RMIT and The University of Melbourne
Co-designing digital tools for Wiradjuri self-determination
We partnered with researchers from RMIT and The University of Melbourne to co-design digital tools supporting Wiradjuri people in Central NSW. Working alongside Indigenous researchers and community members, we created a community storytelling tool, hosted on country, that honours the complexity of contemporary Indigenous identity.
Outcomes
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Culturally grounded research methods shaped by Wiradjuri community — including filmed oral histories and community-led interpretation
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A community storytelling tool, hosted on country, designed to represent multiple perspectives on contemporary Indigenous identity
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Research and design approach presented at the Designing Interactive Systems conference (Brisbane, 2016)
Services
Sectors
Understanding contemporary identities
When we travelled to Wagga Wagga with the research team, Wiradjuri community members told us something we didn't expect. They spoke of "dreamtime fatigue" — a weariness with outsiders reducing their culture to ancient narratives. They were skeptical of digital tools that claimed to "naively preserve" ways of life that have evolved far beyond those stories.
These conversations reshaped our entire approach. Rather than documenting culture as a fixed thing, we focused on what self-determination looks like today — how Wiradjuri people are building their nation in a colonised landscape, on their own terms.
Community members used the term "Nation Building" to describe this contemporary identity. It became the frame for everything that followed: how do you design tools that support a community's capacity to self-govern and shape their own future?
Co-designing research approaches with the community
We ran participatory workshops with the research team using Paper Giant's More-Than Research Game — a card-based tool we developed to help teams design research methods collaboratively. Together, we shaped a field approach centred on Wiradjuri voices: filmed oral histories capturing individual stories, in-community observations, and interviews with community leaders about what it means to be Wiradjuri in contemporary Australia.
We heard stories of "dreamtime fatigue", and listened to sceptical accounts of digital attempts to "naively preserve" ways of life that are long gone.
Building digital tools that hold multiple truths
After spending time on Wiradjuri country, we co-designed and built a community storytelling tool, hosted on country, with the research team.
The central design challenge was that Wiradjuri identity is contested and multi-voiced — there is no single authoritative narrative. So we designed tools that embrace this. Community members could tag and annotate video with their own perspectives, creating layered narratives rather than a single authoritative story. Rather than flattening difference, the tool lets multiple voices interpret the same content in different ways.
Our research and design work was presented at Designing Interactive Systems, an academic conference held in Brisbane in June 2016.
