Postcolonial Computing: A lens on Design and Development

Text Exploration

In this article, the authors, exploring Postcolonial Computing, criticize simply exporting traditional design approaches to other cultures (or even assuming that “other cultures” can be simply defined.) Instead, they argue that a shift towards engagement, articulation, and translation will better support technology efforts across contexts.

“Postcolonial” approaches view the historical, global conditions of power, wealth and political influence as relevant, and intertwined, in discussions of culture. When used in the context of computing, it provides a lens through which to view efforts to bring technology to “others,” often with poor results. The authors describe a challenging history of bringing technology from western areas into other areas without understanding differences between cultures; community-centric design efforts emerged as an attempt to mitigate these approaches, but these well-intentioned attempts avoided discussing and considering things outside the perceived scope of the technology and product implementation itself. To illustrate this, the authors present a variety of case examples.

The first example shows a company attempting to bring technology to the elderly, and one of the authors being asked to conduct research with different national elderly cultures in the United States. They found that the idea of a simple classified culture doesn’t exist, and suggest that a “more productive analytical position” would be to view culture arising from anthropological studies. The second example describes a project in which researchers were asked to find an archetypical poor person with a specific need in India. Upon learning that the need did not exist, the company was reluctant to shift their product vision to focus on a real need that was observed. The third example discusses how Apple blocked attempts in Brazil to provide open-source access to an apple-like computer, illustrating the embedded relationship between technology improvements and geonational power influences; and the fourth example describes how, in some cultures, commonly held views of knowledge management rub against deeply engrained rules around location.

The authors argue that traditional design approaches fail to capture the challenges presented in these case studies; technology is largely local and contingent, and our practices should reflect that. They propose a different way of thinking about and approaching technology design that focuses on engagement, articulation, and translation.

Engagement means shifting from an observational approach of learning about wants and needs to an approach that is about “shaping and staging encounters between multiple parties” and holding conversations rather than following a pre-set process. Articulation is a different way of thinking about the designerly artifacts that are made, and understanding that typical representations of problems and solutions may not work because of the highly situated nature of knowledge. Translation means shifting from requirement definition about a domain to discussion about technology influence in a culture.

The authors summarize by urging researchers to avoid the simply dualism of us vs them, or here vs there; when embracing a post-colonial view of computing, the goal should be to attend to “the emergence of hybrid practices in information technology design, coupled with sensitivity to how uneven power relationships are enacted in design practice.”