Decolonizing Computer Science: The Immersive Elevator Experience

The immersive elevator experience is a speculative design for a system which informs people about the issue of decolonization in computer science. The specific area of decolonization that we have chosen to focus on is the issue of how people in first-world countries use and dispose of technology, and how this links to the exploitation of people in third-world countries. We underwent an iterative design process and created an interactive experience that is installed inside an elevator. The aim is to educate users about how the way they use technology is harming people in poorer regions. Through using the iterative design process and receiving feedback from lecturers and our peers, we continuously made changes to design an installation that was engaging and informative. We also discovered how to make our project as user-friendly as possible. This helped us to ensure that users would pay attention to the important issues that we are raising and gives us confidence that they will come out of the experience willing to make a change.