v.1 p.1593-1602

Keywords: cross-cultural, dialogical approach to design, digital storytelling, ict4d, mobile devices, oral knowledge, rural

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Summary: We reflect on activities to design a mobile application to enable rural people in South Africa's Eastern Cape to record and share their stories, which have implications for 'cross-cultural design,' and the wider use of stories in design. We based our initial concept for generating stories with audio and photos on cell-phones on a scenario informed by abstracting from digital storytelling projects globally and our personal experience. But insights from ethnography, and technology experiments involving storytelling, in a rural village led us to query our grounding assumptions and usability criteria. So, we implemented a method using cell-phones to localise storytelling, involve rural users and probe ways to incorporate visual and audio media. Products from this method helped us to generate design ideas for our current prototype which offers great flexibility. Thus we present a new way to depict stories digitally and a process for improving such software.

Ubuntu in the network: humanness in social capital in rural Africa On the Role and Design of Social Media and Enhanced Technology / Bidwell, Nic interactions 2010-03 v.17 n.2 p.68-71

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Beyond the Benjamins: toward an African interaction design Forum: Under Development / Bidwell, N. J. / Winschiers-Theophilus, H. interactions 2010-01 v.17 n.1 p.32-35

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Dilemmas in situating participation in rural ways of saying Participate / Bidwell, Nicola / Hardy, Dianna Proceedings of OZCHI'09, the CHISIG Annual Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2009-11-23 p.145-152

Keywords: indigenous culture, rural, technology probes

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Summary: We reflect upon participation in design processes by people who emphasise 'primary orality', or direct, face-to-face, unmediated communication, due to their rural locations in places with low technology ambiance and cultural antecedents. We focus on issues and relationships between rural contexts and primary orality of relevance to our projects with Indigenous people in regional Australia and villagers in remote rural South Africa. We observe dilemmas as we apply methods, which are informed by ethnomethodology, ethnography and Participatory Design, in enabling local participation, such as intrusive recording practices, concerns about power structures and appropriate investment of time.

Anchoring Design in Rural Customs of Doing and Saying International and Cultural Aspects of HCI / Bidwell, Nicola J. Proceedings of IFIP INTERACT'09: Human-Computer Interaction 2009-08-24 v.1 p.686-699

Keywords: Rural; Africa; Localizing design; Identity; Ethnography

Link to Digital Content at Springer

Summary: An increasing range of initiatives aim to enable rural communities in developing regions to generate their own, non-text based, digital content to share local stories, information and concerns. Video, photos and audio offer new resources for practices that give communities' a sense of identity and continuity and that members acquire in relationships with each other, their environment and history via speech, gesture, song, music, drama, ritual, skills or crafts. However, these contexts pose challenges for designing interactions within frameworks that have a heritage of text and indirect orality and which emphasize particular communication dynamics and structures. We seek to create new design directions based on insights into local ways of 'doing and saying' gained in interactions with people living under traditional law and custom in the Xhosa Kingdom of Pondoland, South Africa. This paper distils themes from an ethnography when the author lived according to local norms and constraints and cogenerated design activities, situated in the community's priorities, customary power relations and consensus-based practice. We reflect on communication in ordinary and extraordinary activities, and sociotechnical 'experiments' from using social networking websites to storytelling with blogs. We describe how indexicality dynamically shares context and entwines a person's identity with physical setting; and, how practices, such as prolonged discussion, diachronic repetition and synchronous utterance, build rapport, collective memory and cohesion. We propose that these practices inspire ways that local social structures can impact on activities to design systems of organization for information sharing, with occasional reference to our observations of other rural peoples in north Mozambique and north Australia.

Designing for Naturally Engaging Experiences Workshops / Browning, David / van Erp, Marlyn / Bødker, Mads / Bidwell, Nicola J. / Turner, Truna Aka J. Proceedings of IFIP INTERACT'09: Human-Computer Interaction 2009-08-24 v.2 p.961-962

Keywords: Interaction Design; Place; Representation

Link to Digital Content at Springer

Summary: This full day workshop explores how insights from artefacts, created during data collecting and analysis, are translated into prototypes. It is particularly concerned with getting closer to people's experience of shaping a design space. The workshop draws inspiration from data-products resulting from interactions in natural, unbuilt places with the intention of supporting both those with work integrating understandings of such experiences into design and those interested in the way material provokes ideas and inspiration for design.

Rural encounters: cultural translations through video Telling stories / Browning, David / Bidwell, Nicola J. / Hardy, Dianna / Standley, P-M Proceedings of OZCHI'08, the CHISIG Annual Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008-12-08 p.148-155

Keywords: co-generative methods, cultural encounters, design, indexicality, performative knowledge, rural, video

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Summary: Requirements gathering for design in rural and remote areas needs to be considered within the prevailing cultural context. We explain our use of video as a technological site for cultural encounters during the preparatory elicitation of cultural influences and determinants. We outline the factors leading to the development of a co-generative approach arising from our understanding of the role played by indexicality during such encounters with different cultural systems of knowledge.

The landscape's apprentice: lessons for place-centred design from grounding documentary / Bidwell, Nicola J. / Standley, Peta-Marie / George, Tommy / Steffensen, Vicus Proceedings of DIS'08: Designing Interactive Systems 2008-02-25 p.88-98

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Summary: We propose that grounding documentaries can help designers to respond to non-western, non-urban spatial infrastructures. We describe locally-produced, in vivo video methods developed by indigenous Elders in Australia to persist and transfer their Traditional Knowledge and the specific use-case of a documentary on fire. The culturally-situated nature of the documentary exposes subtleties in a dialectic between models of space. The ontology embedded in the methods, and expressed by the documentary, has a spatiality and a belonging to place that profoundly differs from that typifying HCI's urban focus and many video methods used by designers to understand useage contexts. Grass-roots driven documentaries ground subsequent design by engaging designers in otherwise inaccessible truths about remote places, partly through the designer's sense of their own felt-life. The fire documentary reveals many general insights for design, such as the need to escape a singularly anthropocentric spatio-temporal approach in order to respond to the plurality of user experience.

Exploring terra incognita: wayfinding devices for games / Bidwell, Nicola J. / Lemmon, Colin / Roturu, Mihai / Lueg, Christopher Proceedings of the 2007 Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment 2007-12-03 p.6

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Summary: The ludic experience of exploring wilderness in gameworlds may be compromised by either the negative affects of disorientation or the conspicuous application of architectural principles known to support wayfinding. We use a novel device, inspired by insect navigation, to examine players' situated acquisition of spatial knowledge to enable them return to the origin of their route while they explore an unfamiliar, synthetic natural world. We describe qualitative and quantitative data on player behaviour and distill themes to inform subsequent designs to assist players fulfillment when exploring settings and interpreting them spatially.