Human-computer interaction for development (HCI4D):the Southern African landscape

Human-Computer interaction for development (HCI4D) research aims to maximise the usability of interfaces for interacting with technologies designed specifically for under-served, under-resourced, and under-represented populations. In this paper we provide a snapshot of the Southern African HCI4D research against the background of the global HCI4D research landscape.We commenced with a systematic literature review of HCI4D (2010-2017) then surveyed Southern African researchers working in the area. The contribution is to highlight the context- specific themes and challenges that emerged from our investigation

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

InfoInternet for Education in the Global South: A Study of Applications Enabled by Free Information-only Internet Access in Technologically Disadvantaged Areas (authors' version)

This paper summarises our work on studying educational applications enabled by the introduction of a new information layer called InfoInternet. This is an initiative to facilitate affordable access to internet based information in communities with network scarcity or economic problems from the Global South. InfoInternet develops both networking solutions as well as business and social models, together with actors like mobile operators and government organisations. In this paper we identify and describe characteristics of educational applications, their specific users, and learning environment. We are interested in applications that make the adoption of Internet faster, cheaper, and wider in such communities. When developing new applications (or adopting existing ones) for such constrained environments, this work acts as initial guidelines prior to field studies.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figure, under review for a journal since March 201

A Tutorial on Empirical ICT4D Research in Developing Countries: Processes, Challenges, and Lessons

Humanitarian operations research holds a considerable allure for researchers, often promising interesting contexts to develop and extend current theory, large pools of data to validate theory and generate new insights, and, more generally, the opportunity to conduct “research that matters”. For many of these reasons, we embarked on several research initiatives over the past several years with mixed results. In this tutorial, we draw on several studies (some abandoned) to explore the use of information and communication technologies for humanitarian purposes, and we synthesize and highlight the distinct features of humanitarian operations research. Specifically, we draw attention to differences between “the process” of conducting these studies relative to traditional research and focus on challenges and opportunities for researchers

Addressing data collection challenges in ICT for development projects

This paper equips researchers for addressing a wide range of data collection challenges experienced when interacting with marginalized communities as part of ICT4D projects in developing countries. This secondary research categorizes data collection challenges reported in multiple disciplines, and summarizes the guidance from the past literature to deal with the challenges. The open, axial, and selective coding of data collection challenges reported by the past literature suggests that it is necessary to manage scope, time, cost, quality, human resources, communication, and risks for addressing the data collection challenges. This paper illustrates the ways to manage these seven dimensions using (a) the success stories of data collection in the past, (b) the lessons learned by researchers during data collection as documented by the past literature, and (c) the advice they offer for collection data from marginalized communities in developing countries

Understanding the Role of Technology in the Development of Micro-Enterprises: Concepts to Study in Making a Better World

The concept of Development has alluded scholars and practitioners when information technology becomes prevalent. The majority of research in the Information Technology for Development (ICT4D) field is considered to be practice intended to make the world better with Information and Communications technologies (ICTs). In addition, a majority of well-intentioned ICT4D projects tend to fail, often due to unrealistic expectation set by development agencies responding to their political objectives. At the same time, Information Systems (IS) research is ripe with well-studied concepts that do little to make a better world. \ This paper investigates ICT interventions in three case studies of micro-enterprises operating in low resource environments. Two of the Native American micro-enterprises are taken through a set of technology and training interventions while one receives no interventions. The role of information technology in the development of micro-enterprises is analyzed to offer new concepts that can be studied to offer contributions to make a better world.

THE STOF MODEL AND A DEVELOPMENT-ORIENTED MOBILE INNOVATION

Service innovations in modern economies are driven by the need to gain competitive advantage, technology advancements, market demand and organizational innovation. Uniquely, the need for social development presents opportunities for service innovations in developing nations, particularly in the delivery of social services. The thriving mobile industry in the continent provides new possibilities for development practitioners to design services that might fill gaps in social service delivery for poor communities. The challenge facing development-oriented innovations is sustainability. Sustainability is attained through continuous value generation for users and service owner(s). Proposals to developers of these innovations have therefore focused on business model application and evaluations to ascertain their ability to generate value. The complexity however of service innovation in the modern mobile industry requires a unique perspective of service design and evaluation. This paper introduces the STOF model, a business model framework for mobile service innovations in modern economies to an existing developmentoriented service innovation in Uganda. The framework uses the model’s four domains (Service, Technology, Organization and Finance) and their relational Critical Success Factors (CSF), to define and evaluate the innovation. These CSF were defined from web publications on the innovation. The evaluation discovered that some of the CSF, due to poor design and strategic decisions, where poorly defined and formulated, which in turn caused an imbalance in the overall business model and therefore value generation