Designing for cross-cultural perspectives of time

We present ongoing work that seeks to understand cross-cultural perspectives of time, and reflect these temporalities in the participatory design of a cross- cultural Digital Community Noticeboard. Time is a socio-cultural phenomenon that is experienced differently across cultures. Time practices in non- Western cultures can operate in tension with common interfaces for clocks and calendars, whereas other perspectives of time are underrepresented in interactive system design. We conducted community interviews and design workshops to investigate such themes. Two key design principles arising are that 1) time is social and relational, and 2) time is implicit and flexible. We propose ways to incorporate these principles in interface design.