Indigenous Technology Empowerment Model: A Community-based Design Framework

This paper addresses the lack of social and cultural inclusion in the design of systems and products based on emerging technologies. Through a review of existing design processes, and focusing on Virtual Reality (VR) and Indigenous Peoples as examples, we conclude that existing design approaches for such technologies are not socially and culturally inclusive, don’t consider users as a community with its protocols and knowledge, and are not suitable for marginalized groups such as Indigenous Peoples. Through a collaborative project aiming at a prototype VR gathering place for Indigenous communities, we investigate the needs and concerns of community members and propose a framework consisting of a new information system model and its design process. We refer to this framework as Indigenous Technology Empowerment Model (ITEM), which is implemented using a hierarchical community involvement approach and elements we call Participatory Action Unit (PAU). Our prototype development follows this framework, and a qualitative analysis of community participation shows the initial success of our approach in empowering the communities to play an active role in the design process and identify the important technical features to be worked on. Our research also identifies proper community training as an essential component of a community-based design process.