Research, Design
Decentralising Digital (DeDi) was a two year research project funded by GCRF at the University of Dundee in partnership with Quicksand - a design research studio with offices across India, the National Institute of Design, India, and a range of community partners including the Buffalo Back farming collective, Black Baza Coffee collective and Janastu - an open source software non-profit.
New narratives were co-created that explore how developments in emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things, the voice-enabled Internet, machine learning, and artificial intelligence might be harnessed to support rural communities in India. Technology is already successfully contributing to socio-economic development in India but the narratives used to frame these successes are often narrow and frequently urban-centric.
Our approach was one of Speculative Design: by telling stories about different futures, we encouraged people to think critically about the present and the decisions that would need to be taken to make such hopeful futures a reality. We worked with community partners to develop prototypes and probes, to help us establish these stories, and to develop visual concepts and comics that embody and explain them.
Buffalo Back works with around 100 small-scale organic farmers in multiple villages on the outskirts of Bangalore, of which we engaged actively with around 20-30 farmers in our research interviews and workshops.
The project was published in a printed book and online decentralising.digital and a full project summary can be read online.
This research project was funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund and the Scottish Funding Council. This work was undertaken at the University of Dundee / DJCAD in collaboration with Jon Rogers, Pete Thomas, Loraine Clarke, Babitha George, Romit Raj and Neha Singh.