Abstract:
While much of the development of ‘smart’ technologies occurs in the Global North, the logical expectation is that in the near future ‘smart’ technologies will be implemented across the world. Technology is never value neutral and always carries particular cultural and political assumptions. Ensuring technology is meaningful to people implies that it should acknowledge and support their conceptions and desires. If the particular needs and contexts of local, urban African communities are not recognised, ‘smart’ technologies, when implemented in urban contexts such as Johannesburg, South Africa (also known as iGoli in isiZulu – the City of Gold), may be undertaken in an uncritical and perhaps even detrimental manner. This paper describes an interdisciplinary project involving fourth-year industrial and interaction design students working in collaborative teams to consider how the emerging ‘smart’ technologies of the 21st Century, can be implemented in a human-centric manner, particularly in the complex context of Johannesburg. The central conceptual framework that orientated the teams’ design thinking was a novel integration of McCullough’s Typology of Thirty Situations (TTS) with Engeström’s Activity System Model (ASM).
