HCI as a means to prosociality in the economy

HCI research often involves intervening in the economic lives of people, but researchers only rarely give explicit consideration to what actually constitutes prosociality in the economy. Much has been said previously regarding sustainability but this has largely focused on environmental rather than interpersonal relations. This paper provides an analysis of how prosocial HCI has been discussed and continues to be defined as a research field. Based on a corpus of published works, we describe a variety of genres of work relating to prosocial HCI. Key intellectual differences are explored, including the epistemological and ethical positions involved in designing for prosocial outcomes as well as how HCI researchers posit economic decision-making. Finally, emerging issues and opportunities for further debate and collaboration are discussed in turn

Beyond Device Pairing: New Interactions on NFC Enabled Mobile Phones

Near field communication (NFC) is a short-range wireless protocol that allows users to connect devices and access content and services by simply holding enabled devices near each other. Many of the existing applications (ticketing, purchasing, device configuration, etc.) use NFC as a method to transfer unique identifiers which then inform a larger system. While useful, these applications do not focus on the strengths of NFC technology or go beyond single function scenarios. This problem is addressed with a user interaction model for NFC enabled applications. The model draws parallels with the GUI model, leverages the existing knowledge users have about physical items in their environment, and can support a variety of applications tied together in a simple and intuitive way. To realize the model, custom hardware and software tools which allow researchers to build a variety of applications is provided. The tools exploit the unique capabilities of NFC and take the technology beyond pairing.

Content Prototyping – An Approach for Engaging Non-technical Users in Participatory Design

Part 1: Long and Short PapersInternational audienceMany in the developing world have little to no experience with computers - they have never used software as part of their daily lives and jobs, so there is always a challenge for how this class of users can be engaged in Participatory Design in a manner that the value of their participation is not limited by their computing experience. This paper looks at previous work that addressed this challenge, and introduces an approach called content prototyping, which is an adaptation of existing practices to fit the needs of non-technical users. We also discuss the lessons learned from using this approach, and give recommendations for related projects in the developing world

Electronic data capture for large scale typhoid surveillance, household contact tracing, and health utilisation survey: Strategic typhoid alliance across Africa and Asia

Electronic data capture systems (EDCs) have the potential to achieve efficiency and quality in collection of multisite data. We quantify the volume, time, accuracy and costs of an EDC using large-scale census data from the STRATAA consortium, a comprehensive programme assessing population dynamics and epidemiology of typhoid fever in Malawi, Nepal and Bangladesh to inform vaccine and public health interventions. A census form was developed through a structured iterative process and implemented using Open Data Kit Collect running on Android-based tablets. Data were uploaded to Open Data Kit Aggregate, then auto-synced to MySQL-defined database nightly. Data were backed-up daily from three sites centrally, and auto-reported weekly. Pre-census materials’ costs were estimated. Demographics of 308,348 individuals from 80,851 households were recorded within an average of 14.7 weeks range (13-16) using 65 fieldworkers. Overall, 21.7 errors (95% confidence interval: 21.4, 22.0) per 10,000 data points were found: 13.0 (95% confidence interval: 12.6, 13.5) and 24.5 (95% confidence interval: 24.1, 24.9) errors on numeric and text fields respectively. These values meet standard quality threshold of 50 errors per 10,000 data points. The EDC’s total variable cost was estimate

Electronic data capture for large scale typhoid surveillance, household contact tracing, and health utilisation survey: Strategic Typhoid Alliance across Africa and Asia

Electronic data capture systems (EDCs) have the potential to achieve efficiency and quality in collection of multisite data. We quantify the volume, time, accuracy and costs of an EDC using large-scale census data from the STRATAA consortium, a comprehensive programme assessing population dynamics and epidemiology of typhoid fever in Malawi, Nepal and Bangladesh to inform vaccine and public health interventions. A census form was developed through a structured iterative process and implemented using Open Data Kit Collect running on Android-based tablets. Data were uploaded to Open Data Kit Aggregate, then auto-synced to MySQL-defined database nightly. Data were backed-up daily from three sites centrally, and auto-reported weekly. Pre-census materials’ costs were estimated. Demographics of 308,348 individuals from 80,851 households were recorded within an average of 14.7 weeks range (13-16) using 65 fieldworkers. Overall, 21.7 errors (95% confidence interval: 21.4, 22.0) per 10,000 data points were found: 13.0 (95% confidence interval: 12.6, 13.5) and 24.5 (95% confidence interval: 24.1, 24.9) errors on numeric and text fields respectively. These values meet standard quality threshold of 50 errors per 10,000 data points. The EDC’s total variable cost was estimated at USD13,791.82 per site. In conclusion, the EDC is robust, allowing for timely and high-volume accurate data collection, and could be adopted in similar epidemiological settings