Augmenting Usability: Cultural Elicitation in HCI

Abstract

Abstract. This paper offers context and culture elicitation in an inter-cultural and multi-disciplinary setting of ICT design. Localised usability evaluation (LUE) is augmented with a socio-technical evaluation tool (STEM) as a methodological approach to expose and address issues in a collaborative ICT design within the Village e-Science for Life (VeSeL) project in rural Kenya. The paper argues that designers need to locally identify context and culture in situ and further explicate their implications through the design process and at the global level. Stakeholders' context, culture, decisions, agendas, expectations, disciplines and requirements need to be locally identified and globally evaluated to ensure a fit for purpose solution.

Village eLearning: An offline mobile solution to rural communities’ knowledge requirement

“…Once the communities were identified, VeSeL engaged in identifying cultural and contextual characteristics of the two selected rural communities (Kiangwaci and Kambu) and in identifying fit for purpose solutions. Many studies provide empirical and other technical research on the communities' ethnography and socio-technical context [2,4,12]. In early 2008, VeSeL provided a resource kit to farming self-help groups and one primary school in each of the two communities.VeSeL found it crucial to initially provide some minimal communication technologies (a resource kit) to facilitate ongoing interaction and to introduce the targeted rural communities to basic ICTs.…”

“…This approach proposes an equal focus on both the social and technical aspects of the design for a dependable system [7], a system that users can identify with, own and feel part of. Most importantly, these kinds of devices are not so general purpose as others such as the iPod Touch 4 , thus they are very limited in functionalities. Because of these limitations, they have minimal resale potential.…”

“…East Africans are known to have a high uncertainty avoidance index according to Hofstede [8]. This was further explored and validated by another study with these communities [4] which showed that rural Kenyan communities have a high uncertainty avoidance index when using technology. While probing users with the resource kit, users did not do anything they had not been shown before.…”

“…This is an iterative approach that requires evaluation of the different stages of the design process informing the subsequent ones. This will be achieved by the use of sociotechnical evaluation matrices (STEM), [3,4]. STEM is an interactive collaborative tool that allows every design decision to be evaluated in its implication for both the user and for the technology against pre-defined (agreed) criteria.…”

An Empirical Investigation of the Practices and Challenges Specific to International User Studies

“…Within both of these research areas, the implications of globalization and the internationalization of pro ducts and services have over the years become important topics of study [2,3,14,16]. Our research is positioned within the second stream of research concerned with approaches for understanding users and contextual product use.…”