Enough with Newness: On Re-centering African “Users” in HCI Research and Design

Researchers across disciplines have established how capitalist structures and relations have, by design, rendered the past and the future unequally distributed. If such claims could be further strengthened in HCI, then how is it that we uncritically embrace the asymmetrical outlook of the past in thinking/designing with the emerging African user? Building on the rhetoric of ‘Enough with’ across HCI, this narrative essay explores the subtle materialities and performativities of user-centric approaches in African HCI. Drawing on insights from design projects across Egypt and Nigeria, the case we present denotes how the cottage industry culture of importation and adaptation of designerly newness has failed to embrace the worldviews of African users, as often, the African user, we establish, is still an “Outlier” in current design paradigms.