Browsing by Author "Winschiers-Theophilus, Heike"

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    Determining requirements within an indigenous knowledge system of African rural communities.
    (SAICSIT, 2010) Chivuno-Kuria, Shilumbe; Kapuire, Gereon Koch; Bidwell, Nicola J.; Winschiers-Theophilus, Heike
    Eliciting and analyzing requirements within knowledge systems, which fundamentally differ so far from technology supported systems represent particular challenges. African rural communities’ life is deeply rooted in an African Indigenous knowledge system manifested in their practices such as Traditional Medicine. We describe our endeavors to elicit requirements to design a system to support the accumulation and sharing of traditional local knowledge within two rural Herero communities in Namibia. We show how our method addressed various challenges in eliciting and depicting intangible principles arising because African communities do not dichotomize theoretical and practical know-how or privilege a science of abstraction and generalization. Ethnography provided insights into etiology, or causal interrelationships between social values, spiritual elements and everyday life. Participatory methods, involving youth and elders, revealed nuances in social relations and pedagogy pertinent to the transfer of knowledge from generation to generation. Researcher and participant-recorded audio-visual media revealed that interactions prioritize speech, gesture and bodily interaction, above visual context. Analysis of the performed and narrated structures reveal some of the ways that people tacitly transfer bodily and felt-experiences and temporal patterns in storytelling. Experiments using digital and paperbased media, in situ rurally showed the ways that people in rural settings encounter and learn within their everyday experiences of the land. These analyses also demonstrate that own ontological and representational biases can constrain eliciting local meanings and analyzing transformations in meaning as we introduce media. Reflections on our method are of value to others who need to elicit requirements in communities whose literacy, social and spiritual logic and values profoundly differ from those in the knowledge systems that typify ICT design.
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    Technology design with indigenous and marginalised communities: A pragmatic approach to knowledge and alternative future creation
    (2018-08-02) Winschiers-Theophilus, Heike
    At the frontier of disciplines and methodologies, scrutinised through multiple theoretical lenses, community technology design research provides new empirical data expanding current knowledge systems. Within a pragmatic paradigm, in search of practical solutions to identified and agreed upon challenges, we acknowledge that technology design continuously creates new realities requiring novel interventions, designs and methods. We establish that inclusive and transcultural research and development collaborations with indigenous and marginalised communities contributes with new insights and perspectives to the dominating discourse of globalisation and localisation, thereby allowing for the design of alternative futures and knowledges. Positioned within a transforming interdisciplinary research context we further uncover tensions and ethical concerns around established methods and institutionalised research practices. Drawing from our numerous and distinct community technology research projects in Namibia and Borneo we highlight selected and anecdotal findings.
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    Welcome to the first Indigenous Knowledge Technology Conference
    (IKTC, 2011) Winschiers-Theophilus, Heike
    I have great pleasure in welcoming you to the first Indigenous Knowledge Technology Conference (IKTC2011) in Windhoek, Namibia. It is so exciting to see the realization of, what was, just a vague idea borne from the desire to bring together a critical mass of people engaged in studying indigenous knowledge systems and designing new and different technologies to support the representation and dissemination of indigenous knowledge.