Put down your thoughts on paper

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Put down your thoughts on paper

1. What is the common theme across the two papers?
2. Describe their initial goals (Digital Green and
   one case from the Brewer paper)
3. Did the goals change in the design process?
4. Who are the stakeholders (Digital Green and one
   case from the Brewer paper
5. What are the values of the designers?
6. How did the technologies come to be used?

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ICTs for Developing countries (ICT4D)

• Nithya Sambasivan

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Global poverty

• Condition of not being able to afford basic human
  needs
• such as healthcare, clean water or sanitation
• Often measured economically
• Can also be measured through welfare and basic
  needs
• Inequality and vulnerability

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Pyramid of the capitalist system
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What is a developing country?
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What is a developing country?

• Developing country United Nations Human
  Development Index (HDI) score lt.8
• 99 countries
• ?The HDI is comprised of
• ?Life expectancy at birth
• ?Adult literacy (age 15 and above)
• ?Combined gross enrollment ration in education
• ?Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita
• Gini coefficient
• Measure of inequality of income or wealth

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HDI distribution
The greener the better
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GINI co-efficient
The greener the better
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GINI co-efficient
The greener the better
What is this telling us?
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GINI co-efficient
The greener the better
What is this telling us?
Poverty is a global phenomenon
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ICT4Da historical view

• 1998 World Development Report
• Formalized in 2000 United Nations Millennium
  Summit
• "ensure that the benefits of new technologies,
  especially information and communication
  technologies are available to all". 

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ICT4D

• ICTs telephone, television, computer, or
  community radio
• In the device or cloud Toyama and Dias
• Typically for developmentpoverty reduction,
  healthcare, climate change
• Can also include free expression or entertainment

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How is it different?
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How is it different?

• Designing for
• A different ethos (social and cultral values)
• Low literacies
• Disruptive connections
• Low incomes
• Areas lacking basic welfare and infrastructure at
  times
• Traditional western techniques of understanding,
  information visualization, or evaluation do not
  work

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Mobile repair store in Mumbai, India
India fastest growing mobile market (517 million
as of Dec 2009)
Image courtesy Nimmi Rangaswamy
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A household in a slum community in Bangalore
Dynamic sites of consumption
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Masai men in Kenya using mobiles
The number of mobile phone users in Africa
exceeded 370 million in 2008
Image http//www.environmentteam.com/wp-content/u
ploads/2010/02/Uganda_Receives_Kasana__The_Solar_P
owered_Phone_xlarge.jpg
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What are we doing here?

• We
• designers, technologists, policy makers
• Working towards empowerment reduction of
  inequality
• Understand current and potential technologies
• in solving socio-economic problems

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• To create educational opportunities for the
  world's poorest children by providing each child
  with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected
  laptop with content and software designed for
  collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning.
• (OLPC website)
• The worlds poorest two billion people need
  desperately need healthcare, not laptops
• (Bill Gates)

From Kentaro Toyamas slides
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Why technology for development?
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Why technology for development?

• It is a means and not the end
• Is technology always the solution?
• Why computing technology when other sources are
  free or low-cost
• social networks, cyber cafes, television, radio,
  etc
• Information is not always the key
• social, political, and cultural structures
  prevent access and/or practice
• Well-designed technologies must not exacerbate
  existing divides

Some text from Kentaro Toyama
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Framing the problem

• Case Digital Green
• National Increasing debt and decreasing returns
  have forced some farmers to sell cheap and commit
  suicide in some cases NSSO 2005
• Inadequate knowledge about farming
• Local Green Foundation working with 20 villages

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Initial goals

• To design an information system
• catered to good practices in farming
• Evaluate the use of videos featuring NGO staff,
  experts, and farmers
• Increase in productivity through baseline

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Initial assumptions

• Videos may be interesting and viable
• Supporting infrastructure could be sponsored and
  introduced
• Videos increase in knowledge and
  relevant information
• Increased knowledge better farming
  practices
• Better farming practices higher profits
  and less deaths

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Stakeholders
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Stakeholders

• Microsoft Research
• Green Foundation
• Later on, Digital Green Foundation
• Farmer users
• Field officers

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The design process

• Iterative
• Understanding Ethnographic investigation (200
  days)
• Initial roll-outs
• Farmers liked videos of similar people
• Demand for demos, testimonials, entertainment
• Seasonal preference
• Mediation was key
• Demand for repeated sessions

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The design process

• Participatory videos
• Overview, itemization, step-by-step instructions,
  benefits, QA
• Indian idol
• Verifiability
• Video editors
• Mediated instruction
• Regimented sequencing

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What happened later?

• Spun off to become the Digital Green NGO
• Built capacity for Green Foundation
• Expanded to others parts

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The big issues in
Design for Development
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Cultural differences

• Cultural and language barriers between designers
  and users
• Gender, race, skin colour, or age affect access
• Socio-cultural norms may be different
• Sitting on the floor
• Wearing traditional clothes to reduce power levels

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Literacies

• What is literacy?
• ability to identify, understand, interpret,
  create, communicate, compute and use printed and
  written materials associated with varying
  contexts UNESCO.
• There are many forms of literacies
• Textual, numeric, digital, symbolic
• Varying degrees
• 95 of websites are in English

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Interface design

• Case Text-free UIs Medhi
• User interfaces for non-literate users
• Pen or touch interface
• Liberal use of imagery
• No text
• Semi-abstracted cartoons
• Voice annotation
• Aggressive use of mouse-over functionality
• Consistent help icon

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Nouns vs. verbs
Kitchen sink or washing dishes?
Pot or cooking?
Courtesy Indrani Medhi
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Cultural differences
An urban family user?

• Will a recycle bin make sense where it is unheard
  of?
• Colours mean differently in different countries
  Badre

Color China Japan Egypt France USA
Red Happiness Anger / Danger Death Aristocracy Danger
Green Dynasty / Heavens Youth / Future Fertility Criminality Safety
White Death / Purity Death Joy Neutrality Purity
Courtesy Indrani Medhi
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Design
Original design
Revised design
Courtesy Indrani Medhi
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Ethics

• Whose notion of development?
• Should development always be instrumental?

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Ethics

• Whose notion of development?
• Should development always be instrumental?
• Appropriation of telecenter as photo-shopping,
  astrology service
• Is watching Youtube or online social networking
  not useful?
• Brazil and India are the largest consumers of
  Orkut
• Television led to increased resistance of
  domestic abuse in India and family planning in
  Brazil
• Listen to instrumental, healthcare programs on
  radio after a long days work, anyone?

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Sustainability

• Enhancing long-term capability after project ends
• Case SARI (Sustainable Access in Rural India)
• Collaboration with MIT, IIT, GaTech, Harvard, and
  n-Logue
• Privately-owned in 32 cases
• Lack of adequate technical support, new and
  relevant content, and end of institutional
  partnerships

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Marketing for the user

• How is a product created for low-income consumers
  marketed?
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vTJwR9jLjTTE
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vJEPNiZNkhtc
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vnEZ30K5dBWU
• What did you notice?

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Marketing for the user

• Lifestyle-based marketing
• Family values
• Truck driver
• Entertaining and creative
• Catering to social class and aspiration
• Does not explicitly market as a poor mans
  phone
• Conveys through choice of characters

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Marketing for the giver
Case Kiva http//www.kiva.org/
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Marketing for the giver

• Bay area users (green leaf, white bg)
• Design to extract money (PayPal, amount raised)
• Establishing legitimacy
• Scams versus appropriate giving
• Establishes cause
• Entrepreneurship appears useful and a way out
  of poverty
• Poor communities
• The small amount of money can make a big
  difference

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Capacity building

• Designers leave
• Training local people in usage and repair
• Expensive to provide immediate assistance
• Public demonstrations, media, word-of-mouth

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Capacity building

• Case One Laptop Per Child
• Beautiful design
• Tough, open source software, low energy use, an
• Techno-centric
• Not wrong, but irrelevant content
• Rich, American kids ! poor, Ecuadoriaskids
• MIT Ecuador, not MIT
  Ecuador
• Requires new skills and literacies
• No capacity building
• 10,000 laptops per country

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Value systems

• Personal, private ownership and usage
• Communal, shared, and negotiated usage
• Women as empowered or independent
• Perhaps not everywhere
• Independent use
• Intermediated use also

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Value systems

• Case Multipoint
• 10 student per computer in certain rural schools
  in India

Source Udai Singh Pawar
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Solution Multi-mouse
Source Udai Singh Pawar
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Despite the challenges

• The promise is great
• Technology penetration
• Evidence of success exists
• Fishermen in Kerala
• Digital Green
• Kelsa
• Humbling
• Towards a better world!

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Questions?

• lt/Le fingt