Rethinking Knowledge Sharing as (Re)Orientations through Intergenerational Participatory Speculative Design

Paper Title

Rethinking Knowledge Sharing as (Re)Orientations through Intergenerational Participatory Speculative Design

Publication Info

• Topic area: Knowledge sharing and participatory speculative design in intergenerational community contexts.
• Keywords: Knowledge sharing, participatory speculative design, intergenerational collaboration, Black communities, relationality, epistemic justice, orientation, community futures, racial capitalism, HCI.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Traditional approaches to knowledge sharing in HCI often frame it as a resource transfer mechanism for efficiency and productivity, overlooking its relational, affective, and embodied dimensions. These approaches risk reinforcing epistemic hierarchies and excluding historically minoritized communities.
• Significance: Rethinking knowledge sharing is crucial for fostering relational alignment, addressing epistemic injustice, and enabling communities to collectively imagine and move toward alternative futures.
• Motivation and related work: Prior work in HCI has explored knowledge sharing in workplace and organizational contexts but has largely neglected its relational and affective aspects, especially in community settings. Participatory speculative design (PSD) and Black feminist thought offer frameworks for addressing these gaps by centering marginalized voices and relational dynamics.

Solution

• Proposed approach: Conceptualizing knowledge sharing as a relational process of disorientation and reorientation, explored through an intergenerational participatory speculative design (PSD) project in a historically Black neighborhood in Detroit.
• Novelty:
  1. Introduces knowledge-as-orientation, reframing knowledge sharing as relational alignment rather than resource transfer.
  2. Demonstrates how PSD can foster intergenerational collaboration and reorient communities toward collective futures.
  3. Highlights the role of disorientation and reorientation in unsettling epistemic hierarchies and enabling shared imaginaries.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  1. Conducted an intergenerational PSD project involving Black seniors and youth to co-create children’s picture books.
  2. Structured activities across five phases: onboarding, story text writing, storyboarding, professional illustration, and dissemination.
  3. Used participatory methods, storytelling, and collaborative design to foster relational dynamics and knowledge sharing.
  4. Analyzed data through situational analysis to trace intergenerational interactions and knowledge-sharing practices.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Youth and seniors collaboratively created four children’s picture books addressing themes of community safety, care, and imagination.
  • Knowledge sharing emerged as relational and affective, involving embodied gestures, storytelling, and mutual recognition.
  • Participants experienced moments of disorientation (challenging taken-for-granted perspectives) and reorientation (adopting new ways of knowing and relating).
• Advantage over baselines:
  • Moves beyond traditional knowledge-sharing models focused on efficiency to emphasize relational alignment and collective reorientation.
  • Challenges epistemic hierarchies by valuing diverse, situated, and intergenerational ways of knowing.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Participants: 7 Black senior women (average age 64) and 8 Black youth (average age 16.5) from Detroit’s Eastside.
  • Methods: Design workshops, interviews, observations, and collaborative storytelling.
  • Outputs: Four professionally illustrated children’s books, distributed to local schools, libraries, and community organizations.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Limited to a single community context; broader applicability requires further exploration.
  • Future work could expand to other communities and explore long-term impacts of intergenerational PSD on collective futures.

Summary

This paper reconceptualizes knowledge sharing as a relational process of disorientation and reorientation, emphasizing its affective, embodied, and collective dimensions. Through an intergenerational participatory speculative design project in Detroit, Black seniors and youth collaboratively created children’s picture books that reimagined community futures. The study highlights how PSD fosters relational alignment, challenges epistemic hierarchies, and enables collective reorientations. These findings invite HCI scholars to rethink knowledge sharing as a worldmaking practice that sustains relationality, care, and alternative futures.