design guidelines for pervasive computing: implications of technology use in africa
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Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Aalto University, Finland
Department of Information and Service Economy, Aalto University, Finland
Introduction
Research Objectives
Study Results
Future Work
Discussion
• Mobile phones quickly penetrated into the resource constraint development world.
• 80% of the world’s population is dwelling in developing world that constitutes to about 20% of the global economies.
• Designing technology for low income, low literate development world is still a young field of research.
• PerComp practitioners must understand the local needs, social habits and behavior of the users.
• Direct relationship between social implications and technology design.
• We studied the information sharing practices and implications of technology use in two rural communities of Africa.
• It was found that ICT is in abundance but underutilized, oral communication is preferred and need for an invisible technology.
• To examine the current ownership of ICT in resource constraint communities.
• To understand the implications of technology use in development world.
• To identify the existing problems and opportunities for future PerComp solutions
• Participants and study sites
- Alice is more advanced compared to Dwesa
- Alice is closer to city while Dwesa is too remote.
- Old, farmers, women, youth and other professionals
- Dwesa has mainly old and youth (rural – urban migration)
- Both communities were resource constraint and low literate.
• Research Methods - Field studies were done twice in 6 months
- Set of quantitative and qualitative methods were used for data collection.
- Local researchers were involved for data collection process.
o Existing practices are inappropriate and inefficient
o Unavailability of the content in local language
o Local needs are not catered
o Mobile phones can become excellent carriers for PerComp initiatives
o Oral communication is still preferred because its free.
o Replacing existing practices through mobile/technology might result in negative implications – fear among people.
o Low literate have poor acceptance to information sharing through mobile phones.
o Accessibility versus choice
o Fear of technology usage and dependency habits
o Look for affordable, omnipresent and appropriate instrument for reaching masses.
o Radio, TV and mobile phone are current options.
o Support local language, local relevance (to society) and even text free to support illiterates.
o The affordability should not be in terms of a one-time purchase but also that of subscription, repairs, maintenance and up-grades.
o Universal design icons
o Embedding ICT applications in existing mediums
o Made to break type of designs
o Low upfront but same price
o Aim for economic sustainability and prosperity
Defined as the dependence on other technologically skilled parties for accessing technology.
o Possible reasons - use could be illiteracy, age, gender, and fear of technology use and dependency habits.
o Multi-user use of mobile phones
o Limited use of inbuilt functionalities
o Device-specific machine learning for context prediction
o Appropriate icons, graphics and embedded intermediately support in the local language.
o What is considered good or bad in any community defines social compatibility.
o Addressing social compatibility might lead to higher positive attitude towards the usage of PerComp.
o Face-to-face communication for information sharing.
o Different literacy levels, age, openness to new technology and economical status.
o Adding new functionalities to the technology currently existing in the developing regions such as TV, radio and mobile phones.
o Consuming less energy or almost zero energy is appreciated in such communities
o Consuming less money or lesser upfront cost but instead regular recharge, repair, etc.
o Supporting learning in daily life for example having educational use.
o Strong practical relevance is must.
o Supporting social rules of different communities.
Our study results suggest that low resource users do not appreciate the need for privacy especially those who do not
fully understand the technology
Is their any need for invisible technology for users dwelling in resource constrained, low income and low literacy regions ?
1.4 Billion People?
o Essential design implications for PerComp practitioners and researchers were put forward.
o Social implications of technology use has direct impact on technology design.
o Technologies are often developed to achieve certain goals however in practice they might be used for other purposes.
o PerComp practitioners must built their solutions based on the real needs and expectations of the developing world.
o Existing study has one major limitation that we focused on general technology rather than PerComp.
o We aim to repeat such studies in different geographical areas such as Africa, Middle-east and India so as to perform cross-cultural impact.
o Three main research orientations –
- Development World
- Teenagers (Gaming and Chat)
- Non-office contexts
What should be the interesting directions of "Social Implications of PerComp technologies in emerging
countries?”
How should we examine and investigate different social implications in context of developing world (low income
and even illiterate users)? methods?