Provost and Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Anthony Woodman welcomed attendees to the lecture saying, 

Professorial lectures are always very special, but this is one is perhaps a little bit more special because José is one of those colleagues who I’ve seen develop over the last 13 years to becoming a professor."

The lecture was about the intersection of culture and technology in the IT industry and how cultural factors influence the development and implementation of IT solutions. 

José explored what it means to design IT for different cultures, balancing global frameworks with indigenous practices. He shared many examples of doing this from around the world including projects in China, Indonesia, South Africa, India, Kenya and Venezuela. 

Professor Abdelnour Nocera explored the three different ways in which he has used the concept of culture in his research: as an explanatory tool, as a sense-making device and as a critical lens. Using culture as an explanatory tool makes it predictive and easier to inform design but is reductionist and potentially biased. Employing it as a sense-making device enables designers to navigate and interpret users’ cultural language and practices. Using it as a critical lens uncovers systemic inequities and domination within design practices. 

We need to look at the social context and the technical context and try to make it as bottom up as possible. To approach users as persons embedded in a cultural context,” 

explained Professor Abdelnour Nocera. 

We must make sense of how we can design interfaces or technology that is meaningful and useful to local indigenous users. 

Understanding culture from a more critical perspective allows us to uncover systemic inequities and domination within design practises.”