Abstractions for designing and evaluating communication bridges for people in developing regions

Abstract

This paper describes two novel abstractions that help software engineers work in developing regions to align social and technical factors when building communication systems. The abstractions extend two concepts familiar to engineers of computer networks and applications: the Open Systems Interconnect stack for design, and Quality of Service for evaluation. The novel nature of the abstractions lies in how they help cultivate awareness of socio-cultural and technical issues when designing and evaluating communication bridges in the field. Advantages of the abstractions are that they can be understood easily by software engineers, they aid communication with beneficiaries, and can therefore facilitate collaboration. The paper makes an argument for these socially aware abstractions, describes the abstractions in detail, provides examples of how we used the new abstractions in the field and then gives practical guidelines for how to use them. The simple nature of the new abstractions can help software engineers and end-users to work together to produce useful information technology based communication systems for people in developing regions. Categories and Subject Descriptors KeywordsDesign and evaluation of applications, Participatory methods and user-centred design, User interfaces and accessibility for low-literacy populations, Information and communication technology for development.

Beyond Traditional Ethics when Developing Assistive Technology for and with Deaf People in Developing Regions

“…There have been four DEV conferences, starting in 2010 and the last one also in December 2013. Of the 68 full papers, only 2 concerned AT for disability, and both were co-authored by this chapter's author (Tucker and Blake 2010;Motlhabi et al 2013b). Outside of these conferences, ICT research with and/or for Deaf people in developing regions appears to be quite scarce.…”

“…Following on this, Dearden (2013) discusses action research as a mechanism to conduct interventionist work. Action research has also been championed in ICT4D work by Tucker and Blake (2010) and Doerflinger and Dearden (2013). Action research has only recently been embraced in the field of contemporary HCI, an area of Computer Science that has long resisted the non-positivist leanings of action research, e.g.…”

“…None of these issues are easily addressed or static; and any or all can be changed. Many such issues are addressed by bridges.org's Real Access/Real Impact criteria (see see Tucker and Blake 2010 because the bridges.org website is now defunct). There is also the balance between person and community -this is different in different cultures, e.g.…”

Raabta

“…Real Access/Real Impact (RA/RI) The RA/RI criteria [28] for ICT4D projects defines a checklist for long-term sustainability. It revolves around, among many factors, local needs, affordability, socio-cultural factors, and microand macro-economics to evaluate the design of an initiative.…”

Experiences, challenges and lessons from rolling out a rural WiFi mesh network

“…We have identified additional concerns that need to be addressed, and would like to share them with the computing for development (DEV) community. While some authors [11,20,30] mention the pertinence of cultural factors, very little is said about how to approach them. This paper addresses these concerns, especially with respect to the influence of intra-community politics on the design and rollout phase that we have encountered during the early stages of this mesh project, with the hope that others can benefit from our socially aware approach and the lessons we have learned.…”