Workshop at the ACM CHI 2009 Conference: Human-centered Computing in International Development

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What does the desktop metaphor mean for communities that do not use or value desks? How does the QWERTY keyboard perform in 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? Computer applications and PC appliances have traditionally been designed by and for Western high-income populations. But today the Internet and internet-enabled computers have become a truly global phenomenon, reaching out to many of the most remote and marginalized communities. This workshop will be held on Saturday and Sunday, April 4-5, as an official part of the ACM 2009 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2009) in Boston. The workshop will explore interaction design in the context of international development, and in particular will address interaction design for parts of the world that are often marginalized by current systems and applications designers. The PI believes that to extend the boundaries of existing practice in designing information and communication technologies, design should be with, for, and of the marginalized communities he plans to set centre stage in the workshop discussions. The workshop will provide a forum to exchange experiences, to explore differences between developed and developing world contexts, to develop new partnerships, and to learn from each other's experiences. NSF funding will enable approximately ten international delegates to attend from low-income countries, from which participation would otherwise be impossible; without the active involvement of these participants, the outcomes of the workshop would be far less useful and effective.The annual CHI conference, sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (ACM SIGCHI), is a leading international forum for the presentation and discussion of human-computer interaction (HCI) research and practice. The conference is attended by over 2,000 professionals from around the world. Research papers presented at the conference are heavily-refereed and widely cited; they constitute some of the most scientifically respected research publications in the field of HCI.Broader Impacts: A review of the HCI literature exposes the broad intellectual gap that exists between problems of computer interaction and studies of the development impact of computer technologies in low-income countries. The PI expects that this workshop, building on the outcomes of two previous meetings at CHI 2007 (funded in part by NSF) and CHI 2008 (which led to establishment of a website http://hci4d.org that provides a platform for exchange of information, ideas, and experiences in this domain), will be instrumental in developing additional intellectual momentum around these topic areas. Position papers generated as part of the workshop and summary articles will be published in a special issue of the journal Information Technology and International Development, as well as in ACM Interactions, Interfaces magazine, and Usability News. The PI is also working on a story-based template, which will provide an online repository for reporting findings and observations that can be easily searched and shared.