Developing a Digital Information and Consultation Platform in Zimbabwe

This paper presents a narrative on developing a COVID-19 digital information and consultation platform for a province situated in southern Zimbabwe. In response to a WHO prediction and call to prepare for the worst, a team of medical and computer experts worked on a sovereign digital platform facilitating COVID-19 triaging over the phone. Ethnographic assessments revealed that platform developments benefitted from national dialogue, engaged communities and stakeholders, and use of locally available technologies and skills. In this paper, the development of this digital platform is placed in the broader facets of local development, data sovereignty, and growth of local capacity and abilities under the auspices of the Zimbabwe Ministry of Health and Child Care. The paper reflects on the facets involved in developing this digital platform for digital health interventions aligned with local capacity and needs. © 2022, ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.

Zooming in on embodied social sensemaking: Mapping the design space in the context of videoconferencing

Embodied sensemaking theory is thoroughly social: we make sense of the world in interaction with others. Various designs have been proposed to scaffold gembodied social sensemaking'. Yet the details of such scaffolding need elaboration. For example, what happens in remote settings, when bodies cannot engage directly? This paper investigates, through design, how interactive artifacts scaffold embodied social sensemaking. The aim is to establish clearer links between theory and design. Twenty-four embodied interaction prototypes were created to support remote videoconferencing by design students who were also, necessarily, active videoconferencing users during a COVID-19 lockdown. A reflective ordering process revealed a design space made up of six phenomenal aspects and three basic types of scaffolding. The analysis adds further details to existing design frameworks for embodied sensemaking. The paper provides guidance to designers who aim to create meaningful and theoretically grounded embodied augmentations of remote social interaction technologies. © 2022 Owner/Author.