Teaching use
Depth lesson after students have met NZQA/Techquity usability-principle vocabulary.
Digital Technologies • Level 1 HCI external • 60–75 minutes
Mātāpono Māori in HCI: From Shorthand to Evidence
Help ākonga use Māori concepts with enough depth that they add real analytical meaning — while still preparing them for the language and structure of the Level 1 HCI external.
Kaiako planning snapshot
- Time: 60–75 minutes.
- Grouping: whole-class source comparison, pairs for claim sorting, individual exam response.
- Prior knowledge: students know basic HCI vocabulary and at least some of Nielsen's heuristics.
- Kaiako stance: do not ask ākonga to reject NZQA wording. Ask them to distinguish assessment-facing shorthand from deeper meaning and justify the relationship they claim.
Learning intentions
- Distinguish a memorised association from a source-grounded application of a mātāpono Māori.
- Explain when an ordinary usability principle is the more precise lens.
- Use rangatiratanga with attention to authority, object and decision-making.
- Write an exam-ready explanation from observable evidence.
Success criteria
- I can explain the difference between a shorthand and a complete definition.
- I can identify a weak or forced application and say what evidence is missing.
- I can answer: who has authority, over what, and what can they determine or refuse?
- I can connect a usability principle to the interface's purpose and user experience.
Kaiako note: precision is the kaupapa
This lesson does not position Māori knowledge as an optional decoration on top of “normal” HCI. It does the opposite: it asks students to use Māori concepts carefully enough that those concepts retain their own analytical content.
It also does not tell students that NZQA's assessment wording is “wrong”. NZQA can operationalise a concept for an examination. The teaching responsibility is to make clear that the operational shorthand is not necessarily the whole concept.
Kaiako script: “These sources are doing different jobs. NZQA gives assessable prompts; official unpacking protects the concepts' wider meanings; Māori scholarship and Māori-governed organisations give situated digital evidence; Techquity, DTTA and Te Kete Ako offer classroom starting points. We are strengthening claims, not declaring another teacher or resource wrong.”
Assessment authority: what the current standard says
The achievement standard gives concrete examples of mātāpono Māori in usability: accurate use of te reo Māori, technological support for te reo Māori, and support for the expression of tikanga and mātauranga Māori. It separately lists accessibility/consistency and Nielsen's usability heuristics.
The 2025 examination added three named prompts: manaakitanga, rangatiratanga and whanaungatanga. The 2026 specification says examples will be drawn from “Mātāpono Māori” but does not yet enumerate the exact examination resource.
Source roles: do not flatten the ladder
Assessment and official guidance
The standard and current specification establish what may be assessed. The official NCEA Education unpacking also cautions that Mātāpono Māori are complex, fundamental within te ao Māori and wider than their use in an achievement standard; its examples are not definitions.
Situated evidence and teaching interpretations
Keegan, Māori algorithmic-sovereignty scholarship and Te Mana Raraunga show language, relationships and authority operating in real digital contexts. Techquity, DTTA and Te Kete Ako can make these ideas accessible for a class, but a teaching interpretation should be tested rather than treated as cultural authority.
Lesson sequence
- 0–10 min — Can you make it fit? Sort deliberately tempting claims: “Back button = rangatiratanga”, “comments = whanaungatanga”, “durable = kaitiakitanga”, “correct tohutō/search support = mātāpono Māori”. Students rank each as strongly evidenced, possible-but-incomplete, or better explained by ordinary HCI.
- 10–25 min — Read Keegan as HCI research. Introduce Te Taka Keegan's Māori-language-interface work: real users, real interface language, unfamiliar terminology, usability barriers, pride/identity and language normalisation. Ask: what existed in the situation before the researcher chose an analytical label?
- 25–45 min — Rangatiratanga: the difficult case. Compare the 2025 assessment shorthand “users have control over the interface” with Māori data/algorithmic sovereignty examples. Use the authority test below.
- 45–60 min — Test the wider vocabulary. Pairs take one proposed application of manaakitanga, whanaungatanga or kaitiakitanga and identify the evidence needed to make the claim strong rather than associative.
- 60–75 min — Translate depth back into the external. Students choose the strongest lens for an interface and write one explanation linking observable feature → named user/task → principle → effect on usability → effect on purpose → possible limitation.
Source study: what Keegan actually does
Māori language interfaces
Keegan's 2017 chapter begins with target audience and interface language, then examines actual Māori-language Microsoft software, smartphones and library kiosks. The evidence includes awareness, unfamiliar terminology, task difficulty, language preference, pride and the implications of technology for te reo Māori use and survival.
Discussion: Is Keegan taking a generic “good interface” feature and translating it into a Māori word, or is he examining what technology does inside an already-existing Māori language relationship?
Keegan, T. T. A. G. (2017). Māori language interfaces. In H. Whaanga, T. T. A. G. Keegan, & M. Apperley (Eds.), He Whare Hangarau Māori — Language, culture & technology (pp. 10–15). Te Pua Wānanga ki te Ao, University of Waikato.
The empirical study behind it
A fuller usability study sits underneath that chapter. Twelve participants were given a smartphone whose interface language was te reo Māori and asked to send a text, search the internet and post to Facebook. The researchers then asked what had been hard, and why.
The findings were not comfortable. Participants “reported difficulties and some frustration as they struggled with new words and unfamiliar uses of words”, and “expressed disappointment at poor translations and arbitrary truncations”. None stayed on the Māori-language interface throughout; they switched to English when they needed to finish a task quickly.
Mato, P., Keegan, T. T., & Naera, L. (2016). How usable is a smartphone with a Māori-language interface? MAI Journal, 5(1), 17–32. doi:10.20507/MAIJournal.2016.5.1.2 — full text is free.
Look at the method, not just the conclusion
This is the part worth reading closely, because method shows what a researcher actually thinks a thing is.
To judge whether the interface worked, the study reaches for ordinary usability literature — Krug's Don't Make Me Think and Johnson's GUI Bloopers — and ordinary usability criteria: quick to use, relatively error free, navigable with some intuition. It does not build a set of Māori-values heuristics and score the interface against them.
So where is the Māori dimension? In what the study asks its participants. Alongside “how understandable were the screen commands”, the questionnaire asks:
- “How did it make you feel to see your language used in this manner?”
- “Do you think using te reo Māori in these and similar interfaces would encourage the use of te reo Māori?”
- “How would you suggest normalising the use of these interfaces in te reo Māori?”
Feeling, encouragement, normalisation, survival. None of those is a usability heuristic, and none of them is arrived at by renaming one.
The finding that is itself an argument
Notice what actually failed in that study. Someone took an interface designed in a major language and substituted Māori words into it. The result was poor translations, arbitrary truncations, unfamiliar uses of words — and users who gave up and switched to English.
Word substitution did not produce a Māori interface. It produced an English interface wearing Māori words.
Discussion: if substituting Māori words into an English-designed interface does not make the interface Māori, does substituting a Māori word for the name of a usability heuristic make the analysis Māori? Is that the same move, or a different one? Argue both sides.
Be careful and be fair: the study does not say this. It is about interfaces, not about analytical writing. The parallel is your reasoning, and you should present it as reasoning — which means it can be argued against.
The Humpty-Dumpty test
Where the name comes from
In Through the Looking-Glass, Humpty Dumpty tells Alice: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
The linguist Bruce Biggs — himself Māori, and Professor of Māori Studies and Oceanic Linguistics at the University of Auckland — borrowed that line for an essay on the Treaty of Waitangi. His argument was that the words of te Tiriti had determinate meanings in the Māori of 1840, and that you cannot simply declare the Māori and English texts equivalent. He concluded that they are not equivalent “in any reasonable sense”.
Biggs, B. (1989). Humpty-Dumpty and the Treaty of Waitangi. In I. H. Kawharu (Ed.), Waitangi: Māori and Pākehā Perspectives of the Treaty of Waitangi (pp. 300–312). Oxford University Press.
Why it lands on this standard specifically
One of the words Biggs was arguing about is rangatiratanga — the same word this standard asks you to apply to an interface.
That should slow you down. A word that a professor of Māori linguistics argued cannot be treated as equivalent to an English constitutional term is not likely to be exhausted by “the user can undo things”.
The test, in one question: am I describing something that was already there, or am I choosing what a word means so that it fits what I already wanted to say?
Now the honest part — you still have to pass
None of this means refusing the task. NZQA sets the standard and the assessment; that is the authority you are being assessed against, and in the 2025 examination Resource A rangatiratanga was operationalised as users having control over the interface. You should recognise and be able to use that wording.
What this page asks is that you do not believe the shorthand is the whole concept. The strongest answers do both:
- apply the mātāpono as the assessment frames it, with real evidence from a real interface; and
- name the limit — one sentence saying what the concept covers that the interface analysis does not reach.
Naming a limit is not hedging. It is the difference between an assertion and an argument, and it is what a marker reading for depth is looking for.
Rangatiratanga: when “control” becomes an authority question
Assessment-facing shorthand
In the 2025 examination Resource A, NZQA operationalised rangatiratanga as users having control over the interface. Students should recognise that wording because it may help them read an assessment resource.
Deeper contemporary digital example
In Māori algorithmic sovereignty work co-authored by Te Taka Keegan, rangatiratanga is framed as authority in systems involving Māori data, decisions about Māori, or environments in which Māori have rights and interests. The framework asks what controls Māori have in development and use, and whether systems further Māori collective aspirations and self-determination.
Read: Brown et al., Māori algorithmic sovereignty (2023) · Te Mana Raraunga
The authority test
- Who has authority?
- Over what?
- What can they genuinely determine, permit, withhold or refuse?
If these have no meaningful answer, Nielsen's user-control heuristic may be doing the analytical work more precisely.
Compare two “control” examples
A. Undo / Back
A user can reverse an accidental action. That is meaningful user control and can improve usability.
Question: What does invoking rangatiratanga add here that Nielsen's “user control and freedom” does not already explain?
B. Māori data governance
A Māori community has authority over how data about them are collected, accessed, interpreted, used and reused.
Question: Who holds authority, what is the object of that authority, and what decisions can be made or refused?
Techquity: use examples as hypotheses, not automatic equations
Techquity provides accessible examples linking manaakitanga to inclusivity/ease of use and kaitiakitanga to sustainability/durability, then extends both concepts into wider digital and social contexts. Use these as starting hypotheses for analysis.
Strengthen the claim
Instead of “accessible = manaakitanga”, ask: what relationship of care or respect is actually evidenced, toward whom, and through what design decision?
Instead of “durable = kaitiakitanga”, ask: what responsibility or guardianship relationship is actually being enacted, and toward what?
Student resource
- Mātāpono Māori: Claim-Strength Scaffold
- Use the scaffold for sorting, the Rangatiratanga authority test and the final exam paragraph.
Assessment transfer
- Name observable evidence first.
- Name the principle only when the relationship is defensible.
- Explain how the feature affects the user and interface purpose.
- Choose Nielsen/accessibility/consistency when that is the more precise lens.
Reasoned kaiako key for the claim-strength scaffold
Accept a different classification when a student supplies coherent context and a stronger evidence chain. The goal is not a new one-answer matching exercise.
A. “Back button = rangatiratanga” — better explained by ordinary HCI
A Back or Undo control can strongly demonstrate Nielsen's user control and freedom. On the evidence given, it does not identify who holds authority, over what, or what they may determine, permit, withhold or refuse.
B. Accurate te reo, tohutō and functional Māori search — strongly evidenced
The feature supports accurate te reo Māori and a real information-finding task. Students must still explain how it changes usability for the named user and supports the interface purpose.
C. Comments = whanaungatanga — possible; more evidence needed
Comments permit interaction, but the claim needs evidence about the relationships involved, reciprocity, community purpose and how the interface fosters or protects connection. Generic communication may be the more precise lens.
D. Iwi-governed archive permissions — strongly evidenced rangatiratanga
The authority holder, object and decisions are visible: the iwi determines access and reuse conditions for digitised taonga and mātauranga, including what may be permitted or withheld.
E. Durable design = kaitiakitanga — possible; more evidence needed
Durability may reduce waste, but the student must establish the responsibility or guardianship relationship and confirm that the claim concerns the interface rather than only the wider product. Sustainability alone is not a complete definition.
Accessibility features = manaakitanga — accessibility first
Captions, remappable controls or readable scaling remove identifiable barriers and can be analysed precisely as accessibility. A manaakitanga claim needs additional relational evidence about care or respect, toward whom, and through what wider design decisions.
Exit ticket
- Rangatiratanga is more than “user control” because…
- I would feel justified using a mātāpono Māori in an HCI analysis when…
- One example where an ordinary usability principle is more precise is…
Source ladder for kaiako
Assessment authority: NZQA achievement standard → current assessment specification → examination resources.
Scholarship / deeper digital examples: Keegan's Māori-language-interface research; Māori data and algorithmic sovereignty scholarship; Te Mana Raraunga.
Teaching implementation: Techquity and Te Kete Ako. Teaching resources can interpret and scaffold the authorities above, but should not silently become the authority for the meaning of the concepts themselves.