Re-placing faith: reconsidering the secular-religious use divide in the United States and Kenya

Authors:
Susan P. Wyche;Paul M. Aoki;Rebecca E. Grinter
Affiliations:
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA;Intel Research, Berkeley, CA, USA;Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA
Venue:
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Year:
2008

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Abstract

In this paper, we report on design-oriented fieldwork and design research conducted over a six-month period in urban centers in the United States and Kenya. The contributions of this work for the CHI/CSCW community are empirical and methodological. First, we describe how recent design discourse around "designing technology for religion" creates an artificial distinction between instrumental and religious ICT use, particularly in developing regions. As illustrative examples, we relate three themes developed in the course of our fieldwork, which we term mindfulness, watchfulness, and embeddedness, to both "secular" and "religious" aspects of life in the communities studied. Second, we make a methodological contribution by describing how we used design sketches of speculative design concepts to extend and complement our fieldwork. By producing these sketches and soliciting feedback, we elicited additional data about how participants viewed the relationship between religion and ICT and prompted self-reflection on our own ideas.