Designing technologies for developing world contexts - Workshop

Following on from the hct4d workshop a practical workshop at the LKL, London.

Tuesday 11 December 2007, 10:00am - 5:00pm A 1-day exploratory workshop

(for details)

"The aim of this 1-day exploratory workshop is to investigate the ways in which we can design technologies for use in developing countries, creating context-appropriate solutions. The day will focus on producing design scenarios that address real-world problems supported  by current and emerging mobile technologies. Participants are encouraged to take a 'hands-on' approach as part of small design teams."

To take part, please email your bio to design4dev@gmail.com 
Free, but space is limited to 15 participants

Organised by Niall Winters and Mike Ananny
Supported by the London Knowledge Lab, the VeSeL project, Stanford Dept of Communication and the Trudeau Foundation

The Future

Workshop participants agreed to promote the same theme for future BHCI conferences and expand on this. We felt that this area has specific concerns with the design of innovative technologies for development and while clearly related to the existing areas of HCI and ICT4D merits the formation of a new communities. There was also interest in a group specifically interested in human centred and participatory methods for design educational technologies for developing contexts.

Related Groups & Communities

Lone Dirckinck-Holmfeld mentioned a Masters program at Aalborg University on ICT for Development. Roger Tucker also mentioned Richard Heeks at Manchester and the ICT4D collective at Royal Holloway and IDS at Sussex were also mentioned. Please feel free to add to the list by commenting on this post.

Upcoming & Past Events

Please do add more you know about as comments on this post

Workshop at DIS 2008 (Cape Town)
Workshop at CHI 2008 (Florence)
Mini-track at HCI International 2009 (San Diego)
ALT-C 2008 - Rethinking the Digital Divide (Leeds, UK)
IUI4DR - Intelligent User Interfaces for Developing Regions

In the past

Panel & SIG at Interact 2007 (Rio de Janiero)
UCD4ID at CHI 2007
DSA conference at IDS Sussex

Value of on the ground research Breakout Group

Can someone who was in the group provide some summary, please. Just add it as comments on this post

Top-down/Bottom-up Breakout Group

Can someone from this group provide some summary, please. Just post a comment..

Context - Breakout Group

This group defined context generally as a rich picture of users/a community. With a mix of industry and academic researchers, a distinction was made between academic research and R&D (development in this case related to industrial activity not local economic development).

Lone made a distinction between participatory methods and a sociocultural approach: the latter regards local participants as partners or developers, rather than end users. Related to this was giving 'unfinished' products or tools to local people, for them to create and develop things. Yahoo was mentioned as an example, along with NTT DoCoMo. As opposed to user-led innovation of this sort, an alternative approach mentioned by Elizabeth Churchill and practiced by Yahoo and others is outright acquisition of specialised developers. Intellectual property is a related issue, and she added that when partnering with academic researchers, Yahoo sometimes doesn't seek to develop products jointly.

The issue of localisation, or 'glocalisation' was discussed. Lone suggested that this should include training, with local universities being regarded as middlemen. She also added that entire countries could become innovators, based on their historical context; a focus on historical context characterises the Scandinavian sociocultural approach.

Thanks

Thanks everyone for making this such a great day!

Watch this space for comments on the day, audio & video clips and publications news...

HCT4D Workshop Programme

Short presentations, video presentations and demonstrations will be interspersed with time for structured discussion, informal chat and networking. Really looking forward to an interesting day :-)

WORKSHOP SCHEDULE

8.30-9 Arrival and coffee

9-9.30 Introduction

9.30-10.30

• Designing 3ERP to meet use and users: methods to handle cultural diversity and collaborative networking in SMEs by Janni Nielsen and Lone Dirckinck-Holmfeld (Denmark)
• Innovative Design Approach for Technology Adoption for illiterate and Semi-illiterate Users in Rural Kenya by Daniel Orwa Ochieng and Lucy Macharia (U of Nairobi)
• Towards Participatory Design for M2O by Yishay Mor and Niall Winters (LKL)

10.30-11 Discussion & Coffee

11-12

• Found in Translation: Experiences from the Fair Tracing Project by Dorothea Kleine (Royal Holloway)
• E-Quality (quality in virtual campuses) in developing countries: Case study of Iran by Davoud Masoumi (Sweden)
• Technology Diffusion in Rural Markets – A User-centred Approach by Maryam Aziz and Graham I. Johnson (NCR, UK)

12-12.15 Discussion leading to lunch

12.15-13.45 Lunch

13.45-14 Summary of morning & introduce afternoon

14-15 3 talks

• HCT Design for the Developing world: Challenges Ahead by Riad Saba (Lebanon
• Capacity Building and ICTs in Remote First Nations Communities in Canada: a case study by Richard Smith and Jean Hébert (Canada)
• The Self-initiative use of IM in China for Learning by Hui Deng and Yinjuan Shao (China/Nottingham)

15-15.30 Discussion & Coffee

15.30-16.30

• Comparison of Participative Design Experience in UK and Kenya by Roger Tucker (StoryBank project, UK)
• Fluid technology design for development by Niall Winters and Josh Underwood (LKL)
• We come and go, what happens after the projects end by Dorothy Rachovides (Surrey)

16.30-17 Discussion & Coffee

17-18.30 Diva video & Demos & Discussion

...leading to pre-conference reception.

Abstracts and links to position papers below.