Gilles Kounou, Christian Akpona, Herve Ahouantchede, Rose Gohoue, F. Belqasmi, R. Glitho
Rotating Saving and Credit Associations (RoSCA) (known as tontines in francophone Africa) are financial systems involving groups of individuals who put money together periodically and take turns to collect the kitty. They are off-line systems and are very popular in the developing world. However, they now face several challenges (e.g. geographical distance between participants, safety risks related to manual financial operations). An evolution towards on-line systems is now a necessity and this paper is a first step in that direction. It proposes an architecture which handles the participants of ROSCAs as end-users of a social network. The proposed social network accommodates poorly literate end-users who may live in areas with no Internet connection. It also integrates an on-line payment system. The rich cellular network connectivity that is commonplace in most developing countries is used to offset the poor Internet connectivity. Speech technologies (e.g. Interactive Voice Response -- IVR, speech to text -- STT, text to speech -- TTS) are used to address the literacy issue.
{"title":"A social network-based architecture for on-line RoSCAs in the developing world","authors":"Gilles Kounou, Christian Akpona, Herve Ahouantchede, Rose Gohoue, F. Belqasmi, R. Glitho","doi":"10.1145/2537052.2537070","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2537052.2537070","url":null,"abstract":"Rotating Saving and Credit Associations (RoSCA) (known as tontines in francophone Africa) are financial systems involving groups of individuals who put money together periodically and take turns to collect the kitty. They are off-line systems and are very popular in the developing world. However, they now face several challenges (e.g. geographical distance between participants, safety risks related to manual financial operations). An evolution towards on-line systems is now a necessity and this paper is a first step in that direction. It proposes an architecture which handles the participants of ROSCAs as end-users of a social network. The proposed social network accommodates poorly literate end-users who may live in areas with no Internet connection. It also integrates an on-line payment system. The rich cellular network connectivity that is commonplace in most developing countries is used to offset the poor Internet connectivity. Speech technologies (e.g. Interactive Voice Response -- IVR, speech to text -- STT, text to speech -- TTS) are used to address the literacy issue.","PeriodicalId":348018,"journal":{"name":"ACM DEV-4 '13","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128170577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Falko Schmid, L. Frommberger, Chunyuan Cai, F. Dylla
In developing countries, Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) can be a valuable source of information, as often no detailed geo-data is available. Furthermore, it enables to aggregate local knowledge that can only be provided by local stakeholders. However, due to the complexity of tools and workflows of VGI applications, the participation within VGI projects is typically limited to technically skilled persons. We propose to focus on task-specific interfaces to integrate inexperienced user groups in the data collection process. For the example of micro-mapping we show how What-You-See-Is-What-You-Map (WYSIWYM) interfaces can lower the technological barriers compared to generic user interfaces and allow the contribution of precise geometric geographic data even for technologically uneducated persons. We report on two user studies in two different settings: the first study compares the general quantitative and qualitative aspects of user-generated data of three different geographic data collection tools, and the second study investigates the robustness of these results with a focus on the technological barrier with technologically untrained farmers in rural Laos. We are able to show that WYSIWYM interfaces foster the contribution of data of promising quality and at the same time significantly lower the barrier of usage. Thus, WYSIWYM is well suited to integrate contributors with limited technological knowledge into VGI processes and enables crowdsourcing geographic information at a local level.
{"title":"Lowering the barrier: how the what-you-see-is-what-you-map paradigm enables people to contribute volunteered geographic information","authors":"Falko Schmid, L. Frommberger, Chunyuan Cai, F. Dylla","doi":"10.1145/2537052.2537056","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2537052.2537056","url":null,"abstract":"In developing countries, Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) can be a valuable source of information, as often no detailed geo-data is available. Furthermore, it enables to aggregate local knowledge that can only be provided by local stakeholders. However, due to the complexity of tools and workflows of VGI applications, the participation within VGI projects is typically limited to technically skilled persons. We propose to focus on task-specific interfaces to integrate inexperienced user groups in the data collection process. For the example of micro-mapping we show how What-You-See-Is-What-You-Map (WYSIWYM) interfaces can lower the technological barriers compared to generic user interfaces and allow the contribution of precise geometric geographic data even for technologically uneducated persons. We report on two user studies in two different settings: the first study compares the general quantitative and qualitative aspects of user-generated data of three different geographic data collection tools, and the second study investigates the robustness of these results with a focus on the technological barrier with technologically untrained farmers in rural Laos. We are able to show that WYSIWYM interfaces foster the contribution of data of promising quality and at the same time significantly lower the barrier of usage. Thus, WYSIWYM is well suited to integrate contributors with limited technological knowledge into VGI processes and enables crowdsourcing geographic information at a local level.","PeriodicalId":348018,"journal":{"name":"ACM DEV-4 '13","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128880985","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
F. Cuomo, Eric Mibuari, Komminist Weldemariam, O. Stewart
This paper describes our ongoing project whose goal is to combine existing technologies in order to make secondary school curriculum more interactive and practical.
本文描述了我们正在进行的项目，其目标是结合现有的技术，以使中学课程更具互动性和实用性。
{"title":"Leveraging Raspberry Pi for interactive education","authors":"F. Cuomo, Eric Mibuari, Komminist Weldemariam, O. Stewart","doi":"10.1145/2537052.2537068","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2537052.2537068","url":null,"abstract":"This paper describes our ongoing project whose goal is to combine existing technologies in order to make secondary school curriculum more interactive and practical.","PeriodicalId":348018,"journal":{"name":"ACM DEV-4 '13","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121474915","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
M. Zheleva, Paul Schmitt, M. Vigil, E. Belding-Royer
Broadband Internet access has become a critical part of socio-economic prosperity; however, only 6 in 100 inhabitants have access to broadband in developing countries. This limited access is driven predominately by subscriptions in urban areas. In rural developing communities, access is often provided through slow satellite, or other low-bandwidth long-distance wireless links, if available at all. As a result, the quality of the Internet access is often poor and at times unusable. In this paper we study the performance and usage implications of an Internet access upgrade, from a 256kbps satellite link to a 2Mbps terrestrial wireless link in rural Zambia. While usage did not immediately change, performance improved soon after the upgrade. By three months post-upgrade, however, subscribers began to use the faster connection for more bandwidth-hungry applications such as video-streaming and content upload. This change in usage resulted in dramatic deterioration of network performance, whereby the average round trip time doubled, the amount of bytes associated with failed uploads increased by 222% and that of failed downloads by 91%. Thus, while an Internet access upgrade should translate to improved performance and user experience, in rural environments with limited access speed and growing demand, it can bring unexpected consequences.
{"title":"The increased bandwidth fallacy: performance and usage in rural Zambia","authors":"M. Zheleva, Paul Schmitt, M. Vigil, E. Belding-Royer","doi":"10.1145/2537052.2537060","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2537052.2537060","url":null,"abstract":"Broadband Internet access has become a critical part of socio-economic prosperity; however, only 6 in 100 inhabitants have access to broadband in developing countries. This limited access is driven predominately by subscriptions in urban areas. In rural developing communities, access is often provided through slow satellite, or other low-bandwidth long-distance wireless links, if available at all. As a result, the quality of the Internet access is often poor and at times unusable. In this paper we study the performance and usage implications of an Internet access upgrade, from a 256kbps satellite link to a 2Mbps terrestrial wireless link in rural Zambia. While usage did not immediately change, performance improved soon after the upgrade. By three months post-upgrade, however, subscribers began to use the faster connection for more bandwidth-hungry applications such as video-streaming and content upload. This change in usage resulted in dramatic deterioration of network performance, whereby the average round trip time doubled, the amount of bytes associated with failed uploads increased by 222% and that of failed downloads by 91%. Thus, while an Internet access upgrade should translate to improved performance and user experience, in rural environments with limited access speed and growing demand, it can bring unexpected consequences.","PeriodicalId":348018,"journal":{"name":"ACM DEV-4 '13","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133727951","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Waylon Brunette, Mitchell Sundt, A. Ginsburg, G. Borriello
Open Data Kit (ODK) has been a successful data collection platform for many organizations; however, some users have struggled to adapt their use case to JavaRosa's XForm standard. In this paper we describe a new questionnaire-rendering tool (named Survey) that expands ODK's toolkit to support complex and highly adaptable workflows. Survey improves an organization's ability to build customized domain specific applications by providing interactive, non-linear navigation capability and question widgets defined in JavaScript/HTML; thereby, enabling runtime customizable navigation and question data types. To verify that Survey can simplify the creation of complex workflows, we present a case study that implements the World Health Organization's Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI) customized for field deployments in Ghana and India.
{"title":"Customizing and improving medical workflows using ODK survey","authors":"Waylon Brunette, Mitchell Sundt, A. Ginsburg, G. Borriello","doi":"10.1145/2537052.2537074","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2537052.2537074","url":null,"abstract":"Open Data Kit (ODK) has been a successful data collection platform for many organizations; however, some users have struggled to adapt their use case to JavaRosa's XForm standard. In this paper we describe a new questionnaire-rendering tool (named Survey) that expands ODK's toolkit to support complex and highly adaptable workflows. Survey improves an organization's ability to build customized domain specific applications by providing interactive, non-linear navigation capability and question widgets defined in JavaScript/HTML; thereby, enabling runtime customizable navigation and question data types. To verify that Survey can simplify the creation of complex workflows, we present a case study that implements the World Health Organization's Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI) customized for field deployments in Ghana and India.","PeriodicalId":348018,"journal":{"name":"ACM DEV-4 '13","volume":"61 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116797449","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S. Sudar, Saloni Parikh, Mitchell Sundt, G. Borriello
Open Data Kit (ODK) Tables is an Android application that allows users to enter and curate tabular data. Users can view the data through built-in or custom views using HTML/JavaScript. In this paper we discuss our lessons learned from real-world deployments of Tables. Specifically, our initial aim of providing a customized view of a table did not have a sufficient level of customizability. Rather than simply the views of the data tables, the entire application needed to be navigable using web-based tools that do not require recompilation to make presentation changes. We also discuss issues encountered with making the application scalable when faced with real-world datasets.
Open Data Kit (ODK) Tables是一个Android应用程序，允许用户输入和管理表格数据。用户可以使用HTML/JavaScript通过内置视图或自定义视图查看数据。在本文中，我们将讨论从实际的table部署中学到的经验教训。具体来说，我们最初的目标是提供一个自定义的表视图，但没有足够的可定制性。不仅仅是数据表的视图，整个应用程序需要使用基于web的工具进行导航，这些工具不需要重新编译以进行表示更改。我们还讨论了在面对真实数据集时使应用程序具有可伸缩性所遇到的问题。
{"title":"ODK tables: case studies in deployment","authors":"S. Sudar, Saloni Parikh, Mitchell Sundt, G. Borriello","doi":"10.1145/2537052.2537077","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2537052.2537077","url":null,"abstract":"Open Data Kit (ODK) Tables is an Android application that allows users to enter and curate tabular data. Users can view the data through built-in or custom views using HTML/JavaScript. In this paper we discuss our lessons learned from real-world deployments of Tables. Specifically, our initial aim of providing a customized view of a table did not have a sufficient level of customizability. Rather than simply the views of the data tables, the entire application needed to be navigable using web-based tools that do not require recompilation to make presentation changes. We also discuss issues encountered with making the application scalable when faced with real-world datasets.","PeriodicalId":348018,"journal":{"name":"ACM DEV-4 '13","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132926924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Kurtis Heimerl, Shaddi Hasan, Kashif Ali, Tapan S. Parikh, E. Brewer
Lack of access to cellular service often goes hand-in-hand with lack of access to power. For example, the GSM Association estimates that 95% of people living without cellular access in East Africa also lack access to grid power. This situation forces cellular network operators to build out power infrastructure along with their network infrastructure, dramatically increasing costs. While numerous equipment providers offer "low-power" GSM Base Stations (BTS) for use with renewable energy sources, these have a power floor of roughly 70W, which still necessitates a large upfront expenditure. The naïve solution to this problem is duty-cycling---simply turning off the equipment for portions of the day, usually at night. This commonly-adopted approach prevents important use cases such as all-hours emergency calling. Recently, we proposed a technique called virtual coverage to provide on-demand cellular coverage by introducing a "sleep" mode for cellular equipment. The solution turns off the BTS during low-utilization periods, but allows users to power the system back on using specialized autonomous radios if they need to communicate. Incoming communications also wake the BTS, facilitating two-way correspondence. While a potential solution, no real-world deployments have yet validated virtual coverage. The core goal of this work is do just that; we utilize virtual coverage to provide both low power consumption and on-demand access in a real cellular network during a six-month deployment in rural Papua, Indonesia. We demonstrate that the system was used and understood by customers, with more than half of subscribers using the system during "night" (i.e., on-battery) hours, making 730 outbound and receiving 755 inbound communications. Our scheme also allowed the BTS to be in low-power mode for 87% of night hours, reducing night power draw by 56.6%. We believe these results demonstrate that virtual coverage is a viable solution for reducing power draw in rural cellular networks.
{"title":"An experiment in reducing cellular base station power draw with virtual coverage","authors":"Kurtis Heimerl, Shaddi Hasan, Kashif Ali, Tapan S. Parikh, E. Brewer","doi":"10.1145/2537052.2537058","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2537052.2537058","url":null,"abstract":"Lack of access to cellular service often goes hand-in-hand with lack of access to power. For example, the GSM Association estimates that 95% of people living without cellular access in East Africa also lack access to grid power. This situation forces cellular network operators to build out power infrastructure along with their network infrastructure, dramatically increasing costs. While numerous equipment providers offer \"low-power\" GSM Base Stations (BTS) for use with renewable energy sources, these have a power floor of roughly 70W, which still necessitates a large upfront expenditure. The naïve solution to this problem is duty-cycling---simply turning off the equipment for portions of the day, usually at night. This commonly-adopted approach prevents important use cases such as all-hours emergency calling.\u0000 Recently, we proposed a technique called virtual coverage to provide on-demand cellular coverage by introducing a \"sleep\" mode for cellular equipment. The solution turns off the BTS during low-utilization periods, but allows users to power the system back on using specialized autonomous radios if they need to communicate. Incoming communications also wake the BTS, facilitating two-way correspondence. While a potential solution, no real-world deployments have yet validated virtual coverage.\u0000 The core goal of this work is do just that; we utilize virtual coverage to provide both low power consumption and on-demand access in a real cellular network during a six-month deployment in rural Papua, Indonesia. We demonstrate that the system was used and understood by customers, with more than half of subscribers using the system during \"night\" (i.e., on-battery) hours, making 730 outbound and receiving 755 inbound communications. Our scheme also allowed the BTS to be in low-power mode for 87% of night hours, reducing night power draw by 56.6%. We believe these results demonstrate that virtual coverage is a viable solution for reducing power draw in rural cellular networks.","PeriodicalId":348018,"journal":{"name":"ACM DEV-4 '13","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123749188","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This work in progress paper reports on initial research into the protection of information of the individuals that make use of video relay services. Our research team has developed an application called SignSupport, to aid in the communication between a text illiterate Deaf person and a non-signing pharmacist. After a Deaf person hands SignSupport to the pharmacist, s/he can view the prescription in South African Sign Language. SignSupport keeps personal and medical information on the phone that needs to be protected. This project focuses on the provision and security of voice and video over Internet Protocol transmission for video/voice relay integrated into SignSupport. Areas of research include: authentication methods, sign language video encryption techniques, and secure and protected data transit for an IP-based relay system. We also intend to implement and evaluate these security measures within the context of the South African Protection of Private Information Bill. Action research methodology will apply to this project, with consultation from inter-disciplinary groups such as the Deaf Community of Cape Town, legal experts, network and information security experts as well as application developers, for input and direction of this research.
{"title":"Information protection in video relay services","authors":"A. Henney, W. Tucker","doi":"10.1145/2537052.2537076","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2537052.2537076","url":null,"abstract":"This work in progress paper reports on initial research into the protection of information of the individuals that make use of video relay services. Our research team has developed an application called SignSupport, to aid in the communication between a text illiterate Deaf person and a non-signing pharmacist. After a Deaf person hands SignSupport to the pharmacist, s/he can view the prescription in South African Sign Language. SignSupport keeps personal and medical information on the phone that needs to be protected. This project focuses on the provision and security of voice and video over Internet Protocol transmission for video/voice relay integrated into SignSupport. Areas of research include: authentication methods, sign language video encryption techniques, and secure and protected data transit for an IP-based relay system. We also intend to implement and evaluate these security measures within the context of the South African Protection of Private Information Bill. Action research methodology will apply to this project, with consultation from inter-disciplinary groups such as the Deaf Community of Cape Town, legal experts, network and information security experts as well as application developers, for input and direction of this research.","PeriodicalId":348018,"journal":{"name":"ACM DEV-4 '13","volume":"129 Pt 2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131170441","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sunandan Chakraborty, Tiffany Tong, Jay Chen, Afshan Aman, T. Mufti, Yaw Nyarko, L. Subramanian
The task of balancing problems associated with population growth and food production has often been impaired by a lack of accurate information on food supply availability in any given region or time. Such data has conventionally been gathered by legions of field workers who must travel to individual farms and collect information by hand. Predictably, data collection has been slow, error-prone, and difficult to maintain. There is therefore a need to develop tools and techniques that can quickly and accurately generate relevant and up-to-date information on food production.
{"title":"Experiences in designing a mobile GIS mapping tool for rural farmers in Ghana","authors":"Sunandan Chakraborty, Tiffany Tong, Jay Chen, Afshan Aman, T. Mufti, Yaw Nyarko, L. Subramanian","doi":"10.1145/2537052.2537081","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2537052.2537081","url":null,"abstract":"The task of balancing problems associated with population growth and food production has often been impaired by a lack of accurate information on food supply availability in any given region or time. Such data has conventionally been gathered by legions of field workers who must travel to individual farms and collect information by hand. Predictably, data collection has been slow, error-prone, and difficult to maintain. There is therefore a need to develop tools and techniques that can quickly and accurately generate relevant and up-to-date information on food production.","PeriodicalId":348018,"journal":{"name":"ACM DEV-4 '13","volume":"98 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133502016","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed, S. Jackson, Maruf Zaber, M. B. Morshed, Md. Habibullah Bin Ismail, Sharmin Afrose
Making technology accessible to low literate users and communities is an important challenge of ICTD research and practice. Past work in the field has addressed the problem of effective UI (User Interface) design under low literacy conditions, exploring graphic or audio alternatives to text-centered interfaces on the basis of studies that take individual users and user-interface interactions as their central unit of analysis. Our study complements this work through an alternative 'ecological' model, in which literacy-based barriers to technology use are encountered not by individual users but embedded social actors who draw on external networks, resources, and infrastructures to manage the problems that literacy poses. Based on a six month ethnographic study of mobile phone use within a low-literate rickshawpuller community in Dhaka, Bangladesh, we explore the literacy-based barriers to use experienced by our study population, and the external networks and connections that users draw on to work around such barriers. We conclude with design and wider research recommendations that may expand the toolkit of researchers seeking to better address these and other ICTD problems.
{"title":"Ecologies of use and design: individual and social practices of mobile phone use within low-literate rickshawpuller communities in urban Bangladesh","authors":"Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed, S. Jackson, Maruf Zaber, M. B. Morshed, Md. Habibullah Bin Ismail, Sharmin Afrose","doi":"10.1145/2537052.2537066","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2537052.2537066","url":null,"abstract":"Making technology accessible to low literate users and communities is an important challenge of ICTD research and practice. Past work in the field has addressed the problem of effective UI (User Interface) design under low literacy conditions, exploring graphic or audio alternatives to text-centered interfaces on the basis of studies that take individual users and user-interface interactions as their central unit of analysis. Our study complements this work through an alternative 'ecological' model, in which literacy-based barriers to technology use are encountered not by individual users but embedded social actors who draw on external networks, resources, and infrastructures to manage the problems that literacy poses. Based on a six month ethnographic study of mobile phone use within a low-literate rickshawpuller community in Dhaka, Bangladesh, we explore the literacy-based barriers to use experienced by our study population, and the external networks and connections that users draw on to work around such barriers. We conclude with design and wider research recommendations that may expand the toolkit of researchers seeking to better address these and other ICTD problems.","PeriodicalId":348018,"journal":{"name":"ACM DEV-4 '13","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131466578","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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