Diversifying Future-Making Through Itinerative Design

Abstract

Designed in California" is a brand statement used by high-tech manufacturers to denote provenance and cachet of digital innovation and modernity. In this article we explore philosophically alternate design perspectives to those this statement embodies, reporting and reflecting on a long-term multi-sited project that seeks to diversify future-making by engaging communities of "emergent" users in "developing" regions. We argue that digital technologies are typically created with a design lens firmly focused on "first world" populations, assuming a base set of cultural norms, resource availabilities and technological experience levels that do not strongly align with those of emergent users. We discuss and argue for inclusive technology design methods, present our approach, and detail indicative results and case studies as an example of the potential of these perspectives in uncovering radical innovations. Distilling findings and lessons learned, we present a methodology-itinerative design-that pivots between emergent user communities across multiple regions, driving digital innovation through the periphery of mainstream design's current remit. CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → HCI design and evaluation methods; User studies; Interaction paradigms; Ubiquitous and mobile computing design and evaluation methods.

PV-Pix: Slum Community Co-design of Self-Powered Deformable Smart Messaging Materials

“…It is the product of entangled engagement with people, materials, place, and diverse perspectives. That said, initial workshops (Sections 3.1 and 3.2) were planned based on previously published emergent user community methods, including the value of enriching these with artistic perspectives as described in [24][25][26]. The results from thematic analyses of these two initiators and the home workshop (Section 3.3), led to a diary study that in turn highlighted the opportunities embodied in subsequent low-fdelity prototypes.…”

“…Predominantly these activities involve what might be called mainstream or conventional users who have a relatively high degree of access and literacy in terms of digital technologies. In contrast, emergent users [7], based in the global south, have been relatively marginalised from "future making", overlooking their rich perspectives, experiences and resource constraints that can diversify and challenge the Californiancentric design standpoint [25]. Over recent years, there has been a growing interest in working with and for such communities not simply to address the challenges and needs such groups pose but also to innovate freshly, bringing new perspectives on future digital devices and services applicable globally.…”

Gifting in Museums: Using Multiple Time Orientations to Heighten Present-Moment Engagement

“…Other notable interactions with the future include sustaining engagement with technology over time (e.g. Kayali et al, 2018) or more disruptively, 'itinerative design' (Pearson et al, 2019). All of these designs tend to be primarily forwards-looking, perhaps using motifs or tools from the past but still from the perspective of today's designer or co-designer looking towards imagined futures - dystopian, utopian, or quotidian.…”

An Honest Conversation: Transparently Combining Machine and Human Speech Assistance in Public Spaces

“…But the work here suggests that it is possible to both consider new contexts and contribute to the innovation of such technologies. We illustrate how Dharavi is exactly the sort of place to take on the work of designing, developing and deploying speech assistance interfaces, while also locating this research within a wider design ethos that disrupts existing technology mindsets-that humans are an excised or invisible aspect of AI-enabled futures [15]-by situating "future making" [27] outside of its traditional mainstream locations.…”

“…Our work, then, builds on previous insights into smart speaker and human-in-the-loop systems by showing for the first time how a highly accessible advanced computational information retrieval system could be coupled with the richness of a human being in an explicitly transparent way for a more productive experience for users. In addition, in carrying out the work in a non-Western setting, beyond the "Californian" perspective, we aim to show the value of further "diversifying future-making" [27].…”