‘She looked deep into our eyes’: reflections on cross-cultural practice in rural Africa

Abstract

This paper shows the development of a mobile digital storytelling system that suits the needs and functions of rural African communities. But rather than focusing solely on the artefact and how it was designed, I also present an account of the ideas and perspectives I took, and how these changed in the course of practice. I uncover the slow process of discovering that cross-cultural practice is not only about understanding users or prototyping ideas in a detached fashion, but explore how in the course of practice pre-existing notions embedded in ourselves and in our culture are ‘unconcealed’. It is a learning process in which we learn about users in relation to ourselves. The prototype was tested in Adiedo, Kenya.