The rapid development of rural societies mixed with the infrastructural transformation of emerging economies bring both challenges and opportunities to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) design as illustrated through the emergence of the field of HCI for Development (HCI4D). A key challenge for HCI4D is how local knowledge, expertise, and culture can be constructively combined with global trends in digital innovation and socioeconomic development. Co-design and participatory design practices in HCI offer opportunities to engage diverse communities in design activities which embrace both transition and tradition in constructive ways. We present our co-design framework, Qi2He, which supports designers and local communities engaging in co-design activities. Qi2He is inspired by traditional Chinese epistemology and contributes (i) methods to support cross-cultural co-design engagement, and (ii) post-hoc critique of co-design participation. We illustrate the use of Qi2He through three case studies of HCI design over four years in rural China where local culture and traditions are in a state of flux from waves of migration to cities whilst also being an integral part of the broader national and global transformation. The first case study examines how local rural knowledge can be shared and acquired to create a design system for ethnic brocade production. The second case study explores how the creation of an interactive drama can be used as a driver for rural community engagement. The third case study focusses on the iterative design of cross-cultural interactive product innovation. We conclude by reflecting on lessons we learnt when structuring and restructuring our co-design process and offer suggestions for how our Qi2He framework could be used by others and in different cultural settings.

Co-creation across cultures is a fertile area for the study of design and human computer interaction. Many studies have examined what can be learnt from cultures across the world and how cultures respond to interactive technology, and yet open questions remain on how to engage people in co-creation across cultures. In this article, we reflect on a study of cross-cultural co-creation with the Kam ethnic minority group of China. We report on the kinds of collaboration and value that emerged through the co-creation of an interactive drama, and how a traditional Chinese literature composition method was used to structure the design process. We present a notation for describing cross-cultural co-creation and reflect on the careful balance that we found needed to be struck between the depth of co-creation, immersion in local culture, cultural exchange and interactivity. We report on the use of our approach to elicit serendipitous design opportunities in-situ and how our non-utilitarian approach allowed us to explore different meanings of ‘interactivity’ across cultures.