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

Infrastructural Speculations: Tactics for Designing and Interrogating Lifeworlds

This paper introduces “infrastructural speculations,” an orientation toward speculative design that considers the complex and long-lived relationships of technologies with broader systems, beyond moments of immediate invention and design. As modes of speculation are increasingly used to interrogate questions of broad societal concern, it is pertinent to develop an orientation that foregrounds the “lifeworld” of artifacts—the social, perceptual, and political environment in which they exist. While speculative designs often imply a lifeworld, infrastructural speculations place lifeworlds at the center of design concern, calling attention to the cultural, regulatory, environmental, and repair conditions that enable and surround particular future visions. By articulating connections and affinities between speculative design and infrastructure studies research, we contribute a set of design tactics for producing infrastructural speculations. These tactics help design researchers interrogate the complex and ongoing entanglements among technologies, institutions, practices, and systems of power when gauging the stakes of alternate lifeworlds

Ethics and Design in the Brazilian Context

Often driven by practical and immediate requirements, more and more people are incorporating technology into a variety of aspects of their lives, often without reflecting on the consequences of using them. On the other hand, studies on interactive system development that lead to behavioral change have been gaining ground on the agenda of large HCI conferences. This movement brings to the forefront the fundamental issues of ethics in design and technology use. A designer’s intentions, when directing certain actions or behaviors, are not always explicit or desired by the stakeholders affected by the use of the technology. Systems that induce an undesired purchase, or even those that use conditioning strategies to cause a behavioral change are examples of such intentions. The challenge proposed is therefore about the relationship between design and personal freedom in a way that these technology users do not become victims, either passively or submissively, of the effects of its use. This advance allows for the redefinition of the relationship between man and technology, and the application of new forms of designing and developing interactive systems that take into account the ethical aspects of this relationship

Usability Engineering and PPGIS - Towards a Learning-improving Cycle

July 21 - 2