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"Design for Development: Rethinking Computers and the Internet for Africa
and South Asia"
Abstract: What does the desktop metaphor mean for communities that do not use or value desks? How does the QWERTY keyboard perform among communities whose language has no "Q", "W", "E", "R", "T", nor "Y". What is the point of a personal computer in a context where technologies are not held for a person but are shared by a whole community? Fundamentally, computer applications and PC appliances have been designed by and for Western high-income populations. But today the internet and the computer are truly global artifacts reaching out to many remote and low-infrastructure communities. The distance between the development of t hese technologies, and their end use, leads all to often to profound Design-Reality gaps. In this talk I will overview projects aimed to understand and re-invent these technologies for the contexts of Africa and South Asia. My work encompasses problems of engineering (e.g. building a message system for low-literacy populations of Rwanda), public policy (e.g. designing a national ICT policy for the government of Liberia), and evaluation and assessment (e.g. assessing equity of access and economic impact of the internet in rural South India). |
