Decentralising Digital

Ground-Up Framing

The imagination of alternative futures can often be an alienating feeling especially for marginalised communities who have had systems and technologies imposed on them. As a result, the process of decentralising digital narratives, it was necessary to reframe our frame of inquiry around hope.

During our early immersions, we realised that hope was a more meaningful and accessible framing. Many participants spoke about hope for their children and grandchildren. Thinking about future generations became a powerful way to imagine otherwise. This reframing is why the project focuses on hopeful futures.

Design as a method of inquiry

This project followed a research-through-design approach where design was not just the outcome, it was the method. The team used design tools to engage community members with complex, abstract topics. The project centered its reframing of decentralising of digital systems through three key provocations:

Rethinking Data & Knowledge Systems: In agriculture, many technology solutions focus on data sensing using AI tools, soil sensors, numerical outputs like nitrogen levels. These mean very little to many farmers, who rely on lived, generational knowledge. Given that this knowledge is built over decades of experience and not data points, one key question emerged: How do we design technology that accounts for different knowledge systems?

Sensorial Knowledge Building: The team explored how “data collection” can be reimagined beyond spreadsheets to incorporate sensorial knowledge—smell, touch, sound. For instance, tribals spoke about identifying snakes through smell like a jackfruit indicating the presence of a cobra. While these may not be scientific claims, they provided insight into how lived experiences can be reflected in digital narratives.

Prototypes as Provocations: Our team spent extended time in the fields, markets, and homes of small-scale farmers and tribal collectives. They didn’t just map "user needs"; we absorbed these experiences. Instead of building products to bridge the existing access gap, the team focused on building provocations. One such prototype used local songs as a tool of inquiry. A record of tribal songs, in turn, became a valid research artifact. These were artifacts designed to be dismantled and critiqued through co-creation.

Stories of Hope

When COVID-19 halted fieldwork, the project had to shift gears unexpectedly. We commissioned six artists and designers (such as muralists and writers) to respond to the theme of "Hopeful Futures," ensuring the project remained a tapestry of different voices. Additionally, the on-ground work was collated into a comprehensive book: Learning to speak to an elephant and other stories of decentralised digital futures.

Over the first two years, we used the field insights into three specific narratives to illustrate hopeful futures, later turning them into three comics available in both English and Kannada:

• Future of Food (Set in 2035): Traces the steps taken to build healthier farming ecosystems and prosperous organic local food systems, driven by localized technology innovations.
• Song of Soligas (Set in 2050): Follows a researcher working with the Soliga tribe to incorporate their traditional ecological knowledge into conservation policies using supportive technology.
• Making a Mesh (Set in 2030): Tells the story of decentralized mesh networks emerging from South Indian villages, sparking a "Resilience by Design" movement that gives people complete control over their data.

These artifacts served as prompts for the global design community and an invitation for technologists to rethink how data, interfaces, and systems might be designed if we truly centered them on the diverse, embodied knowledge of the people they are meant to serve.