Looking for User-Created Personas with ovaHimba in Otjise and in Ohandungu

In March 2015, lecturer and facilitator Gereon Koch Kapuire (Namibia University of Science and Technology), PhD candidate Daniel G. Cabrero (University of West London and current exchange-researcher at Namibia University of Science and Technology), lecturer and facilitator Colin Stanley (Namibia University of Science and Technology) and Professor Heike Winschiers-Theophilus (Namibia University of Science and Technology and Cabrero’s external supervisor) held two co-design sessions in Otjise and Ohandungu respectively. The persona aim was (1) to find suitable methods with which to find relevant data towards User-Created Personas (UCP).

In both localities, Otjise and in Ohandungu (situated in the Kunene region in the North of Namibia), we deployed subsequent focus-group sessions where we discussed and explored constructs of Usability and goals of User Experience (UX) from the natural environments these two ovaHimba communities develop their lives, and from testing the IK Crowdsourcing system Colin Stanley especially is working on.

As a list of usability constructs and goals of UX we found out as follows:

• Usability Constructs: Scalability, Screen Visibility, Feedback (lack of).
• UX Goals came as per this categorisation of our own:
• Humanness: Respect, Reminding, Local Ethics, Values;
• Emotional Kindliness: Pride, Gratification, Motivation, Help;
• Ethics: Understanding, Research;
• Storytelling: Namibia, Cohesiveness;

As a scientific literary result, this session is included in both, a scientific paper published at the CHIuXID’16 conference held in Jakarta (Indonesia) in April 2016 and an upcoming publication at an international conference to be held in Aarhus, Denmark, in August 2016.