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Tariq Zaman

University College of Technology Sarawak, School of Computing and Creative Media, Associate Professor

Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft, HTW Berlin, Computer Science, Communications, Economics, Faculty Member

Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, Faculty Member

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For more information, browse www.tariqzaman.jimdo.com
Phone: +6 082 583673
Address: Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology
Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS)
Kota Samarahan, Sarawak, 94300
Malaysia

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Papers by Tariq Zaman

Ngerabit eLamai, Smart Villages and resilience to natural disasters : Singapore Workshop Report

We aim to provide policymakers, donors, and development agencies concerned with rural energy acce... more We aim to provide policymakers, donors, and development agencies concerned with rural energy access with new insights on the real barriers to energy access in villages in developing countriestechnological, financial and political-and how they can be overcome. We have chosen to focus on remote off-grid villages, where local solutions (home-or institution-based systems and mini-grids) are both more realistic and cheaper than national grid extension. Our concern is to ensure that energy access results in development and the creation of "smart villages" in which many of the benefits of life in modern societies are available to rural communities.

It is not a village but people: Long Lamai, a case study of a smart village

Mitigating Ethno-Cultural Differences

Advances in human and social aspects of technology book series, 2017

Community engagement is necessary for the success and sustainability of Information and Communica... more Community engagement is necessary for the success and sustainability of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) projects. To ensure active participation of community, researchers need to understand and adhere to the local cultural norms and adapt in the lifestyle of people. These cultural norms are mainly unwritten and implicit in nature. Hence the researchers spend maximum time of their field visits in observing and developing understanding of the community's life. In our longterm partnership with the indigenous Penan community of Long Lamai in Malaysian Borneo, we codeveloped written guidelines for researchers and visitors. The researchers demonstrated their interest in aligning research process to the community's cultural values, however norm internalisation and development of associated behaviour is still a challenging. The written guidelines are yet only one of the attempts to the practices of community researchers' engagement and we are refining our methodology to enhance the researchers' learning process.

Scaffolding Undergraduate Students' Ethical Cyber Behaviour With Philosophy and Theory

IGI Global eBooks, Oct 21, 2022

Individual perceptions of climate anomalies and collective action: Evidence from an artefactual field experiment in Malaysian Borneo

World development sustainability, 2022

Lost in Afghanistan: Can the World Take ICT4D Seriously?

Communications of the ACM, 2023

A pragmatic approach to ethical research collaboration with Indigenous communities: A case study with the Penan people of Long Lamai, Malaysia

Environment and Planning F

It is paramount that research relevant to Indigenous communities be conducted in partnership with... more It is paramount that research relevant to Indigenous communities be conducted in partnership with them through free and prior informed consent. Historically, much research was extractive in nature, performed without Indigenous community consent, and often applied a deficit-framing. Some academic professional societies have developed guidelines for ethically conducting research with Indigenous communities to avoid these unethical practices. However, missing from these ethical research declarations are the specifics on research implementation or how research can be enriched through an ethical research approach. In 2010, the Association of American Geographers’ (AAG, now known as the American Association of Geographers) Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group (IPSG) wrote a Declaration of Key Questions About Research Ethics with Indigenous Communities outlining several questions that researchers should ask themselves when collaborating with Indigenous communities. We selected the AAG’s ethi...

End-user perceptions of success and failure: Narratives from a natural laboratory of rural electrification projects in Malaysian Borneo

Energy for Sustainable Development, 2020

Located deep in the Kelabit Highlands in Malaysian Borneo, the remote town of Bario offers us a n... more Located deep in the Kelabit Highlands in Malaysian Borneo, the remote town of Bario offers us a natural laboratory of rural electrification projects through which to understand end-user perceptions of success and failure, and the factors that contribute to these perceptions. We use a case-study based approach and focus on three off-grid energy projects: a 110 kW mini-hydro power plant; a 12 kW wind turbine system; and a 1.59 MW solar-diesel hybrid system. We find that end-users primarily see the success or failure of a project in technical terms, but that this narrow conceptualization masks important interactions between technical, economic and institutional factors. We further find that end-user perceptions of newer projects are heavily affected by their perceptions of previous projects. Our findings suggest several ways forward to improve the effectiveness of rural electrification initiatives. Firstly, we should expect complex interactions between technical, economic and institutional factors and build-in the necessary capacity into rural electrification projects to identify and address these interactions. Secondly, there is no one size fits all solution to creating the requisite capacity to deal with interactions among technical, economic and institutional factors. Thirdly, ongoing qualitative or mixed-methods evaluations of rural electrification initiatives can help unravel what would otherwise be hidden interactions between technical, economic and institutional factors.

eToro: Appropriating ICTs for the Management of Penans’ Indigenous Botanical Knowledge

Indigenous knowledge govenance framework : a holistic model for indigenous knowledge management

The environmental and social conditions that indigenous communities interact with the external en... more The environmental and social conditions that indigenous communities interact with the external environment are characterized by a constantly increasing degree of complexity. The interaction between different cultures can be considered a multifaceted process of negotiation. It is well acknowledged that the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for indigenous cultural preservation and revitalization can lead to several challenges. In this context, Indigenous Knowledge (IK) represents a critical resource that needs to be focused towards specific processes and governance activities. The early efforts in knowledge management were on technologies to store, capture, and distribute knowledge, while the focus at present has shifted to make explicit, the tacit knowledge, but the development is more conceptual than practical. This study focuses on exploring the patterns of Indigenous Knowledge Management (IKM) and the supporting of a governance system of communities. Based on generic patterns of IKM, the goal of the research will be in developing an indigenous knowledge governance framework.

Creating Smart Connected Learning Ecosystems: A Hybrid Model for Design-Based Learning

Interaction Design and Architecture(s), Jun 10, 2022

Emerging technologies and new pedagogies, such as design-based learning, have the potential to re... more Emerging technologies and new pedagogies, such as design-based learning, have the potential to revolutionize formal education systems. We postulate that smart learning ecosystems can be co-created through connecting schools and students across the globe to co-design their own virtual learning spaces by exploiting new affordances offered by digital technologies. This paper presents a Hybrid model for Design-Based learning (HyDe), which guides colocated and online design-based learning activities with geographically distributed students. It was conceptualized within a case study, wherein 63 students aged 11 to 13 from three schools in Namibia, Malaysia, and Finland collaborated on co-designing a virtual space to share local perspectives on global challenges. The HyDe model was refined based on reflections from the case study yielding in a model which can be integrated in school curricula across the globe, thereby creating a smart connected learning ecosystem.

Co-development is the next step

Facilitation Tools and Techniques for Distributed Online Co-Design with Children

In an attempt to promote wider participation of children across the globe in co-designing, we nee... more In an attempt to promote wider participation of children across the globe in co-designing, we need to establish enabling distributed online facilitation techniques and tools. In this hybrid workshop, we will work in an online design space that was co-designed with 62 children from Namibia, Malaysia and Finland. Participants will share challenging experiences, and develop strategical solutions in teams. Furthermore, participants will have the chance to cofacilitate a design session with children from across the globe and reflect on their experiences. We hope to create new connections between researchers and practitioners, to exchange techniques and tools, and collaborate on new projects with children from different places. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in interaction design.

PDC Place Malaysia: Emerging Spaces for ICT4D and PD Communities

Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2022 - Volume 2

Community protocols for researchers: using sketches to communicate interaction guidelines

AI & SOCIETY, 2019

Reviews of research and development collaborations with indigenous communities have exhibited num... more Reviews of research and development collaborations with indigenous communities have exhibited numerous challenges related to researcher-community interactions. Based on many accounts of indiscretions, indigenous communities have begun generating conduct guidelines for researchers. However, the effectiveness of their chosen communication methods, guaranteeing appropriate behavior of the researchers, has not been established. This research contributes to an ongoing debate around appropriate ethical conduct of researchers in situ. The aim of this study was to investigate the interpretation accuracy of interaction guidelines produced in the form of sketches by a Malaysian indigenous community. We provided eight interaction sketches to 57 students, in three continents, for interpretation and expression of their intended behavior. We found that most were unable to accurately interpret the sketches and describe intended behavioral responses. A major concern remains with the tendency to fall back on prior practices of "good" behavior, with minimal guidance on contextual practices. In an attempt to provide greater direction, we explored a speech bubble exercise with further 15 students. Our findings directly contribute to current efforts in formulating researcher-community interaction practices that should form the basis of ethical research in situ.

Indigenous perceptions of climate anomalies in Malaysian Borneo

Global Environmental Change, 2019

Local perceptions of climate anomalies influence adaptation behaviour. Specifically, perceptions ... more Local perceptions of climate anomalies influence adaptation behaviour. Specifically, perceptions that are more accurate and homogenous at the community-level are more likely to facilitate the collective action required to adapt to the local effects of climate anomalies experienced by many indigenous communities. We combine primary data on perceptions of climate anomalies from 200 individuals in six Penan villages in Sarawak, Malaysia with instrumental climate data. We find that perceptions of climate anomalies vary substantially in terms of occurrence and magnitude, and do not generally correlate with instrumental climate data. We operationalise the Penan forest sign language (Oroo') as a measure of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and find only weak evidence of a systematic statistical association with perceptions of climate anomalies among our sampled respondents. Our findings suggest caution in advancing adaptation strategies in indigenous communities that are predominantly premised on TEK. Instead, our findings suggest that in designing adaptation measures, indigenous communities may benefit by engaging in forums where community members and external stakeholders can come together, share their perceptions and observations of climate change, and reach a collective consensus on the community-level effects of climate change and pathways towards adaptation.

Unleashing Indigenous Iban Values For Collective Technology Design

Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2022 - Volume 2

Making Ethics at Home in Global CS Education: Provoking Stories from the Souths

ACM Journal on Computing and Sustainable Societies

Despite the increase in university courses and curricula on the ethics of computing there are few... more Despite the increase in university courses and curricula on the ethics of computing there are few studies about how CS programs should account for the diverse ways ethical dilemmas and approaches to ethics are situated in cultural, philosophical and governance systems, religions and languages. We draw on the experiences and insights of 46 university educators and practitioners in Latin America, South-Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Australian First Nations who participated in surveys and interviews. Our modest study seeks to prompt conversation about ethics and computing in the Global Souths and inform revisions to the ACM's curricular guidelines for the Society, Ethics and Professionalism knowledge area in undergraduate CS programs. Participants describe frictions between static and anticipatory approaches to ethics in globalised regulations and formal Codes of ethics and professional conduct, and local practices, values and impacts of technologies in the Global Souths. Code...

A Respectful Design Framework. Incorporating indigenous knowledge in the design process

by Lizette Reitsma and Tariq Zaman

The Design Journal

To stay within the planetary boundaries, we have to take responsibility, and this includes design... more To stay within the planetary boundaries, we have to take responsibility, and this includes designers. This requires new perspectives on design. In this work, we focus on a co-design project with indigenous communities. Within such communities, indigenous knowledge is central. Indigenous knowledge acknowledges that the world is alive and that we, as humans, are merely a small part. Central in our approach is Sheehan's respectful design, which ensures a central place for indigenous knowledge in the design process. However, Sheehan's approach does not state in pragmatic terms how such a design approach can be achieved. Some of the co-design processes we engaged in led to respectful design spaces, others did not. This helped us to identify patterns of dynamics that are essential for respectful design. At the core of our findings lies the observation that in order to reach a respectful design space, in which indigenous knowledge is embedded, a shared dialogical space between community and designer is essential.

Indigenous Knowledge Fairs: a new approach to pluralistic knowledge dissemination in HCI

Adjunct Proceedings of the 2022 Nordic Human-Computer Interaction Conference

Ngerabit eLamai, Smart Villages and resilience to natural disasters : Singapore Workshop Report

We aim to provide policymakers, donors, and development agencies concerned with rural energy acce... more We aim to provide policymakers, donors, and development agencies concerned with rural energy access with new insights on the real barriers to energy access in villages in developing countriestechnological, financial and political-and how they can be overcome. We have chosen to focus on remote off-grid villages, where local solutions (home-or institution-based systems and mini-grids) are both more realistic and cheaper than national grid extension. Our concern is to ensure that energy access results in development and the creation of "smart villages" in which many of the benefits of life in modern societies are available to rural communities.

It is not a village but people: Long Lamai, a case study of a smart village

Mitigating Ethno-Cultural Differences

Advances in human and social aspects of technology book series, 2017

Community engagement is necessary for the success and sustainability of Information and Communica... more Community engagement is necessary for the success and sustainability of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) projects. To ensure active participation of community, researchers need to understand and adhere to the local cultural norms and adapt in the lifestyle of people. These cultural norms are mainly unwritten and implicit in nature. Hence the researchers spend maximum time of their field visits in observing and developing understanding of the community's life. In our longterm partnership with the indigenous Penan community of Long Lamai in Malaysian Borneo, we codeveloped written guidelines for researchers and visitors. The researchers demonstrated their interest in aligning research process to the community's cultural values, however norm internalisation and development of associated behaviour is still a challenging. The written guidelines are yet only one of the attempts to the practices of community researchers' engagement and we are refining our methodology to enhance the researchers' learning process.

Scaffolding Undergraduate Students' Ethical Cyber Behaviour With Philosophy and Theory

IGI Global eBooks, Oct 21, 2022

Individual perceptions of climate anomalies and collective action: Evidence from an artefactual field experiment in Malaysian Borneo

World development sustainability, 2022

Lost in Afghanistan: Can the World Take ICT4D Seriously?

Communications of the ACM, 2023

A pragmatic approach to ethical research collaboration with Indigenous communities: A case study with the Penan people of Long Lamai, Malaysia

Environment and Planning F

It is paramount that research relevant to Indigenous communities be conducted in partnership with... more It is paramount that research relevant to Indigenous communities be conducted in partnership with them through free and prior informed consent. Historically, much research was extractive in nature, performed without Indigenous community consent, and often applied a deficit-framing. Some academic professional societies have developed guidelines for ethically conducting research with Indigenous communities to avoid these unethical practices. However, missing from these ethical research declarations are the specifics on research implementation or how research can be enriched through an ethical research approach. In 2010, the Association of American Geographers’ (AAG, now known as the American Association of Geographers) Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group (IPSG) wrote a Declaration of Key Questions About Research Ethics with Indigenous Communities outlining several questions that researchers should ask themselves when collaborating with Indigenous communities. We selected the AAG’s ethi...

End-user perceptions of success and failure: Narratives from a natural laboratory of rural electrification projects in Malaysian Borneo

Energy for Sustainable Development, 2020

Located deep in the Kelabit Highlands in Malaysian Borneo, the remote town of Bario offers us a n... more Located deep in the Kelabit Highlands in Malaysian Borneo, the remote town of Bario offers us a natural laboratory of rural electrification projects through which to understand end-user perceptions of success and failure, and the factors that contribute to these perceptions. We use a case-study based approach and focus on three off-grid energy projects: a 110 kW mini-hydro power plant; a 12 kW wind turbine system; and a 1.59 MW solar-diesel hybrid system. We find that end-users primarily see the success or failure of a project in technical terms, but that this narrow conceptualization masks important interactions between technical, economic and institutional factors. We further find that end-user perceptions of newer projects are heavily affected by their perceptions of previous projects. Our findings suggest several ways forward to improve the effectiveness of rural electrification initiatives. Firstly, we should expect complex interactions between technical, economic and institutional factors and build-in the necessary capacity into rural electrification projects to identify and address these interactions. Secondly, there is no one size fits all solution to creating the requisite capacity to deal with interactions among technical, economic and institutional factors. Thirdly, ongoing qualitative or mixed-methods evaluations of rural electrification initiatives can help unravel what would otherwise be hidden interactions between technical, economic and institutional factors.

eToro: Appropriating ICTs for the Management of Penans’ Indigenous Botanical Knowledge

Indigenous knowledge govenance framework : a holistic model for indigenous knowledge management

The environmental and social conditions that indigenous communities interact with the external en... more The environmental and social conditions that indigenous communities interact with the external environment are characterized by a constantly increasing degree of complexity. The interaction between different cultures can be considered a multifaceted process of negotiation. It is well acknowledged that the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for indigenous cultural preservation and revitalization can lead to several challenges. In this context, Indigenous Knowledge (IK) represents a critical resource that needs to be focused towards specific processes and governance activities. The early efforts in knowledge management were on technologies to store, capture, and distribute knowledge, while the focus at present has shifted to make explicit, the tacit knowledge, but the development is more conceptual than practical. This study focuses on exploring the patterns of Indigenous Knowledge Management (IKM) and the supporting of a governance system of communities. Based on generic patterns of IKM, the goal of the research will be in developing an indigenous knowledge governance framework.

Creating Smart Connected Learning Ecosystems: A Hybrid Model for Design-Based Learning

Interaction Design and Architecture(s), Jun 10, 2022

Emerging technologies and new pedagogies, such as design-based learning, have the potential to re... more Emerging technologies and new pedagogies, such as design-based learning, have the potential to revolutionize formal education systems. We postulate that smart learning ecosystems can be co-created through connecting schools and students across the globe to co-design their own virtual learning spaces by exploiting new affordances offered by digital technologies. This paper presents a Hybrid model for Design-Based learning (HyDe), which guides colocated and online design-based learning activities with geographically distributed students. It was conceptualized within a case study, wherein 63 students aged 11 to 13 from three schools in Namibia, Malaysia, and Finland collaborated on co-designing a virtual space to share local perspectives on global challenges. The HyDe model was refined based on reflections from the case study yielding in a model which can be integrated in school curricula across the globe, thereby creating a smart connected learning ecosystem.

Co-development is the next step

Facilitation Tools and Techniques for Distributed Online Co-Design with Children

In an attempt to promote wider participation of children across the globe in co-designing, we nee... more In an attempt to promote wider participation of children across the globe in co-designing, we need to establish enabling distributed online facilitation techniques and tools. In this hybrid workshop, we will work in an online design space that was co-designed with 62 children from Namibia, Malaysia and Finland. Participants will share challenging experiences, and develop strategical solutions in teams. Furthermore, participants will have the chance to cofacilitate a design session with children from across the globe and reflect on their experiences. We hope to create new connections between researchers and practitioners, to exchange techniques and tools, and collaborate on new projects with children from different places. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in interaction design.

PDC Place Malaysia: Emerging Spaces for ICT4D and PD Communities

Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2022 - Volume 2

Community protocols for researchers: using sketches to communicate interaction guidelines

AI & SOCIETY, 2019

Reviews of research and development collaborations with indigenous communities have exhibited num... more Reviews of research and development collaborations with indigenous communities have exhibited numerous challenges related to researcher-community interactions. Based on many accounts of indiscretions, indigenous communities have begun generating conduct guidelines for researchers. However, the effectiveness of their chosen communication methods, guaranteeing appropriate behavior of the researchers, has not been established. This research contributes to an ongoing debate around appropriate ethical conduct of researchers in situ. The aim of this study was to investigate the interpretation accuracy of interaction guidelines produced in the form of sketches by a Malaysian indigenous community. We provided eight interaction sketches to 57 students, in three continents, for interpretation and expression of their intended behavior. We found that most were unable to accurately interpret the sketches and describe intended behavioral responses. A major concern remains with the tendency to fall back on prior practices of "good" behavior, with minimal guidance on contextual practices. In an attempt to provide greater direction, we explored a speech bubble exercise with further 15 students. Our findings directly contribute to current efforts in formulating researcher-community interaction practices that should form the basis of ethical research in situ.

Indigenous perceptions of climate anomalies in Malaysian Borneo

Global Environmental Change, 2019

Local perceptions of climate anomalies influence adaptation behaviour. Specifically, perceptions ... more Local perceptions of climate anomalies influence adaptation behaviour. Specifically, perceptions that are more accurate and homogenous at the community-level are more likely to facilitate the collective action required to adapt to the local effects of climate anomalies experienced by many indigenous communities. We combine primary data on perceptions of climate anomalies from 200 individuals in six Penan villages in Sarawak, Malaysia with instrumental climate data. We find that perceptions of climate anomalies vary substantially in terms of occurrence and magnitude, and do not generally correlate with instrumental climate data. We operationalise the Penan forest sign language (Oroo') as a measure of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and find only weak evidence of a systematic statistical association with perceptions of climate anomalies among our sampled respondents. Our findings suggest caution in advancing adaptation strategies in indigenous communities that are predominantly premised on TEK. Instead, our findings suggest that in designing adaptation measures, indigenous communities may benefit by engaging in forums where community members and external stakeholders can come together, share their perceptions and observations of climate change, and reach a collective consensus on the community-level effects of climate change and pathways towards adaptation.

Unleashing Indigenous Iban Values For Collective Technology Design

Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2022 - Volume 2

Making Ethics at Home in Global CS Education: Provoking Stories from the Souths

ACM Journal on Computing and Sustainable Societies

Despite the increase in university courses and curricula on the ethics of computing there are few... more Despite the increase in university courses and curricula on the ethics of computing there are few studies about how CS programs should account for the diverse ways ethical dilemmas and approaches to ethics are situated in cultural, philosophical and governance systems, religions and languages. We draw on the experiences and insights of 46 university educators and practitioners in Latin America, South-Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Australian First Nations who participated in surveys and interviews. Our modest study seeks to prompt conversation about ethics and computing in the Global Souths and inform revisions to the ACM's curricular guidelines for the Society, Ethics and Professionalism knowledge area in undergraduate CS programs. Participants describe frictions between static and anticipatory approaches to ethics in globalised regulations and formal Codes of ethics and professional conduct, and local practices, values and impacts of technologies in the Global Souths. Code...

A Respectful Design Framework. Incorporating indigenous knowledge in the design process

by Lizette Reitsma and Tariq Zaman

The Design Journal

To stay within the planetary boundaries, we have to take responsibility, and this includes design... more To stay within the planetary boundaries, we have to take responsibility, and this includes designers. This requires new perspectives on design. In this work, we focus on a co-design project with indigenous communities. Within such communities, indigenous knowledge is central. Indigenous knowledge acknowledges that the world is alive and that we, as humans, are merely a small part. Central in our approach is Sheehan's respectful design, which ensures a central place for indigenous knowledge in the design process. However, Sheehan's approach does not state in pragmatic terms how such a design approach can be achieved. Some of the co-design processes we engaged in led to respectful design spaces, others did not. This helped us to identify patterns of dynamics that are essential for respectful design. At the core of our findings lies the observation that in order to reach a respectful design space, in which indigenous knowledge is embedded, a shared dialogical space between community and designer is essential.

Indigenous Knowledge Fairs: a new approach to pluralistic knowledge dissemination in HCI

Adjunct Proceedings of the 2022 Nordic Human-Computer Interaction Conference

Indigenous Technological Innovation in Malaysia: Reducing vulnerability and marginalization among Malaysia Indigenous Peoples

Initiative for e-commerce capacity-building of Penans in Long Lamai Sarawak

Indigenous Knowledge Governance Framework

Appropriation (?) of the Month: One Design with Two Labels — Peshawari Chappal vs. Robert Sandal

by Tariq Zaman and Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage (IPinCH) Project

IPinCH Blog , Nov 13, 2014

The Pashtun people are an Indo-European ethnic group from the subgroup of Eastern Iranians, who l... more