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Workshop
Abstract
Place-making in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) remains a persistent research challenge, especially in contexts where technology intersects with culture, heritage, and socio-political dynamics.
The process of creating, understanding, and engaging with "place" in digital and physical environments requires sensitivity to the local histories, sensory realities, and lived experiences of the people who inhabit those spaces.
This challenge becomes particularly pronounced when designing for diverse communities across the African continent, where a place is often defined not only by physical landscapes but also by cultural narratives, ancestral ties, and communal practices.
This workshop will address these challenges by exploring methods for designing interactive systems that support meaningful place-making in African contexts.
A central component is the use of notebook techniques inspired by observational and narrative practices that capture the richness of place.
Originating from disciplines such as film-making and as well as anthropology, these techniques emphasize attentiveness to sensory details, micro-interactions, and the emotional textures of everyday life promoting the details that often are missing from digital representations of the African places.
Format: half-day, in-person only
This workshop welcomes designers, activists, community leaders, academics, and practitioners in the field of HCI, especially those with a focus on place-making and who have experience with or are curious about methods for doing so.
Join
Join Our Workshop
We welcome all interested participants to join our workshop. To apply for participation, please complete the application form at the link below.
As part of your application, you will be asked to account for your motivation and research interests.
Position Paper Guidelines
Your application may respond to the following questions:
• What makes you interested in place-making in HCI?
• What are your current experiences or curiosity towards working with digital design through observational notebook techniques?
• What challenges and oppurtunities do you imagine might surface?
Application Form
To complete your application for the workshop, please fill out the necessary details in the Google Form linked below:
CLICK ME TO JOIN
Organizers
Meet the team behind the workshop
Lars Rune Christensen is an Associate Professor at the IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark. With a background in anthropology and software development, he focuses on interventions and co-design in humanitarian settings. His expertise combines human social and cultural understandings with digital interventions, enabling him to address the intersection of technology and societal challenges. Lars has, for example, done action-research with Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and Syrian refugees in Jordan. Also, he has done field work in Sudan, Ethiopia, and Togo where he has focused on the design and evaluation of digital technologies for development.
Kasper Rodil is an Associate Professor at Aalborg University, Denmark. Most visibly, Kasper has collaborated with local researchers and indigenous communities in Namibia for 15 years on rurally situated emerging tech innovations. Kasper is rather agnostic towards technologies as long as they are developed with respect for culture and use, for instance as mobile systems reflecting Afrocentric design values or Virtual Reality, which he was first to introduce as a collaborative technology with indigenous communities on the continent. He has many connections across Africa and Europe—for instance, in indigenous research networks in the Nordics—and maintains numerous innovation-driven partnerships within the Triple Helix framework on both continents.
Marwa Dabaieh is an architect and BioGeometry® practitioner with experience in vernacular and environmentally conscious architecture. Marwa did her PhD on desert vernacular architecture in Egypt in 2011 and since then she has been researching on the North Africa and sub-saharan Africa vernacular architecture with focus on zero emission, passive earth buildings, sustainable architectural conservation, climate responsive design, climate neutral architectural design, low-tech vernacular methods and their adaptation for contemporary energy efficient and zero carbon building practice. Marwa is the vice president of the international committee of vernacular architecture which is under ICOMOS (international council for monuments and sites) Currently she is a full professor and the architecture program manager at Malmo university and an adjunct professor at Aalborg university in Denmark.
Colin Stanley is Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research, Innovation, and Partnerships at the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST). He is actively involved in numerous innovative projects, including leading initiatives at NUST's new Lüderitz Research Satellite Campus (Technovation Park), focusing on green hydrogen and oil and gas sectors. In addition, Colin plays a key role in transdisciplinary projects like the INFORANGE project, which aims to improve the efficiency of rangeland-based livestock systems using machine learning and digital technologies. His core research interest is Community-Based Co-Design (CBCD) of software applications for Safeguarding Indigenous Knowledge. His approach to CBCD is to integrate Oundu's moral values and Afrocentricity as a foundation for conducting Afrocentric research to establish and maintain humanness before CBCD can occur.
