Software Engineering in Developing Communities

This paper reflects on our work in deriving targeted methodologies to develop IT applications and content in a developing world environment. This paper argues that a common thread over more than a decade of experience in building Information and Communication Technology systems has been a community centred approach. We relate this to the African philosophy of ubuntu. These approaches are wrapped into an iterative Action Research paradigm to include the communities of users directly

Computer Science and Global Development

This position paper argues that we should set ourselves the Grand Challenge of creating tools that people in the developing world appropriate for their own purposes. I suggest that one such Grand Challenge is a tool that makes all telcos obsolete. Our allies in this might be the mobile handset manufacturers. I also argue for community based values and methods that em¬brace the egalitarian principles of Action Research. I point out that Monitoring and Evaluation Tools are useful as a metric for development projects but need to be adapted for ICT Design

Design Doctorate in Computing: a defence of "doing cool stuff"

This position paper argues that it is time to extend the notion of worthwhile scholarship in Computer Science to embrace Design and to award doctorates in the field of Design

Socially Aware Software Engineering for the Developing World

While the social effects of Information Technology (IT) have received much attention there is very little work on targeted methodologies to develop IT applications and content in a developing world environment. This paper describes a methodology called Socially Aware Software Engineering we are busy formulating based on firsthand experience building Information and Communication Technology solutions. Our method is based on a classical user-centred approach from Human Computer Interaction combined with aspects of Participatory Design and cyclical software engineering practises. These approaches are wrapped into an iterative Action Research paradigm in order to directly include the community-based users of our systems. We outline three cases studies based on our evolving method. The paper concludes with suggestions on changing the nature of tertiary curricula in developing countries in a way that integrates this socially aware software engineering methodology

Presence in a Distributed Virtual Environment

Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) involve the use of a distributed architecture, and advanced interactive user interfaces to create a ‘shared’ sense of space where users located in different physical locations can interact. An important objective is to provide users with an illusion that the machine mediated experience is not mediated. The extent of this illusion is measured by the sense of ‘presence’ experienced. We explore ‘shared presence’ in a Cooperative Virtual Environment, that is providing the participants with a sense of presence of others in the environment, thus having a feeling that they are directly cooperating with real people. We describe our prototype system for a ‘non-immersive’ distributed virtual environment. We provide preliminary results on factors which increase the sense of ‘shared presence’ in a virtual environment. These include the use of avatars to represent the participants, providing simple communication and interaction with the environment. Our prototype has served as a good basis for our future work towards shared presence by highlighting areas that require attention, (such as providing communicative behaviour to avatars) and indicating good prospects such as the importance of how one represents the avatars

Sharing the cloudlet: Impression management and designing for colocated mobile sharing

This article explores how designing for impression management affects the design of cloudlet and other mobile colocated sharing services. We demonstrate how colocated concepts and experimentation led to the conceptualization and design of a sharing interface that provides users with control over their shared content. We uncover usage behaviors and privacy concerns through the use of a technology probe and use those discoveries to develop a prototype designed with the principles of impression management to give sharers control over their content and identity. Our designs and results indicate users of cloudlets and other colocated sharing systems require visual control and privacy over shared content

Evaluating Existing Strategies to Limit Video Game Playing Time

Public concern surrounding the effects video games have on players has inspired a large body of research, and policy makers have even mandated systems that limit the amount of time players spend in game. This article presents an experiment that evaluates the effectiveness and side effects of such policies on the user experience

The Use of Optic Flow in the Painterly Rendering of Animated Models

Image based painterly rendering has always had difficulty enforcing frame-to-frame continuity in animations. This paper lays out an approach that uses a form of optic flow to ensure continuity in the painterly rendering of 3D models characteristic of virtual environments. The proposed technique will be used to emulate the rock painting style of the San people of southern Africa

Presence and Co-Presence in Collaborative Virtual Environments

Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) involve the use of a distributed architecture, and advanced interactive user interfaces to create a ’shared’ sense of space where users located in different physical locations can interact. In this paper, we describe two experimental designs which use subjective evaluation methods to asses personal presence and co-presence in a CVE. Personal presence is having a feeling of “being there” in the CVE yourself. Co-presence is having a feeling that one is in the same place as the other participants, and that one is collaborating with real people. The first experiment investigates the effects of avatar appearance and functionality (gestures and facial expressions) on presence and co-presence in a CVE. The second experiment investigates the effects of small group collaboration on co-presence in a CVE

Using Activity Theory to Understand Technology Use and Perception among Rural Users in Uganda

Implementing technologies in developing communities often involves working with people that have a very different context from the researcher in terms of lower literacy and less experience with technology. Having worked with three rural communities in Uganda and introduced an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) intervention for water management, we use activity theory to analyse people's activities in relation to the use and uptake of the community-based ICT tool. To understand the contextual factors that influence the use of the tool, we proceed from our activity theory analysis and we unpack the perceptions and attitudes that rural technology users have towards technology. Our findings provide insights into what motivates and demotivates people in rural communities to use ICTs. We use our findings to substantiate the relevance of the intangible impacts of ICTs such as empowerment, social cohesion and improved self-worth for rural technology users. We recommend that technology designers be open to the unintended uses of the technologies they introduce in rural communities