University of Toronto

Faith, Culture & Knowledge

Case-2: Fight Over Manot’s Meat: In this image, people from faraway places have come to donate the animals they want to sacrifice and feed the meat to poor peop
"Fight Over Manot's Meat", one of the visual narratives created with rural designers in Bangladesh. From Communicating Consequences (CHI 2023).

Much of computing assumes a secular, Western, scientifically rational user. For many people in the Global South, faith, tradition, and local knowledge shape how they make sense of information, technology, and the world.

We take these practices seriously as sources of design insight — studying religious media, rural visual and performative storytelling, and beliefs that sit outside scientific rationality — and build technologies that support interfaith and intercultural understanding.

Religion, Faith, and Technology

(top-left) Putting on clean clothes before heading to Church on Easter is a morning ritual in the Christian culture. The color and design of the attire carry re
Everyday rituals across faiths, as experienced in the Cohabitant VR application (CHI 2024).

Religious values shape how people live, communicate, and care for the world around them. Religion and Sustainability (CSCW 2020) draws lessons for sustainable computing from Islamic religious communities, challenging persuasive design's narrow economic worldview. A nine-month ethnography of Islamic sermons shared online, Putting The Waz on the Social Media (CHI 2022), examines how digital sermons build an online religious counterpublic, while Situating Public Speaking (CSCW 2022) questions the idea of a universal set of public-speaking skills. During the pandemic, we also wrote about religious and parareligious responses to COVID-19 in rural Bangladesh.

Because a lack of interfaith communication can breed prejudice and conflict, we designed Cohabitant (CHI 2024), a virtual reality application that promotes interfaith learning and empathy.

Related papers

Local Ways of Seeing and Telling

Case-1: Road Accident: In this image, the bus violated traffic rules, and the passersby were not using the crosswalk. Therefore, the accident happened, and four
(a) A Puthi-Pathok is sitting on the Pati (rural sitting arrangement on the floor) and reciting the Puthi, (b) Hajak-lantern used for Puthi performance, (c) Hur
Field photos of the familiarization, ideation and prototyping phases.
Left: a rural visual narrative of a road accident (CHI 2023). Middle: a Puthi-Pathok reciting Puthi, a traditional narrative performance (CHI 2026). Right: field photos from a participatory video project (CHI 2023).

Data visualization rests on two centuries of conventions that may not reflect how many audiences convey information. Communicating Consequences (CHI 2023) contrasts rural traditional visual culture with contemporary data visualization, arguing that understanding traditional practices is needed to build richer, more accessible data narratives. Earlier, Seeing in Context (CSCW 2020) documented traditional visual communication practices in rural Bangladesh.

In a ten-month ethnography in three villages, Embodying Facts, Figures, and Faiths (CHI 2026) studied how communities use entertainment and cultural performance to tell serious stories with data. And Community Voice as Data (CHI 2023) explores how participatory videos can bring communities' own voices into international program development.

Related papers

Postcolonial Computing: Belief, Luck, and Memory

Scenes from the application: (a) Iraqi, (b) Indian, (c) Senegalese, (d) Taiwanese, (e) Canadian, and (f) Indonesian.
In Family 1 GC brought different objects such as “nokshi-katha” (a) and tea cup (b), and containing designs inspired by Bangladeshi culture. Persian carpets (c)
Left: scenes from Be Our Guest — Iraqi, Indian, Senegalese, Taiwanese, Canadian, and Indonesian homes. Right: objects a family brought to remember home, including a nokshi-katha (CHI 2024).

For many people, especially in the Global South, witchcraft, sorcery, and other occult practices are primary means of seeking health, wealth, and happiness. Building on an eight-month ethnography in six villages, Witchcraft and HCI (CHI 2019) brings these practices into conversation with postcolonial computing. Chasing Luck (CHI 2021) shows how villagers combine statistical probability, faith, hunch, and cultural norms in online betting, and Purdah, Amanah, and Gheebat (COMPASS 2021) shows how Islamic values shape notions of privacy.

We also design for remembrance and cultural exchange. Politics of the Past (CHI 2024) studies how migrant families navigate history through memory and postmemory, and Be Our Guest (CHI 2023) is an augmented reality application that invites users into homes from different cultures to foster intercultural exchange.

Related papers