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Ovahimba Knowledge through Storytelling and Personas:
Technologies, Methods and Challenges Ahead
Daniel G. Cabrero
University of West London /
Polytechnic of Namibia
London, UK / Windhoek, Namibia
daniel@personas.technology
Heike Winschiers-Theophilus
Polytechnic of Namibia
5 Storch Street
Windhoek, Namibia
heikewinschiers@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
This paper presents our latest intervention on the ongoing
digitalization of cultural heritage of the Ovahimba indigenous
communities in Northern Namibia. It describes the
communicative and technical processes undertaken in a double-
session during two days in March 2015. This doubled-session was
part of the development, design and future implementation of an
Indigenous Knowledge (IK) Crowdsourcing Management System
aiming to provide and empower elder pastoral Ovahimba with
technological tools with which to gather, store, curate and
preserve traditional knowledge for future generations. The paper
hence pronounces the aims of the project regarding the
technologies intended for deployment, their current development
and design, and the storytelling and persona methods arranged in
these sessions in order to progress in the design endeavours of our
multidisciplinary team of researchers and Ovahimba communities
in two villages. The manuscript then details the initial take-on,
engagement, and involvement of participants in both, a usability
session and in an initial exploration on creating persona artefacts
for User Experience. The document draws to a close highlighting
strengths, challenges and future projections thus-far unfilled.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: User Interfaces –
Evaluation/methodology, Crowdsourcing, Personas;
General Terms
Cultural heritage, indigenous knowledge, community-based co-
design, Namibia, Ovahimba
Keywords
Cultural Usability, Participatory Design, Indigenous Knowledge,
User Involvement, Personas, Cross-Cultural HCI.
1. INTRODUCTION
The technological custody of indigenous heritage compellingly
implies designing usable and acceptable technologies that respect
cultural traditions and epistemologies, and that support and
enhances cognitive behaviours and mental models while
acknowledging contextual ecologies, affordances and physicality.
Contextual connotations, dynamics and integration are hence
paramount to a comprehensible and ultimately sustainable design,
development and integration of technologies across cultures.
Cross-cultural design endeavours can thus be considered to be an
artistic act for it is a highly creative and sensitive process
presented as situational unique and contextually self-defined [9].
In working with OvaHimba indigenous communities in the North
of Namibia, communicative and technical processes must hence
be first well understood, and then cautiously initiated so as to
grasp an initial and genuine interest and involvement of the
communities into the design process. We deploy what we have
called a community-based co-design process, a methodology
based on participatory design principles, with a dialogical
perspective based on local community practices [2]. We strive to
maximise community gains within a technology co-design
process besides the direct project objectives.
As part of current endeavours, we are designing and developing
an IK Crowdsourcing Management System to provide and
empower [mainly] elder pastoral Namibians with tools to
gathering, storing, curating and preserving traditional knowledge
for future generations [7]. For this, we have undertaken a double-
session based on participant engagement towards the ongoing
communication, technical design, and ultimate deployment of
such tool. This intervention occurred during two consecutive days
in March 2015 at two different sites where indigenous OvaHimba
are settled. The participating community is part of the project’s
pilot communities and has been visited two times previously by
the core project team.
This paper hence pronounces the aims of the project regarding the
technologies deployed, their development and design so-far, and
the methods deployed in each of the sessions. The methods are
storytelling with local scenarios, a discussion around the needs to
extend an existing prototype from elsewhere, a usability test of a
newly created prototype, a design session as well as a user-
created persona session. The paper, hence, highlights the take-on,
engagement and involvement of participants on this IK venture,
while it also pinpoints the challenges, strengths and projections of
future.
2. STORYTELLING SESSION
After an initial lengthy greeting and expression of happiness to
meet again the formal parts of the project activity start. It begins
with an initial gathering of female and male members of the
community, youngsters and adults, inside and around a canopy we
have brought about to allow a session in the shade towards
avoiding issues of reflection on tablet screens while providing of
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shade to participants. Referring directly to the leader of this
OvaHerero community towards keeping the respect towards the
community tradition, we first introduced the aims of this specific
session as part of the ongoing project. This serves to obtain the
permission from the chief first to carry out the session.
In previous research with such communities we have established
that scenario-based storytelling entices participants to organically
interact with researchers without being intimidated by
technologies brought along. Thus, when entice to speak about any
of his tradition a scenario comes naturally in regards to wedding
practices. This provides insights in regards to marriages taking
place in close circles of relatives, which does not thus imply for
the couple to have previously been involved in a relationship. The
leader then explains how the process to arrange the wedding takes
place, highlighting issues to do with cattle exchange between
families and about the groom mates coming along to visiting the
bride’s homestead. After grasping a foundation from the above
story, further members of the community implement details that
enhance it into a complete and detailed description of protocols,
behaviours and props around the consummation of a wedding.
While attempts to conceptualize and digitally represent wedding
practices among OvaHerero communities in Namibia have been
previously reported [4] we are mostly interested in the variances
to the existing digital representations as to further explore
requirements for OvaHimba cultural heritage preservation.
3. TECHNOLOGY INSPECTION
After having gone through the introductory protocol and wedding
storytelling, a discussion takes place around a version of the
OvaHerero Homestead Creator (HC) [3] which was previously
adapted to the OvaHimba community [6,8]. The HC is a 3D
visualization tool where cultural elements can be placed in an
empty virtual world. The tool has shown to be very intuitive to
rural communities in Eastern Namibia and triggered much
conversation around cultural practices thereby serving as an
ethnographical probe.
Presenting the leader with the standard Ovahimba village (Figure
2), a conversation sparks whereby the leader states all the things
spoken about during the wedding scenario which were not in the
HC thus they needed to be modelled for the HC.
He then goes on providing with a deeper level of detail about how
a OvaHimba lady should then be depicted in regards to her
physical appearance, thereby referring to a previous visit’s
discussion [7]. This gets once again complemented by other
participants, with the leader however pinpointing the unsuitability
of the moment to make recordings of the female participants in
the session, as he argues they do not wear the clothing that would
better capture tradition.
The session then moves into providing in-situ practical experience
where the leader takes over the tablet and takes a series of
pictures of medicinal plants in the surroundings. Although the
user interface was designed with the rural community in mind a
number of usability issues were recorded. Discussing possible
deployment strategies, the leader responds training is necessary
and suggests one, two or three days at the most, as he is confident
that after a preliminary initiation it will result fairly easy for him
to get on with how a technology towards such an aim would
function. The conversation moves into what if the technological
proposal does not work for them. The leader proposes means such
as voice recording of stories instead.
Figure 3: OvaHimba Leader taking pictures of healing plant
4. DESIGN SESSION
Following the usability evaluation, we launched into a design
session of the user interface, the icons, the metaphors as well as
colours and features. While the detailed request are beyond this
paper, we observed interesting challenges in their decisions on
meaningful representations of features as well as suggestions
influenced by simple nokia phones that they poses.
Fi
g
ure 1. Initiatin
g
the session throu
g
h conversation.
Fi
g
ure 2. The OvaHimba Homestead Creator.
5. PERSONA SESSION
With the data provided in the previous two sessions we hold a
further aim of gathering and communicating such data to further
stakeholders in the design process. This is intended by proposing
participants the construction of persona artefacts that strive to
both, embody and communicate the needs, requirements and
aspirations of the communities to further stakeholders and to
make a further understanding of the elements that are relevant to
the communities in the design of technologies for their usage.
In another OvaHimba village a session takes place with a group of
women of different age and status in the community. This session
aims to make an initial understanding of user profiles towards the
creation in the future of persona artefacts as tools for usability
evaluation and corroboration.
Participants inform on the cohesion of the female upbringing and
the transitional period from childhood to adulthood via the first
menstruation of a teenager. They also pinpoint their sense of shy
character and humble behaviour within their community, the role
they play in it at the different stages in life, as well as the physical
markers of those stages through their attire.
When then asked to describe a scenario whereby two young ladies
are alone working together in the maize field, they revealed they
talk about further things they would not in front of the rest of the
community. However, before starting this conversation, the
women requested for the male elder sitting in proximity to step
out of the area for the females to express themselves on their own
private life. They then revealed a number of stunning facts about
girls and women lives.
In a discussion around current usage of technologies a number of
community members revealed their nokia phone (see figure 4)
which is even used by elder ladies despite the lack of literacy.
Interesting workarounds were explained such as association of
phone numbers with inbuilt icons to recognize who calls or who
to select who she would like to call.
6. CONCLUSION
This paper presents an intervention towards technological heritage
custody by OvaHimba indigenous communities in the North of
Namibia. Describing the communicative and technical processes
undertaken in the middle of an ongoing project, we have found
out strengths and challenges towards the development, design and
future implementation of an IK Crowdsourcing Management
System to empower pastoral OvaHimba with tools to store, curate
and preserve traditional knowledge for future generations.
6.1 Strengths
In understanding cultural traditions, detailed data on a wedding-
based scenario provides with props and arrangements of relevance
to the community. This also triggers the activation of an engaging
participatory process where contributors organically and actively
discuss, put at work, and feedback researchers on the IK tool.
In regards to the hierarchical and gender-based arrangement of the
community, we have corroborated this with women informing us
on their shy and humble character on the societal hand, and on the
role they play within it. However, when asking in further detail,
they also describe further roles within the community, and where
their traits and behaviours vary from being in community.
Scenarios such as the one proposed about the two young ladies
alone in the maize field, provide with further traits, behaviours
and a more overall understanding towards acquiring feedback and
suggestions on how user generated personas would fundamentally
differ from mainstream individual personas as described by
Nielsen [3].
6.2 Challenges
We have found logistical provision, community outreach and
technology maintenance must be thought of deeply and in a wide
discussion, as this is paramount to the sustainability of the project
[1]. This is likewise towards issues of online / offline Internet
access when full deployment of the IK system. Further technical
issues such as sun reflection have been felt by participants.
In terms of collaboration and cross-cultural interventions, a
challenge has been the initiation of novel researchers to
community-based work and cultural practices as well as their
interpretations thereof.
7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Our thanks go to the OvaHimba communities for participating in
this challenging endeavour of digitalising cultural heritage. The
research is funded by the NCRST grant.
8. REFERENCES
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