Domesticating design by a disenfranchised community

Abstract

Many technologies afford functionalities that may be relevant to the daily lives of diverse groups of people but that does not necessarily mean that in all communities that they are mundane. Indeed our construction of domestication may reflect power relations and existing inequalities and its influence in design may exacerbate exclusion. We introduce a process to respond to the needs of Aboriginal women in designing systems to support community connectivitiy and preserve their heritage and some of the challenges it presents. We discuss designing technology probes to help us refine applications that can be subsumed into family and social life. We propose issues relating to rural-urban differences that arise when considering these users that have wider relevance for mundane technologies.