Michael Kibedi
First & Fifteenth
Michael Kibedi (he/him) is a design researcher and writer of First & Fifteenth — a biweekly newsletter featuring essays that explore his interdisciplinary interests in human-computer interaction, conceptual art, Black Geographies, and data justice.
Michael gained an MSc in Human-Computer Interaction Design from City University of London. His dissertation (supervised by Dr. Alex Taylor) explored how misunderstandings caused by accent biases in voice assistants are representative of how social exclusion can be reproduced by technology — questioning our relationship to nationhood, gender and racial identity.
Michael continues to conduct research with a sociotechnical mindset and seeks to inspire his audiences to adopt similar critical responses to utopian ideals in technology discourse.
He has spoken at Design Thinking Zeal, UX Camp Brighton, and UNPARSED in London. His writing has also been published by the Design Research Society.
session description
What if we rewild ourselves, by design? What if we adjust our ways of designing by de-centering humans and repositioning them not at the top of a pyramid—justifying continued exploitation of minerals, resources and labour—but as beings in adaptive relationships with more-than-human entities and intelligence — animal and plant, living and non-living—all capable co-designers for better futures?
In the session Rewilding Us, Michael will share his principles for deconstructing what we mean by human, disrupting hierarchies of ‘humanity,’ and setting up new epistemic systems for digital design based in decoloniality, more-than-human intelligences, and relationships.