research-article

Deliberate interactions: characterizing technology use in Nairobi, Kenya

Authors:

Susan P. Wyche,

Thomas N. Smyth,

Marshini Chetty,

Rebecca E. GrinterAuthors Info & Claims

CHI '10: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Pages 2593 - 2602

https://doi.org/10.1145/1753326.1753719

Published: 10 April 2010 Publication History

Abstract

We present results from a qualitative study examining how professionals living and working in Nairobi, Kenya regularly use ICT in their everyday lives. There are two contributions of this work for the HCI community. First, we provide empirical evidence demonstrating constraints our participants encountered when using technology in an infrastructure-poor setting. These constraints are limited bandwidth, high costs, differing perceptions of responsiveness, and threats to physical and virtual security. Second, we use our findings to critically evaluate the "access, anytime and anywhere" construct shaping the design of future technologies. We present an alternative vision called deliberate interactions--a planned and purposeful interaction style that involves offline preparation and discuss ways ICT can support this online usage behavior.

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Index Terms

Deliberate interactions: characterizing technology use in Nairobi, Kenya
1. Social and professional topics

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cover image ACM Conferences

CHI '10: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 2010

2690 pages

ISBN:9781605589299

DOI:10.1145/1753326

General Chair:
Elizabeth Mynatt
Georgia Institute of Technology
,
Program Chairs:
Geraldine Fitzpatrick
Vienna University of Technology
,
Scott Hudson
Carnegie Mellon University
,
Keith Edwards
Georgia Tech
,
Tom Rodden
University of Nottingham

Copyright © 2010 ACM.

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Published: 10 April 2010

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3687045
Nigatu HCanny JChasins S(2024)Low-Resourced Languages and Online Knowledge Repositories: A Need-Finding Study.Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642605(1-21)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
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