What If

Fabulating African HCI Futures within the Veil of HCI

Workshop Objectives

As the African HCI community grows, emerging dimensions of HCI have been clustered with issues such as cultural aesthetics, identity politics, language relations, community narratives, geo-politics and economics of innovation, and knowledge and power. Specific to knowledge and power relations, we posited: what might we learn from African HCI’s growth to enact a ‘heterotopic space’ or a new 'episteme’ for knowledge production and dissemination? In this workshop, we sought to lay the discursive foundations for critically fabulating future regimes of HCI’s knowledge production and dissemination. This interactive workshop aims to lay the foundation for more expanded conversations about the geopolitics of knowledge production and dissemination in HCI. The specific objectives of this workshop are to:

Develop a platform for interaction and discussion with no “sage on the stage”, where the emerging directions of African HCI identities and futures are deliberated and advanced.
Explore new modes/mediums for investigating and representing research and design endeavours in African HCI, as domesticated by African epistemologies, methodologies, and philosophies.

Format: Hybrid

Planned Activities

Due to the significant of the question raised, this workshop will run in 2 blocks of 90min sessions, with a break in between. As a hybrid session, the plan to have a cycle of critical reflection and action-oriented commitments. In the first part, we plan to have a community-wider reflection exercise where we situate our dialogue within prior achievements and future aspirations. We will then organise participants into ‘what if’ ideation groups were new modalities for building momentum around the future dimension of African HCI could be explored and deliberated. After the break, we will come together to tentatively identify action-oriented directions from African HCI efforts towards domesticating the situated and the subjugated in its corpus. The activities are detailed as follows:

Opening Remark: The workshop organizers will introduce the workshop, highlight the aim and objectives, and describe the general structure of the workshop to the participants.

Brief Introductions: We will request a short reflection on each participant's interest and experiences with adopting/adapting HCI approaches in practice. This can be in the form of a reflection on or about HCI research or design, a thought-provoking practical experience that could inspire a new mode of knowledge production or exchange or a demonstration of a transferable moment of theory-practice experimentation.

Interactive Discussion: We plan to group the participants based on the workshop's themes or the submission received e.g., Situated Experiments and Experiences, Activism/Artivism, Translation Actions. We will introduce the themes and their objectives to the participants and each participant will be expected to select breakout sessions based on their interests. We expect that participants will engage with one another and share ideas in each breakout room.

Reflection and Future Plans: At the end of the workshop, each group will present a summary of the theme discussion with an action-oriented direction for moving forward identified with clear deliverables/milestones.

Call for Participation

We invite participation from the African HCI community and beyond with an interest in exploring and promoting more subtle discussions about HCI knowledge production and dissemination practices. Intending participants are encouraged to fill out this form which asks a 2-pager summary of research interests’ alignment with the theme of the workshop, the motivation for attending, and the expected outcome of attendance. We also encourage sharing fables/stories in any format imaginable of what might be considered intermediate-level knowledge or lived experience-led knowledge that might be lost in transit or translation. There is also the option to submit a short position paper if participants would like to reflect on what they perceived to be the evolution of African HCI or discuss emerging directions of African HCI identities and futures. This can be in any format that best reflects their views on the desired future of HCI in Africa - in terms of subject matters, discourses, and knowledge production. As an interactive session, we also encourage sharing fables/stories in any format imaginable of what might be considered intermediate-level knowledge or lived experience-led knowledge that might be lost in transit or translation.

Submissions are due on the 13rd of November 2023 (AOE), if you need to issue a visa you can submit a 500 words abstract by October 20th to get an initial response and submit the 2-pager on November 11th.There is no specific template for submissions; however, we recommend using the ACM single-column template.

Organizing Team

If you have any questions about the workshop, please contact Muhammad Adamu at m[.]adamu[@]lancaster[.]ac[.]uk

Shaimaa Lazem

Shaimaa Lazem is an associate research professor at the City of Scientific Research and Technology Applications (SRTA-City). She completed her Ph.D. in HCI at Virginia Tech. She is interested in HCI in non-Western cultural contexts, participatory design, and decolonizing HCI. She is the co-founder of the ArabHCI community (https://arabhci.org)

Muhammad Adamu

Muhammad Adamu is a postdoctoral researcher at Imagination Lancaster, a design and architecture-led research lab at Lancaster University. His overall research interest centers around design for digital good, healthcare data design, and AI for good. He is also interested in developing approaches to the design and deployment of indigenous technologies with and for African communities.

Yasmeen Abdrabou

Yasmeen Abdrabou is a Senior Reserach Associate at the School of Computing and Communications, at Lancaster University. She works on gaze and head coordination in VR as part of the Gemini ERC Grant She completed her PhD at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich, Germany where she focused on using eye gaze to enhance security mechanisms in the space of HCI and usable security.

Chris Muashekele

Chris Muashekele is a Research Fellow at Aalborg University and a trans-disciplinary technology

researcher, developer, and designer. His current research interests are in renewable energy and the development of appropriate business models for rural African communities.

Hafeni Mthoko

Hafeni Mthoko has experience in monitoring and evaluating ICTD-related interventions in rural contexts, citizen engagement, and health communicative ecologies. She has an interest in identifying innovative ways, including technology, to facilitate meaningful change in African settings. She has a PhD in information systems from Rhodes University.

Sheena Erete

Sheena Erete is an associate professor in the College of Information at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she’s also the founder and director of the Community Research and Design Collective. Her current projects focus on issues such as equity in AI/ML tools, community safety, education, political efficacy, and economic development in communities that have been historically oppressed and resource-constrained due to unfair policies and state violence.

Jakita Thomas

Jakita Thomas is an associate professor at the Department of Computer Science and Software

Engineering (CSSE), Auburn University, USA, where she is also the director of the CURSOR Computing Lab (CUltuRally & SOcially Relevant). Her research interests include exploring computational algorithmic thinking, intersectional computing, and computer-supported collaborative learning

Heike Winschiers -Theophilus

Heike Winschiers -Theophilus is a professor in computer science in the Faculty of Computing and Informatics at Namibia University of Science and Technology. She’s a pioneer in co-designing

technologies with indigenous and marginalized communities; actively promotes inclusive innovation, which has led to the establishment of a local Tech Innovation Hub engaging indigenous and marginalised communities in the co-development of innovative technology products and processes for the mainstream

market.

Nic Bidwell

Nicola J Bidwell is a professor at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and at the International

University of Management, Namibia, researching contexts marginalized by techno-geopolitics, including rural and indigenous communities in the Global Souths. Nic was the co-founding Technical Co-chair (with Kagonya Awori) of the AfriCHI conference.

Aderonke Sakpere

Aderonke Sakpere is a faculty member at the University of Ibadan with about 12 years of experience in lecturing, research and mentoring. As a lecturer, she teaches both undergraduate and postgraduate students, with research interests spanning Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Data Privacy, and ICT for Development. She is the founder of Tech Girls Club which was set up to foster networking and interaction among females in technology.

Anicia Peters

Anicia Peters is a Namibian Computer Scientist with a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction from Iowa State University, USA. She is the CEO of the National Commission of Research, Science and Technology (NCRST), an Adjunct Research Professor at the University of Namibia and was the Chairperson of the Presidential Task Force on 4IR. She founded the Africa Human Computer Interaction Conference (AfriCHI); serves as observing member on the Steering Committee of ACM CHI; and was the Technical Programme Co-Chair of the ACM CHI2023 conference. She works with Prof Shaimaa Lazem on localizing responsible Human-Centered AI in the African tech ecosystem with the 2020 Google Inclusion Award and 2021 Google grant.

We look forward to seeing you in East London, South Africa

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