Disentangling participatory ICT design in socioeconomic development

Participatory design in socioeconomic development is an invariably political activity fraught with both political as well as ethical entanglements. ICT for development (ICTD) - often involved in contexts of great inequality and heteogeneity - places these in especially sharp relief. This paper draws attention to these entanglements as well as what they mean for the role and practice of designer-researchers practicing PD. We then draw upon our experiences in an active PD project to highlight approaches that serve as a partial response to these entanglements. These presents both limitations as well as orientations for our role as designer-researchers in engaging with and organising PD work in ICTD - providing a starting point for answering the question “who participates with whom in what and why?

Evaluating How Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Interventions Affect the Wellbeing of Indigenous Communities in the North Rupununi, Guyana

Having its roots in computer science and information systems, the field of information and communication technologies (ICT) in development has arguably been dominated by technocentric approaches, mainly concerned with describing and managing the mechanisms of technology diffusion and adoption. However, the high failure rate of many ICT for development (ICT4D) interventions and their limited focus on wellbeing impact has drawn attention to the needs for designing better evaluation frameworks to help make sense of the complex realities in which ICT interventions take place, and for interrogating the usefulness of mainstream approaches on the impact of ICT4D interventions on wellbeing. Efforts to operationalise the capability approach, and to apply it to the field of ICT4D constitute an increasingly popular alternative in this regard. The alternative shifts the focus of ICT4D evaluation away from an exclusive focus on technology access and use, towards understanding their multidimensional development outcomes, including their impact on wellbeing. One avenue, which has largely been underexplored, is the potential contribution of systems thinking approaches for further strengthening the focus on multidimensional development outcomes while improving the practical applicability of ICT4D evaluations. This doctoral research sets out to explore how systems thinking concepts and techniques can be used to complement existing approaches so as to increase the success rate of ICT4D interventions, as measured by their effect on the wellbeing of intended beneficiaries. Drawing on multiple theoretical influences, including the capability approach, systemic inquiry, critical theory and pragmatism, this thesis evaluates four ICT4D interventions, including a researcher-led ICT4D intervention, which have all taken place in Indigenous communities of the North Rupununi, Guyana, between 2005 and 2015. The findings of this study suggest that the wellbeing impact of ICT4D interventions is primarily determined by whether they are introduced to address locally-defined needs and the extent to which beneficiary communities are involved in their design, implementation and evaluation. It argues that applying concepts and techniques from systems thinking can help address some of the criticism and shortcomings of established and emerging approaches for evaluating ICT4D interventions, by looking beyond efficiency and optimisation towards questions of participation, power, purpose and values. The research then outlines the contours of a Systemic Implementation and Evaluation (SIE) framework, as a way to draw attention to the inevitable clashes of worldviews that characterise interventions involving multiple stakeholders, and to allow a critical reflection on the nature of these interventions and the changes brought about. It concludes by producing a series of policy recommendations associated with enhancing the impact of ICT4D interventions on Indigenous wellbeing

Internationalization prospects of Finnish language technology SMEs in rural India

Rural India is an emerging business area with a population of over 800 million people. Despite the strong two-decade long economic growth, most of these people have to cope with a poor selection of both private and public services due to consumer limitations and deficiencies in service infrastructure. Mobile services are rapidly becoming one important exception. Mobile phones are enabling access to various services from banking to agriculture and from healthcare to education for the rural people, and this consequently creates large scale business opportunities for international mobile service developers. In multilingual India, services have to be scaled to various languages and they have to overcome the obstacle of illiteracy in order to reach entire rural audience. The utilization of language technology is one possibility to deal with both issues cost-effectively. This thesis takes a novel approach on internationalization research by examining the prospects that Finnish language technology companies have in the commercial development of multilingual mobile services in rural India through a case study of six SMEs. The results suggest that the prospects are characterized by the internationalization orientation and knowledge orientation of the company, and that Finnish language technology companies are prone to reactive internationalization at best when it comes to developing areas

Internationalization prospects of Finnish language technology SMEs in rural India

Rural India is an emerging business area with a population of over 800 million people. Despite the strong two-decade long economic growth, most of these people have to cope with a poor selection of both private and public services due to consumer limitations and deficiencies in service infrastructure. Mobile services are rapidly becoming one important exception. Mobile phones are enabling access to various services from banking to agriculture and from healthcare to education for the rural people, and this consequently creates large scale business opportunities for international mobile service developers. In multilingual India, services have to be scaled to various languages and they have to overcome the obstacle of illiteracy in order to reach entire rural audience. The utilization of language technology is one possibility to deal with both issues cost-effectively. This thesis takes a novel approach on internationalization research by examining the prospects that Finnish language technology companies have in the commercial development of multilingual mobile services in rural India through a case study of six SMEs. The results suggest that the prospects are characterized by the internationalization orientation and knowledge orientation of the company, and that Finnish language technology companies are prone to reactive internationalization at best when it comes to developing areas

Telecommuting in the Developing World: A Case of the Day-Labour Market

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in general, and mobile phones in particular, have demonstrated positive outcomes in the various social transformation and human development dimensions. As a result, many researchers have focused on ICTs innovations targeting the poor. Among the poor are the low-skilled day-labourers who belong to the Day-labour Market (DLM), which is also made up of employers, job-brokers and intermediary organisations. The DLMs’ main activities involve a great deal of travelling in search of jobs by workers and a search for workers by employers. These travels place heavy economic pressure on the day-labourers, hence reducing their net earnings while they struggle with extreme poverty. The first objective of our study was to find out how and which ICT interventions can be used to alleviate the challenges faced by the DLM stakeholders. The nature of our problem resembled studies that use ICTs to reduce travel distance. Such studies fall under subjects such as teleactivities and teleworking/telecommuting, and advocate for prospects of working anywhere anytime. These studies have not received much research attention in the developing world. They have mainly been done in the developed world, and mostly on white-collar workers and organisations. This brought about our second objective: to find out whether the ICT interventions for the DLM could be studied under teleworking/telecommuting and whether the telecommuting benefits can be realised for the blue-collar workers. Our research methodology was Action Research applying three case studies. We used participant observation and both structured and unstructured interviews for qualitative data collection and questionnaires to collect quantitative data. Contextual inquiry, prototyping and technology probe was applied as our design technique. The prototypes were evaluated in-situ to assess usability and uncover user experience. We mainly employed qualitative data analysis, but where appropriate, triangulated with quantitative data analysis. The research outcomes were divided into three categories: (1) the knowledge on the DLM characteristics which depicted different forms of the DLM and shaped our design process, (2) the DLM software designs tested as prototype applications and software artefacts deployed for use by the DLM and (3) the meaning and the state of telecommuting/teleworking before and after our experiments in the DLM. In the first category, appreciating the challenges faced by our primary target users, the day-labourers, helped shape our designs and our inquiry to include intermediation. With regard to the prototype applications, they included the remote mobile applications and the web-based server side software systems. Although most of these applications where meant for proof of concept, some of them ended up being implemented as fully functional systems. Finally, in the third finding, travel reduction using ICTs (mainly the mobile phones) had been practised by some of the DLM stakeholders even before the commencement of our study. After our intervention, we discovered that implementing telecommuting/teleworking within the DLM may be possible, but with a raft of redefinitions and changes in technology innovations. We therefore identified factors to consider when thinking of implementing telecommuting among blue-collar employees, organisations and employers

Mobile Crowdsourcing of News Content – Participation Preferences and Implications for Design

Citizens participate increasingly in hyperlocal news content creation. In order to make content creation more meaningful to reader reporters and more interesting to a wider audience, it is necessary to examine the factors that influence participation and carrying out mobile assignments. This thesis has been carried out at Tampere University of Technology, Unit of Human-Centered Technology (IHTE) in 2012. The research was carried out as part of the Next Media programme by TIVIT and funded by TEKES. The trial was conducted in co-operation with Sanoma Kaupunkilehdet. The goal of the research was to study participation preferences and motivations of readers participating in news content co-creation process. The study included a five-week mobile crowdsourcing trial with photo assignments using Scoopshot application. The participants in the study were 104 readers of omakaupunki.fi hyperlocal news portal. Information on the factors affecting participation was collected via a web survey open for all participants and interviews of five participants. The results of the study indicate that the participants’ willingness to put effort to carrying out assignments is high and the trial was found a positive experience. Still the degree of activity was low. Many young people were participating and more suitable topics for them were wished for. The activity seems to be pleasant pastime. It is considered as a challenge or a game. Photo assignment was found the most pleasant assignment type. Also video assignments and information acquisition were of interest. Based on the results of this study and the related literature, implications for designing mobile tasks for news content co-creation were formed. They can be adapted to other types of crowdsourcing, too