SIGCHI Social Impact Award: Asking Better Questions

I remember when I started my DPhil studies joking with friends that my research was improving the sum total of human happiness – by one. I was enjoying the work. It was as a post-doc, however, that I began to see how knowledge, or at the very least the pursuit of knowledge, is not neutral. The things that we choose to study, the problems that we choose to focus on, and the way we frame our questions, lead towards different benefits for different interests. If we want to make a better world, then perhaps we should focus on asking better questions. One question that was a turning point for me was posed by Steve Walker in 2002. In a world where e-commerce and e-government already had thriving, well-financed research communities, he convened a workshop asking “Can there be a Social Movement Informatics?” The topics ranged from designing with voluntary organizations and trade-unions, to investigating hate speech in Internet bulletin boards and chat rooms. Together with colleagues, we ran projects around “Design for Civil Society”, and “Technology and Social Action”, exploring how we as technologists, designers and researchers can connect and collaborate more effectively with groups promoting social change. Following on from that work, I won an opportunity to explore how participatory approaches in international social and economic development relate to understandings of participatory design in HCI. Working with the Sironj Crop Producers Company Ltd (a co-operative of small and marginal farmers in Madhya Pradesh, India) and Safal Solutions (a small software house focused on rural development, based in Telengana, India), this was my first attempt to apply participatory design methods in a context with very limited infrastructure and resources. How can we facilitate meaningful communications about priorities and possibilities across wide social, cultural, geographical, linguistic, experiential and economic divides? How does the way we arrange, organize and conduct projects aiming to advance ‘development’ affect the outputs, the outcomes and the impacts that are achieved? How can agency, creativity and control be shared in ways that move systems towards a more just world? I don't know all the answers to those questions, but I have learned that the inequalities of this world are far greater than I had originally imagined. I started with high hopes that expertise in participatory design, together with a commitment to participatory development would deliver radical results. I discovered that true participation and reciprocity is tougher than I thought. We cannot communicate effectively across such huge social divides without questioning, acknowledging and responding to our own positionality in the wider context. For example, we should ask how our own actions are contributing to harming others, such as the millions who will become, or are already, climate refugees? A few short-term “bungee research” visits will not lead us to real understanding. When key decision making remains in the usual centers of power, that simply reinforces the neo-colonial arrangements that underpin the marginalization that we say we want to change. To create a future for humanity as part of life on this planet, we must see changes in behavior close to centers of power – and that includes ourselves. We are already enmeshed in a system of unjust socio-economic relationships. “The problem” is not something that is “out there”, it is also “in here” and all around us. Are we asking the questions that really matter?