Decolonizing Design Practices: Towards Pluriversality

Abstract

Decolonizing discourses teach us that we need to move away from the universalizing 'grand narratives' of knowledge production and focus on contextualizing diverse and situated experiences, epistemologies and narratives. Yet, few contributions actively demonstrate what a shift to decolonizing design means in practice. Participatory Design (PD) approaches are particularly well-suited to contributing to contemporary debates of decolonization in design due to PD's long-standing political traditions and values of equality and empowerment, but even here empirical methods and techniques to fully realize pluriversality in design are lacking. In line with the CHI 2021 theme of Making Waves. Combining Strengths, this interactive workshop will invigorate the debates and practices in HCI of decolonization by bringing together and demonstrating how designers and researchers in diverse global contexts are working with and adapting modes, concepts, methodologies and sensibilities into decolonizing design practices. Not only will this workshop provide new ways of thinking in HCI but also fuse theories and practices to develop truly transcultural approaches to HCI. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → HCI theory, concepts and models.

Diversity and language technology: how language modeling bias causes epistemic injustice

“…That said, it needs to be noted that accounting for diversity and power asymmetries in language technology is not a fixed state, but a process and situated procedure which requires continual adaption to the variety of linguistic phenomena and different communities' needs. Therefore, we embrace the contributions of design anthropologists such as Smith et al (2021) who advocate mutual learning and thus consider all participants in the process simultaneously as researchers and beneficiaries. Specifically with regard to language technology, we echo Bird's call for a focus on knowledge transfer beyond language, as generational loss of knowledge about local history, practices, etc.…”

“…We show how simplistic representations of diversity can lead to inevitably false representations of particular languages, which, when they penetrate previously under-served communities, can lead to dialectic dynamics by perpetuating existing or new forms of epistemic injustice, which we outline below in more detail. As an alternative, we make a case for a language resource development initiative we call LiveLanguage, which is grounded on rigorous co-design, thereby reflecting, supporting and accounting for diversity in a much more principled and systemic manner than any top-down approach can (Saad-Sulonen et al, 2018;Smith et al, 2021).…”

Contemporary Design Attitudes for Pluriverse: Review & Introduction to Industry Practice

“…So we search for a new story! So imagining a post-colonial era needs unfamiliarising or decolonising our beliefs, attitudes and practices (Smith et al, 2021) and acknowledging the fact that there is no one solution for all.…”

No More “Solutionism” or “Saviourism” in Futuring African HCI: A Manyfesto

“…As preparatory work for futuring African HCI identities, the conceptual provocation of this paper develops on the aspiration to make the African perspective of innovation more visible in contemporary discourses. The reflection identifies with the critical perspective of computing in and beyond developmental frames [49,56,75,83,92,120,177,184] through to decolonial [15,35,36,104,157,175,182], and pluriversal perspectives of design [70,163]. This paper identifies with recent discourses in Africa HCI that engaged different dimensions of indigenization and decolonisation as tactics for discontinuing the simplistic categorization of specific perspectives to themes of appropriation, leapfrogging, and adaptation [6,29,97,145,159].…”