Enough with 'In-The-Wild'

HCI is a field of study that is no longer confined to European or North American usability labs. HCI is practiced all over the world, and within Euro-American contexts, HCI research is also increasingly turning its attention to real world settings, outside of the controlled environments of the usability lab. One increasingly popular approach to designing and evaluating new technologies in real-world settings is called ‘in the wild’ research. We find this terminology uncomfortable from an African perspective as it evokes negative connotations of the contexts in which we study and the people we study with. Our intention is not to discredit this approach but rather to start a conversation around the terminologies we use to describe our research approaches and contexts. We consider it an ethical imperative to be conscious of the words we use to describe people and places, not only as HCI research expands its empirical focus to real world settings, but equally importantly to support HCI research beyond its traditional centres in Europe or America.