Visualization of African Knowledge to embody the Spirit of African Storytelling: Principles, practices and evaluation Judy van Biljon † School of Computing University of South Africa South Africa vbiljja@unisa.ac.za Karen Renaud School of Design & Informatics Abertay University/University of South Africa k.renaud@abertay.ac.uk Bester Chimbo School of Computing University of South Africa South Africa chimbb@unisa.ac.za ABSTRACT Storytelling is part of the knowledge creation and transfer tradition and constitutes the knowledge base of many African cultures. Visualization, as a means of knowledge creation and transfer, goes back to the origins of human communication and provides a mechanism for extending and enhancing human cognitive capacity. Technological advances have made the consumption and creation of visualizations easier and more accessible. However, the connection between storytelling and the visualization of African knowledge has not been explored in depth, particularly not from the perspective of benchmarks and standards. Knowledge is context specific, and knowledge visualization guidelines need to be developed and validated within specific contexts too. Cross- cultural studies expose Western biases in design, as well as incorrect assumptions about the universality of concepts, methods, theories and models, which have led to inappropriate decisions. This workshop aims to focus on this gap in the literature by exploring the visualization of knowledge generated through storytelling, and then benchmarking the visualizations based on African context-specific guidelines. CCS CONCEPTS Human-centered computing ~Visualization design and evaluation methods KEYWORDS African knowledge; Knowledge visualization, Storytelling ACM Reference format: Judy van Biljon, Karen Renaud, Bester Chimbo. 2018. Visualization of African Knowledge to embody the Spirit of African Storytelling: Principles, practices and evaluation. In: Proceedings of AfriCHI conference (AfriCHI’18). Windhoek, Namibia, 2 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3283458.3283496 1. Background The potential of technology to support knowledge transfer seems endless, yet scientific progress is limited by humankind’s ability to absorb and apply new information and technology. Visualization provides a mechanism for extending and enhancing human cognitive capacity, helping us to create and transfer knowledge where the storyteller and the listener are separated by time and space, and the medium of paper or video is used to bridge the time- space gap. Storytelling is part of the knowledge creation and transfer tradition and constitutes the knowledge base of many African cultures. The categories include performative storytelling (drama/dance) and narrative storytelling (visualization prompted by how words are used and imagery) [1-3]. Storytelling, via songs and poetics, could be categorized as performative or narrative. Yet much of 21st century communication takes place at a distance, via words and pictures, and not verbally, face to face. Bidwell [4] warns that certain writing cultures disembody voices at the expense of communication and knowledge transfer. In recognition of the continued value of the African tradition of storytelling for knowledge transfer in this digital age, we want to explore the connection between visualization and storytelling. The adoption and successful use of knowledge visualization depends on usable benchmarks and widely accepted guidelines and standards endorsed by the target users. There is a dearth of knowledge visualization guidelines for two-dimensional static knowledge visualizations, with few, if any, tailored specifically to inform the crafting of knowledge visualizations with its roots in African storytelling. Knowledge is context specific and knowledge visualization guidelines need also to be developed and validated within a specific context. Cross-cultural studies expose Western biases in design as well as incorrect assumptions about the universality of concepts, methods, theories and models, which have led to many inappropriate decisions [5-6]. This workshop aims to focus on this gap in the literature by considering the visualization of knowledge rooted in storytelling and the benchmarking of visualization guidelines for the African context. 2. Objective and theme Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author. AfriCHI '18, December 3–7, 2018, Windhoek, Namibia © 2018 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-6558-1/18/12. https://doi.org/10.1145/3283458.3283496