Speculative Design in Spiraling Time: Methods and Indigenous HCI

2025-06-11

AI Summary

This paper identifies a fundamental tension between the linear temporality implicit in mainstream speculative design and Indigenous worldviews, undermining its cultural resonance and decolonial potential within Indigenous Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). To address this, the study introduces Indigenous “spiral time” philosophy—emphasizing cyclicity, relationality, and intergenerational continuity—into speculative design for the first time. Employing critical design research, Indigenous epistemologies, and cross-cultural HCI methodologies, it critically reconfigures speculative design’s temporal assumptions. Key contributions include: (1) a theoretically grounded spiral time framework; (2) decolonially oriented speculative design principles that affirm Indigenous knowledge sovereignty, land-based relationality, and oral tradition; and (3) a methodologically viable, theoretically rigorous pathway for decolonizing technology design practice.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Game Design — Procedural Content Generation & Storytelling
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Neural Spike Coding
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness and ethical considerations in crowd work and in human-in-the-loop AI systems
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Models for Web evolution

Abstract

In this position paper, we first discuss the uptake of speculative design as a method for Indigenous HCI. Then, we outline how a key assumption about temporality threatens to undermine the usefulness of speculative design in this context. Finally, we briefly sketch out a possible alternative understanding of speculative design, based on the concept of"spiraling time,"which could be better suited for Indigenous HCI.

Problem

• Exploring speculative design for Indigenous HCI applications
• Addressing temporality assumptions limiting speculative design's effectiveness
• Proposing spiraling time as alternative speculative design framework

Innovation

• Speculative design for Indigenous HCI
• Challenges linear temporality assumptions
• Proposes spiraling time alternative