Designing from the Rural
Human-computer interaction is dominated by urban spaces, particularly superstar cities that have become hubs of education and technological innovation. In many ways, this is natural for HCI: These cities, such as San Francisco and Boston, are home to most major tech companies and universities, as well as the majority of tech’s financial and human capital. They stand in the popular imagination as bastions of the future, the places from which innovative design emerges. However, in allowing attention to drift almost exclusively to these cities, we bypass an important question: What are we missing when we focus only on the superstars?
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Jean Hardy, Chanda Phelan, Morgan Vigil-Hayes, Norman Makoto Su, Susan Wyche, and Phoebe Sengers. “Designing from the Rural.” ACM Interactions July/August 2019.