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Shraddha Kumbhar
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November 19, 2021
12 mins

Critical Response: Decolonial Pathways

Decolonial Pathways: Our Manifesto for a Decolonizing Agenda in HCI Research and Design

Authors: Leea Contractor & Shraddha Kumbhar

Part of: Emily Carr University of Art + Design

Course: Contemporary Dialogues in Design

Over the last decade, the issue of decolonization has become increasingly essential to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). This new focus came from a growing awareness of how computing technologies affect populations in the Global South differently from those in the Global North. In addition, there was a growing sense that current HCI methods, techniques, and approaches are not receptive to the development of appropriate computing technologies across cultural spaces. Furthermore, these calls have become more prominent in recent years because more voices have called for decolonizing computing, decolonizing design, and utilizing a decolonial approach in computing. In response to the abovementioned points, similar-minded people from the HCI community collaborated and submitted a workshop proposal to the Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) 2020 conference. Upon being selected, they co-organize and participate in the 'Decolonizing Learning Spaces for Sociotechnical Research and Design' workshop. This conference resulted in creating five pathways that offer HCI researchers a framework to investigate through their own practice, sociotechnical research and the learning they inhabit. Thus, it is a collective exploration from workshop organizers and their participants for approaching decoloniality within HCI. Furthermore, using the findings from the workshop, they created a manifesto, "Decolonial Pathways: Our Manifesto for a Decolonizing Agenda in HCI Research and Design." as an artifact to investigate the why, what, how, with whom, and what for when practicing decoloniality. Interestingly, most of them were from different corners of the world, which gave the manifesto a world view on HCI (Alvarado et al, 2021).

The manifesto highlights the equality of contributions of the authors; this is very evident since the authorship is listed alphabetically. Following are the authors of this manifesto.

  1. Adriana Alvarado Garcia is a Ph.D. candidate at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She uses a mixed-methods approach to create contextualized technologies that allow the transfer of social media data from online to offline contexts to advocate for human rights in Latin America (Organizers, 2021).
  2. Juan Fernando Maestre is an Informatics Ph.D. candidate at Indiana University. His research lies in the intersection of HCI research methods, technology, and stigma. He uses novel methods for recruiting and conducting research with marginalized and vulnerable populations via remote approaches (Organizers, 2021).
  3. Manuhuia Barcham, PhD. is an Associate professor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Along with this, his interests are brought together with his work on Futuring under the Archetekt brand. His work lies at the intersection of interaction design and strategic design (particularly service and social design) (Bio — Manuhuia Barcham, 2021).
  4. Marilyn Iriarte is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland. Her focus includes HCI, user experience design, and sociotechnical information difficulties encountered by the Latino population (Organizers, 2021).
  5. Marisol Wong-Villacres is a Ph.D. candidate in Human-Centered Computing at Georgia Tech and a faculty at Ecuador's Escuela Superior Politecnica del Litoral's Computer Science programme. Her research lies at the intersection of culture, information access, and assets-based design of technologies for vulnerable communities (Organizers, 2021).
  6. Oscar A. Lemus is a doctoral student in the Department of Informatics at Indiana University. He is interested in the digital technologies and artifacts women micro-business owners use to construct personalized systems to manage economic and home life in their everyday life (About — O.A. Lemus).
  7. Palak Dudani is a systems-oriented designer & researcher with interest in culture, social systems and the future of urban life. She is currently at Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Norway. (Palak Dudani - dR).
  8. Pedro Reynolds-Cuéllar is a Ph.D. student at the Center for Civic Media Group at MIT. His research focuses on studying participatory frameworks to conduct technology design in collaboration with rural, historically marginalized communities in Latin America (Person Overview ‹ Pedro Reynolds-Cuellar – MIT Media Lab).
  9. Ruotong Wang is doing her Ph.D. in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. Her research interests are HCI and social computing. Before starting her Ph.D., she spent a year in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at CMU (Homes.cs.washington.edu)1.
  10. Teresa Cerratto Pargman is an Associate Professor of HCI at Stockholm University. Her research focuses on the increasing digitalization and datafication of society and the impact of such sociotechnical practices on us at individual and collective levels (Teresa Cerratto Pargman — Digital Futures, 2021).

Keywords: Decolonizing Design, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Pathways, Pluriverse, Manifesto, Global North & Global South

  • Decolonizing design means creating a world where many worlds fit; futures where the human is not the center of the narratives but a part of many narratives (Rivera, Agrawal & Lam, 2021).
  • Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is a multidisciplinary field focusing on designing the interaction between humans (the users) and computers. Today HCI has expanded to cover almost all forms of information technology design (What is Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)? 2021).
  • Pathways are suggested courses of action. In terms of this manifesto, it is to decolonize in HCI research & design.
  • Pluriverse is the idea of building design practices situated in plurality in terms of participatory, socially oriented, and open-ended approaches. It is the coexistence of plural meanings and connotations (Hans, 2021).
  • Manifesto "A manifesto is a unique way of communicating which addresses an audience and asks them to unite to take action and change something." (Cooke, 2021).
  • Global North & Global South is the concept of a gap between both populations regarding how computing technologies have impacted them differently. According to the Brandt Line 1980 model, the more affluent countries are almost all located in the Northern Hemisphere, except for Australia and New Zealand; and the underdeveloped countries remain primarily located in tropical regions and the Southern Hemisphere. (A 60 seconds guide to the Global North/South Divide, n.d.)

Following are the five pathways mentioned in the manifesto and how to implement them in the design practices.

Path 1: Understanding The Why

The writers discuss Mignolo's concept of colonial difference. Unless contemporary epistemology was transported or imported to those regions where thinking was impossible due to mythology, magic, or wisdom; it is crucial to recognize the colonial difference within one's own community in order to enlighten and strive towards developing conditions of diversity that embrace a more pluriversal approach to knowledge production. It also requires us to consider how many of our current standards and ways of engaging with other communities may be rooted in the colonial past. We can do so by reflecting on and documenting the tenets, practises, and procedures that constrain our knowledge production so we can trace them back and consider how things came to be (Alvarado et al. 2021, p. 5, 6).

Path 2: Reconsidering The How

The authors claim that the HCI framework has tension with what the community believes is optimal knowledge production. It is critical to understand our knowledge practises origins/genealogy. One must acknowledge the colonial legacy of the tools, methods, and approaches used to address this concern. Also, let users drive methodological decisions and seek to learn what they genuinely value. Participatory research and action research methods can engage people and make them feel more comfortable and open for conversations that matter. It is necessary to take ethical considerations into account when creating research guidelines, especially for marginalized populations. Understand that other methods of knowing are legitimate and do not need to be established or accepted by the Western canon, and remember to create a collective archive to record and share colonial interactions and accomplishments of decolonization(Alvarado et al. 2021, p. 6, 7).

Path 3: Changing the For Whom

The authors demonstrate how the HCI community structured and orientated their research techniques and writing to be acceptable to their fellows in the field. Keeping this in mind, the authors argue for a radical shift in how we view this matter. Firstly the HCI community should examine the scale, productivity, and impact values used to evaluate successful research. Also, the outcomes should ultimately benefit participants, drawing on their systems of knowledge and values (Alvarado et al. 2021, p. 7).

Path 4: Expanding The What

For authors, knowledge production in HCI stems from the epistemological and ontological Pluriverse. They express how we should consider participants or communities we engage with as experts of their own problem domain and design space. The research's limited knowledge, flaws, and ideological blind spots should be examined. Researchers should walk into a research space with a non-expert attitude and not impose research to extract information; instead, they should be open to learning more and carefully listen to what the participants say. Diverse frames of reference should be recognized and valued; one should accept different cultures and support other points of view while challenging prevailing assumptions and norms of what is right. Authors encourage the HCI community to widen their declarations of positionality to encompass knowledge paradigms, populations served, and how different knowledge forms are accepted (Alvarado et al. 2021, p. 7,8).

Path 5: Reflecting on The What For

The paths explained so far suggest significant shifts in how we engage with and perform the HCI discipline. To navigate through the previous paths, one must unpack the complexities of how they are affected by or resist forms of power in the field. The authors explain how the idea of Coloniality of Power helps break down the existing systems of knowledge, hierarchies and cultures that embed in one's practices. Drawing on this concept, the authors identify three themes characterized around issues of power and action in HCI:

  • Knowledge Systems refer to the systems of collective knowledge. The authors question how one can take an outside perspective of something from the inside, find gaps within their knowledge system while being present, and dismantle it?
  • The Genealogy of Fear refers to the fear of being delegitimized; this originates from self-doubt around not being able to tell what counts as real knowledge. The authors observed that researchers often feel the pressure to cite literary experts, primarily white, male, and Western and how the resistance may bring the fear of having one's work delegitimized.
  • They explain Existentialism; as design becomes more prominent in solving today's complicated problems, society forces the discipline to confront questions about its responsibilities and duties. As a result, authors ask who has the authority to define what HCI research and design is and should be.

To work on the above points, one should recognize the importance of 'dominant' knowledge systems in shaping the way we conduct HCI research. Create safe spaces for researchers to choose research methods that encourage pluralistic perspectives and incorporate community feedback and information into their design research, citing marginalized groups, encouraging change after reflecting on the previous principles (Alvarado et al. 2021, p. 8, 9, 10).

Pathways Moving forward

The authors have mentioned that the pathways proposed are still incomplete, but they will continue to build them for "HCI to become a pluriverse connected and joined by multiple paths" Some of the examples given by authors as an opening of other decolonial paths are Design Justice, Critical race theory in HCI, and Feminist HCI. Authors say that "There are a multitude of paths to many worlds which are open to us if we choose." To enable the return of the voices of the multitude of worlds and enter the realm of possibilities in HCI, one needs to understand the histories, the choices we make, be it methods or communities we work with and recognize how power courses through it all, then we will be able to enact the change that we desire (Alvarado et al. 2021, p. 10).

After reading the manifesto multiple times and being designers who have recently moved from the Global South, my presentation team-mate Leea Contractor and I found the following quote fascinating as it is highly relatable to us. "It is through understanding our histories, the impacts of the methods we use, the communities with whom we work, the multiple voices present in our work, and the ways in which power courses through it all, that we will be able to enact the change that we desire." (Alvarado et al. 2021, p. 10).

In order to be able to act upon the change we aspire towards, we must assess all the aspects that make us who we are. Our history, culture, customs, methods, and knowledge systems make us who we are as designers, researchers, and practitioners. What interested us in this quote was the idea of how power has a significant influence on all that we do. As mentioned in path five, with the fear of being delegitimized, we subconsciously gravitate towards methods, methodologies and practices that originated in the Global North. We need to step back and ask ourselves the - why, what, how, with whom, and where are we applying these methods? It is also important that we are able to hone our knowledge about the communities we work with to contextualize our practice.

At this point of the semester, we realized that most of the classmates, including us, were struggling to unlearn the past practices and absorb the new eye-opening realm of information. Be it learning new research methods, practices, ethics, cultures, the issue with problemist or solutionist approach and profitability mindset. In my opinion, this paper is a worthy read to take the first step towards the change in our own knowledge system. Keeping these points in mind, we wanted everyone to reflect and talk about the changes in their past knowledge and hoped it would help reflect some perspective of their own and help classmates get new directions to achieve the answers they were looking for through other's experiences. The questions asked are as follows.

  • How do you select and reflect on the research methods you choose in your design practice?
  • How have your design/research paths evolved in your design practice?
  • Our final question is based on a quote from the article, "There is a tendency voiced by the workshop participants who are also researchers themselves to structure and orient their research procedures and writing so that they will be acceptable for fellow researchers in the field." Have you ever been in this position? What did you do?

While trying to answer these questions on my own, the following points came to my mind.

  • It is essential to keep reading, learning, unlearning and growing our knowledge systems.
  • The words, citations and information we choose are important, especially when trying to unlearn something. It will also help reach out to the audience with the proper perspective.
  • Taking the responsibility to self-reflect, recognize and consciously try to practice the new learnings can help one achieve their goal.• Reflecting on papers, I have started to learn more about participatory research, co-design and research ethics.

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