This forum looks at how the fields of interaction design and HCI can extend to cover “developing” communities around the world, ones that are gaining access to digital technology for the first time.

Gary Marsden, Editor
Walking Together to Design
Nicola J. Bidwell

CSIR-Meraka | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University | [e-mail]

November + December 2012

interactions

In isiXhosa, the home language
in Eastern Cape, South Africa,
“Sihamba sobabini” means, literally,
“We are walking together,” but figu-
ratively, “Are we still on the same
page?” Such translations juxtapose
ways in which we make meaning by,
as Tim Ingold writes, “going along”
through the world or by interacting
with representations of it, on paper
or screens [ 1]. In this article, I aim
to inspire new paths to design and
deploy technologies for those inhab-
iting the periphery of technology
production. To do so I tell of how
walking in rural southern Africa
revealed incompatibilities between
the point-based representations
that dominate technology, and local
knowledge and communication
practices. Along the way I claim
that neglecting these mismatches
reinforces infrastructures that
already marginalize many inhabit-
ants of the world.