CAREER: Information and Communication Technology Use in Communities with Limited Technical Infrastructures

该项目调查技术基础设施有限的社区如何与计算交互，以及发现人机交互(HCI)中全球关联问题的技术解决方案之间的关系。传统上，计算技术的进步被理解为来自工业化国家，或那些在技术研究和开发方面投入巨资的国家。美国要保持全球创新领导者的地位，就必须显著提高个人和组织的创新能力和能力。基于以人为中心的设计和后殖民理论的整合，这项研究将导致改进的创新模式，并增进我们对变革性想法出现在哪里以及如何出现的理解。通过人种学调查，这项工作还将填补关于限制如何激励计算创新的知识空白，这些限制在美国存在，但在撒哈拉以南非洲更为明显。信息和通信技术(ICT)创新的中心正在世界各地转移。新兴经济体，如肯尼亚，不再仅仅是工业化国家创新设计的接受者，而是可能制定巧妙的战略，在使用信通技术时驾驭经济和技术限制。对于那些生活在技术丰富的环境中的人来说，这些变通办法不太明显，但它们促进了全球范围内使用的创新计算应用程序，如手机银行。认识到肯尼亚农村居民和贫民窟居民是ICT创新者，而不是西方技术的被动采用者，具有更广泛的理论意义，包括完全重新想象在HCI中进行设计的方法。该研究计划包括一系列理论驱动的、人种学的和基于设计的研究，这些研究将产生三个结果：(1)发现实证证据，从根本上了解撒哈拉以南非洲的农村居民和城市贫民窟居民中可见的经济和基础设施限制如何影响计算机的使用，并可能影响世界其他地区的创新设计。(2)在一系列基于设计的研究中使用经验证据作为干预，改进两个创新模型，以评估和比较这些模型的有效性，以在以下领域产生设计建议：可持续的人机界面、停电情况下的崩溃信息学、互联网数据管理以及群体工作和创业。(3)开发和评价一系列概念设计，探索人种学和以设计为基础的研究结果提出的新的实际可能性，从而推进设计工作簿方法。美国和肯尼亚的研究人员将评估将这些想法转化为市场现实的潜力。综合教育计划将为学生提供国际研究经验和机会，以开发针对全球问题的新技术。

This project investigates the relationship between how communities with limited technical infrastructures interact with computing and the discovery of technological solutions to globally connected problems in human-computer interaction (HCI). Technological advances in computing are traditionally understood as coming from industrialized nations, or those that invest heavily in technology research and development. For the U.S. to remain a global innovation leader, it must significantly enhance the capacity and ability of individuals and organizations to innovate. Based on an integration of human-centered design and postcolonial theory, this research will lead to improved models of innovation and advance our understanding of where and how transformative ideas emerge. Through ethnographic investigation this work will also fill a gap in knowledge regarding how constraints that exist in the U.S., but are more visible in sub-Saharan Africa, can motivate innovations in computing. Centers of information and communication technology (ICT) innovation are shifting in the world. Emerging economies, such as Kenya, are no longer simply the recipients of innovative design from industrialized nations, but may develop ingenious strategies to navigate economic and technical constraints when using ICT. These workarounds are less obvious to those living in technology-rich environments, but they have motivated innovative computing applications used worldwide, such as mobile banking. Recognizing Kenya's rural residents and slum dwellers as ICT innovators rather than passive adopters of Western technologies has broader theoretical implications, including completely reimagining approaches to design in HCI. The research plan includes a series of theory-driven, ethnographic, and design-based studies that will result in three outcomes: (1) Discovery of empirical evidence that provides a fundamental understanding of how economic and infrastructural constraints visible among sub-Saharan Africa's rural residents and urban slum dwellers affect computing use and can influence innovative design for the rest of the world. (2) Improving upon two models of innovation using the empirical evidence as an intervention in a series of design-based studies to assess and compare the effectiveness of these models to yield design recommendations in these areas: sustainable HCI, collapse informatics in situations such as power outages, Internet data management, and crowd work and entrepreneurship. (3) Advancing the design workbook method by developing and evaluating a portfolio of conceptual designs that explore new practical possibilities raised by results from the ethnographic and design-based studies. Researchers based in the U.S. and Kenya will assess the potential to translate these ideas into marketable realities. An integrated education plan will provide students with international research experience and opportunities to develop new technologies that target global problems.