A deeply embedded sociotechnical strategy for designing ICT for development

This document is the author deposited version. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it. Published version DEARDEN, Andy and RIZVI, Haider (2009). A deeply embedded sociotechnical strategy for designing ICT for development. International journal of sociotechnology and knowledge development, 1 (4), 52-70. Repository use policy Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in SHURA to facilitate their private study or for noncommercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. Sheffield Hallam University Research Archiv

Getting from research to practice in M4D

In this paper we argue that, if technical M4D research is going to contribute positively to development, the activities of specialized, highly paid ‘researchers’ must be combined with skilled contributions from many other actors. In particular, there is a critical need to develop the capacity available in development organizations, community based organizations, and in local economies, to innovate and to adapt technologies to support their objectives. This suggests that the methods that we adopt in research and in design should be open to local appropriation and contribute to capacity building, and that education programmes are needed in developing countries to support the broader processes of innovation. We describe the Mobile Innovation & Enterprise partnership, which is working to develop the innovation capacity available in Uganda.</p

A Critique of Personas as representations of "the other" in Cross-Cultural Technology Design

A literature review on cross-cultural personas reveals both, a trend in projects lacking accomplishment and personas reinforcing previous biases. We first suggest why failures or incompleteness may have ensued, while then we entice a thoughtful alteration of the design process by creating and validating personas together with those that they embody. Personas created in people's own terms support the design of technologies by truly satisfying users' needs and drives. Examining the experiences of those working "out there", and our practises, we conclude persona is a vital designerly artefact to empowering people in representing themselves. A persona-based study on User-Created Persona in Namibia contrasts the current persona status-quo via an ongoing co-design effort with urban and rural non-designers. However we argue persona as a design device must ease its implicit colonial tendency to and impulses in depicting "the other". Instead we endorse serenity, mindfulness and local enabling in design at large and in the African context in particular

See no evil? Ethics in an interventionist ICTD

This paper considers some of the ethical questions that arise in conducting interventionist ICTD research, and examines the ethical advice and guidance that is readily available to researchers. Recent years have seen a growing interest from technology researchers in applying their skills to address the needs and aspirations of people in developing regions. In contrast to much previous research in Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICTD) which has sought to study and understand processes surrounding technologies, technology researchers are interested in finding ways to change the forms of these technologies in order to promote desirable social aims. These more interventionist research encounters raise distinctive ethical challenges. This paper explores the discussions that have been presented in the major ICTD journals and conferences and major development studies journals as well as examining codes of conduct from related fields of research. Exploration of this literature shows that the quantity, quality and detail of advice that directly addresses the challenges of interventionist ICTD is actually very limited. This paper argues that the there is an urgent need for the ICTD research community to investigate and debate this subject

Human computer interaction for international development: past present and future

Recent years have seen a burgeoning interest in research into the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the context of developing regions, particularly into how such ICTs might be appropriately designed to meet the unique user and infrastructural requirements that we encounter in these cross-cultural environments. This emerging field, known to some as HCI4D, is the product of a diverse set of origins. As such, it can often be difficult to navigate prior work, and/or to piece together a broad picture of what the field looks like as a whole. In this paper, we aim to contextualize HCI4D—to give it some historical background, to review its existing literature spanning a number of research traditions, to discuss some of its key issues arising from the work done so far, and to suggest some major research objectives for the future

Kheti: mobile multimedia in an agricultural co-operative

Kheti is a mobile phone-based, multimedia communication system to support sharing of agricultural knowledge and advice within a producers' co-operative. The first version of this system was designed with, and was tested by, the Sironj Crop Producers Company Ltd, a co-operative of small farmers working in Madhya Pradesh, Central India. In this paper, we describe the Kheti system and examine how it addresses the problems of making agricultural knowledge available by recognizing that practical knowledge is always located within a complex network of social relations and practices. We also examine the results of field trials and some of the challenges in seeking to convert a successful technology into a sustainable development intervention. © 2010 Springer-Verla