AfriCHI 2018 is coming to Windhoek

AFRICHI 2018, a conference on human-computer interaction, is set to take place in Windhoek from 3 to 7 December.

The conference will be hosted by the Namibia University of Science and Technology (Nust), in collaboration with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)’s special interest group on human-computer interaction (SIGHCI).

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is a branch of computer science. Research in this area is about the relationship between computers and people: how hardware and software are designed, and how people use computers, and advanced technology in general, for work and pleasure.

Whenever someone is battling with a spreadsheet, a cellphone feature, or a TV decoder, the design of the machine or its software can probably be improved. This is what HCI practitioners are doing.

HCI has thousands of practitioners worldwide. Researchers congregate at the annual CHI (spoken: khai) conference. However, as people, their work, and their values are not the same everywhere, specific African challenges and solutions are presented at the African continental conference, AfriCHI. It was first held in 2016 in Nairobi, Kenya.

The second AfriCHI will now take place in Windhoek. The conference, themed ‘Thriving Communities’, saw more than 100 submissions, addressing technology adoption, inter-cultural and inter-generational communication, all the way to matters of health and social justice.

Not all of the work exhibited will come in the form of papers and presentations. There are 14 installations – demonstrations of what can be done with technology, and six workshops, for instance on knowledge visualisation for story-telling, on the ethics of collecting traditional knowledge from indigenous communities, or on designing interactive games for people who don’t know each other.

There is also a summer school for graduate students, academics, and industry practitioners. There will also be designing with or for marginalised communities at the Namibia Business Innovation institute village from 26 November to 2 December.

For more information, visit africhi.net.

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