Doing research in an unfamiliar context
Getting access to the right research environment required real effort. Research visas from the Namibian Embassy demanded school degrees, insurance certificates, criminal record statements, and officially stamped passport copies. Finding a trustworthy local partner was not a given. We secured both through the Namibian University of Science and Technology (NUST). The partnership gave us research credibility, local guidance, and practical support that made the work possible. NUST's support crew guided the team during and after business hours, showed us where people actually gathered, recruited workshop participants, and translated concepts into Oshiwambo and Afrikaans. Without that collaboration, the research would not have happened — or would have happened badly. The methodology combined immersive observation, ad hoc conversations, and structured co-creation workshops. We rented space at Kabila Community Centre and ran a workshop session with local residents. After a Sunday church service, we organised a barbecue and continued conversations informally. The schedule changed repeatedly on short notice. That flexibility was the point — real field research in unfamiliar contexts requires it.
Most of the wood craftsmen we interviewed were migrant workers, not originally from Namibia. That detail — the mobility and economic precarity of the target users — directly shaped how we thought about ownership, access, and service continuity.
What the research produced
The Windhoek research validated that the Kinio concept addressed a genuine need — and revealed the specific conditions under which it would need to operate. Understanding how connectivity hops work between nodes, how people in informal settlements share resources, and what digital behaviours already existed gave the design work a factual foundation instead of a set of assumptions. Co-creation workshops with residents moved beyond validation into participation. The people who would use the service helped define what it should do. That method is standard in design research generally, but it requires particular care in contexts where the power differential between researcher and participant is significant. The NUST partnership and the informal setting of the barbecue helped flatten that dynamic. The research also confirmed the principle behind the decision to go: design for a community you haven't met, based on assumptions you haven't tested, and you'll build the wrong thing with confidence. Spending time in Windhoek before committing to a design direction was not expensive caution — it was the right sequence.
The network operates via hops — each base station extends coverage to the next. That physical architecture shaped the service logic and the community-level ownership model that the platform was designed around.
Next projects.
(2016-25©)
