Sugar for the Nasa people

The design described here was designed and evaluated collectively with teachers and students of two Nasa schools, located in mountains of the Cauca department in Colombia.

(Add picture of design session)

Our idea is to adapt Sugar according to cultural characteristics of the Nasa context.

First, we would take advantage of the three Sugar's "spaces", home, group and neighborhood, to provide in the interface analogies to those three spaces:

• A personal space
• The hearth
• The resguardo (reserve?)

Collective work

Mingas

Symbols

• The kid representation. The buddy icon used has been based on the human representations found in the chumbes (ribbon tejido) were Nasa documents elements of their daily-life.

• Rhombus. The rhombus is an important Nasa symbol, which means a World view. Rhombus can be found in handicrafts, bags, dances, paintings and a wide range of cultural manifestations.

• Spiral. The rhombus relates to another ubiquitous symbol, the spiral, which stands for time and life development. It link been used to describe the diffent levels of social interaction: the hearth, the house garden, the resguardo, the municipality, the department, and so on.

• Garabatos and bags. Used to store different kinds of objects, tools, and food, hanged up, out of the reach of animals.

Spaces

Personal space

The hearth

Family and close friends space