As Kenya and other African countries experience a digital transformation, educators are working to amplify their voices in the technology design process. In this poster, we describe our efforts to redesign an ICTD course to center African perspectives. Thirty-eight students participated in the semester-long course, including five Kenyan students who joined via Zoom. We evaluated the course by administering an open-ended surveys to assess students' learning experiences. Our findings suggest that students gained a deeper understanding of how colonialism, agriculture, and language use in Kenya are related to technology design. We also learned that U.S. students' engagement with Kenyan students-via Zoom and WhatsApp-significantly enhanced their learning. We discuss these findings and how future ICTD curricula can integrate aspects of our course.

Human-centered design (HCD) centers users' perspectives in the technology design process. This approach is widely used in ICTD to develop digital interventions for people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), including mobile health (mHealth) applications. However, primarily using HCD to develop digital interventions limits understanding of how to design interventions for users who do not regularly use digital technologies, particularly smartphones. In this article, we contribute a case study documenting our collaboration with Kenyan adolescents and their caregivers to develop a prototype paper-based diary to support type 1 diabetes (T1D) management. We describe how outcomes from the project's user research and ideation phases-in particular, findings from two design workshops-contributed to the development of the diary. Our findings motivate a discussion about considering alternative HCD outcomes: in particular, non-digital interventions, new knowledge creation, and community-building.

The prevalence of Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) among youth is increasing worldwide. Mobile phones, particularly mHealth applications, can potentially improve youth's management of this chronic condition. However, the design of these services rarely accounts for users in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). In this paper, we investigate factors that influence the use of mobile phones for managing T1D among youth in rural and urban Kenya. Our analysis draws from 58 interviews conducted with T1D youth (between the ages of 11 and 18 years old), their caregivers, and other significant stakeholders, including doctors and schoolteachers. Our findings draw attention to a significant mismatch between the mobile phone features prioritized in mHealth apps and participants' usage practices. We discuss the practical implications of these findings for mHealth design and user research.

Design has traditionally been used to solve problems in the field of Human-Computer Interaction for Development (HCI4D). Mobile phone applications intended to address health and education challenges in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) are prominent examples of these efforts. In this paper, I argue that design-especially, speculative approaches-can play a different role in HCI4D. Within HCI, speculative design has proven to be useful for raising critical questions. Here, I present a collection of nine speculative design concepts that are intended to raise questions about mobile phones; in particular, how they are designed and what they are used for. These concepts are inspired by my +10 years of studying mobile phone use in Kenya. In the discussion, I elaborate on how speculative design approaches can benefit HCI4D by prompting questions about whether the field is solving the right problems. I also discuss how speculative design is useful for drawing attention to other problems and topics of study.

This article argues that design workbooks can benefit the field of Information Communication Technology and Development (ICTD). To demonstrate this, I present a workbook comprised of 12 speculative design proposals. I then present findings from interviews conducted with 22 participants in Bungoma, Kenya; I used the workbook images as prompts during these sessions. My findings suggest that the design workbook method supports a participant-driven interview process. The workbook images prompted rich responses from participants about the contexts where the ideas would exist. These responses draw attention to the practical problems that might accompany the introduction of the ideas into their communities. Significantly, these responses also included critical feedback. Important information was gleaned from comparing and contrasting the multiple ideas in the workbook; these insights include novel understandings about surveillance and participant/researcher relations. These findings motivate a discussion about how design workbooks support different ways for people to participate in the design process, and encourage different outcomes in ICTD.

Poultry farming is a significant income-generating activity in sub-Saharan African (SSA) households. Poultry farmers frequently have to overcome extreme environmental conditions to maintain their chickens’ wellbeing. Prior research has proposed automating poultry farming activities to control environmental conditions (e.g., temperature and humidity). However, these interventions have never been implemented, in this context, to understand how they would work and participants’ perceptions. Further, chicken coops in SSA have different configurations that would make technology automation difficult. To explore how technology can be used to address this problem, we worked with local collaborators to design and deploy “NkhukuProbe”—a low-cost sensor-based technology that poultry farmers can interact with via USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) to monitor and adjust chicken coop conditions. First, we conducted a review of related work on poultry farming in SSA and a pilot study with poultry farming experts. Findings from this work guided the design of NkhukuProbe. Then, we deployed NkhukuProbe in 15 Malawian households for one month. The goals of our deployment were to understand participants’ experiences using NkhukuProbe and to learn about other ways of using sensors in this context. To achieve these goals, we used interview, diary, observation and data logging to collect data throughout the deployment. Our findings suggest that a technology probe's approach unveiled different opportunities for using sensors to support poultry farming in SSA. Further, NkhukuProbe motivated participants to think of other ways of using sensors. We present design implications based on these findings and offer new perspectives on the role of technology in supporting poultry farming activities.

Power blackouts (outages) are a common occurrence in Kenyan households. They affect people's livelihoods, and damage their property (household electrical items). We explore the role of GridAlert-a sensor-based technology we designed-in monitoring power blackouts. We worked with local technicians to design GridAlert's housing and integrate GridAlert with Kenya's electricity infrastructure. Then, we used interview, observation, diary, and data logging methods to understand 18 households' experiences using the system. Our findings provide insights for using sensor-based technology to monitor power usage and blackouts in Kenyan households. We also present participants' thoughts about GridAlert's housing, and about how it influenced their actions when using the system. We use these findings to discuss design insights for power monitoring systems, and to offer new perspectives on the role of technology in monitoring blackouts in Kenyan households.

In Kenya there are over 300,000 "chamas". These groups provide social and financial support for their members and have around $3.4 billion in assets. Despite widespread mobile phone use in Kenya, there are few efforts to develop digital services for chamas. We describe the design, and formative evaluation of 'SmartChama'---a prototype mobile app developed to understand activities in chamas and how to digitize them. We used contextual inquiry to understand how seven chama groups (n=48 participants) used our prototype to manage and track their finances. Based on our findings, we iterated SmartChama's design and then evaluated it with seven groups. Findings from this evaluation suggest different chama activities that should be considered when designing digital financial systems for these groups. We discuss these design implications and offer new perspectives on designing financial systems in Kenya.

Cultural probes have long been used in HCI to provide designers with glimpses into the local cultures for which they are designing, and thereby inspire novel design proposals. HCI4D/ICTD researchers are increasingly interested in more deeply understanding local cultures in the developing regions where they work, in designing technologies that are not strictly related to socioeconomic development, and in considering new design approaches. However, few use this subjective, design-led method in their research. In this paper, I present a case study detailing my experience designing and deploying cultural probes in Bungoma, Kenya. Returns from my comment cards and digital camera activities draw attention to probe recipients' unique experiences and to Bungoma's distinctive characteristics; they also inspired a series of speculative design proposals. My experience motivates a discussion that elaborates on how a cultural probes approach can benefit HCI4D/ICTD research by raising questions about generalizability, objectivity, and the pursuit of a single solution in design. More broadly, I offer a case study demonstrating an alternative way to approach design in HCI4D/ICTD.

Domestic and personal photography are topics of longstanding interest to CSCW and HCI researchers. In this paper, we explore these topics in Bungoma County, Kenya. We used interview and observation methods to investigate how photographs are taken, displayed, organized, and shared, in 23 rural households. To more deeply understand participants' photography practices, we also gave them digital cameras, observed what they did with them, and asked them to engage in a photo-elicitation exercise. Our findings draw attention to the ways photographs are "relational objects" - that is, material objects that support the maintenance, reproduction, and transformation of social relations. We then describe these relations: economic (i.e., working as cameramen producing and distributing printed images); family (i.e., parents and children using printed images to tell family histories); and community (i.e., people using printed images to present an idealized self). The introduction of digital cameras into these households did not appear to change these practices; instead, it reinforced them. We discuss how considering relational objects in CSCW/HCI is useful for balancing the technologically determinist perspectives that are the basis of many prior studies of photography in these fields. In particular, we detail how considering the concept provides new perspectives on materiality, as well an alternative to the individualistic perspective, which underlies these communities' understanding of photography.

HCI researchers are increasingly conducting research in rural communities. This paper interrogates how rurality has been treated in previous HCI research conducted in developed and high-income countries. We draw from research outside of HCI to suggest how we can effectively engage with rurality in research. We present results of a scoping review of HCI literature that asks: 1) How do HCI researchers define rurality?; 2) How do the unique characteristics of rural communities enter into study findings?; 3) What methods are used in rural research?; and 4) Where has rural research been conducted? More than twice as many rural HCI articles have been conducted in low-income and/or developing countries than in high-income and/or developed countries. HCI researchers rarely define rurality, and when they do, they primarily define it using descriptive rather than sociocultural or symbolic definitions. Rural research findings have primarily addressed infrastructure and distance/geographic isolation as unique rural characteristics, while qualitative, observational, and cross-sectional methods dominate this research. There are further opportunities for HCI research to more productively advance understanding of what rurality is, and how it matters for sociotechnical systems.

In rural Kenyan households, property theft is a persistent problem. To explore how Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) may be used to address this problem we designed and deployed "M-Kulinda"-a sensor-based technology probe. We used interview, observation, diary, and data logging methods to understand 20 households' experiences using the system. Our findings suggest that a probe's approach is useful in this context, more specifically we found that participants used our system in different ways to address their specific needs (e.g., monitoring poultry, electronics, and their family members). We also observed changes in our participants' understanding of sensors; M-Kulinda prompted them to reflect on other areas where sensors could be used in their households. We present design implications based on these findings, and offer new perspectives on the role of technology in deterring crime.

Domestic environments remain a topic of interest in HCI/Ubicomp, including how Information and Communication Technology (ICTs) can be designed to support sustainable practices in them. In this paper, we broaden the community's knowledge of these topics by studying them in rural Kenya. Specifically, we explore users' experiences with 'M-Kopa Solar', a commercially-available solar-powered lighting system for homes. We draw from our fieldwork, which primarily involved conducting interviews and observations at 21 households. In the process of learning about people's experiences with M-Kopa, we also learned about other sustainable practices that were central to their everyday lives. Our findings suggest that M-Kopa is a "green" solution to limited access to electricity in rural Kenya; in particular, we find that the system's design contributes to its success. These findings also raise questions about the long-term implications of such systems---especially in terms of how M-Kopa's marketing practices introduce people to consumption practices. We discuss this and other findings; in particular, the continued significance of "defamiliarization" as design strategy within HCI/ubicomp.

This article focuses on a range of Kenyan women, and their everyday experiences with mobile phones. We use our qualitative findings to broaden understanding of affordability, mobility and ease of use—design themes which underlie the motives for developing mobile phone applications in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Information and Communications Technology for Development (ICT4D). We find that studying women's routine interactions with their mobile devices is useful for re-examining these themes, and for discovering new ones, including the importance of trust within mobile communication and the emotional significance women attribute to mobile devices. We then discuss the practical implications of our research, and argue that technologists should develop interventions that target Kenyan women's everyday technology problems, rather than (as is traditional) focusing on interventions meant to improve their socioeconomic conditions. We also comment on the role of feminist theory in the design of these interventions.

Substantial interest is focused on using video to disseminate agricultural information to rural farmers in the developing world. This paper explores the effectiveness of using this approach to improve rural farmers' device literacy---that is, their ability to use mobile phones for purposes other than making and receiving voice calls. Findings from our pilot evaluation, conducted with women farmers in rural western Kenya, suggest that videos combined with facilitators can be useful for improving women's confidence in sending text messages, using 'm-agriculture' applications, unsubscribing from services that deduct their mobile phone airtime, and, in general, increasing their awareness of the mobile Internet and its related services (i.e., Facebook and Google). More significantly, our findings also reveal underexplored issues that hinder women's mobile phone use: in particular, their concerns about losing money to Safaricom (Kenya's dominant mobile network provider), and the challenges that result from a wide variety of mobile phone screen interfaces. These findings encourage ICTD researchers and practitioners to pay greater attention to corporate power structures affecting mobile phone use, to recognize that rural farmers' information needs encompass more than just agricultural material, and to raise questions about scalability of instructional video.

This article provides a detailed analysis of rural Kenyan women and their interactions with the products and services of Safaricom Ltd., Kenya's dominant mobile network provider. The amplification theory of technology offers a framework for analyzing our data, and we find that differential motivation and capacity are mechanisms that appear to benefit the network provider, while disadvantaging rural mobile phone owners. In particular, the design of Safaricom's airtime scratch cards and mobile services does not support rural users’ capabilities. Our analysis suggests that technologists consider their ongoing responsibilities for technologies they built yesterday—that is, they should address problems inherent in the current design of mobile-phone interfaces. We offer practical recommendations on how to do this, and ask HCI/ICTD researchers and practitioners to more carefully consider how overlooking corporate power structures and their impact on mobile phone use amplifies social inequality.

This article focuses on "fundi wa simu," (mobile phone repairers) in rural Kenya and their ideas about mobile phone design. Our study design and analysis were guided by ideas from postcolonial computing; we use our qualitative findings, and outcomes from a drawing exercise, to show existing flaws in mobile phone design, and to explore how repairers' knowledge can lead to handsets that are better suited for rural Kenyans. Our argument is that, by engaging with repairers "[on] their own terms," technologists can expand conversations around designing for the 'developing' world that go beyond building novel smartphone applications. In fact, such conversations can also include reimagining mobile phones, and supporting local repairers' efforts to manufacture them. We conclude by discussing ways to improve upon postcolonial approaches to technology design.

This paper explores how participatory video can improve the knowledge and adoption of nutrition and food preparation practices among smallholder farmers in Malawi. Using a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design, this study found that the participatory video method improved the participants' knowledge as much as the traditional demonstration method. Short-term adoption tests were carried out 7--10 days after the training. The extent of short-term adoption of the technique varied by the training topic. For egg-coated nsima, the overall short-term adoption rate was a little over 60% across the groups, while the rate for egg-coated pumpkin flower was around 32%. This rate for the former practice was significantly lower in the video group (50.9%) than in the traditional demonstration group (75.6%) mainly because the participants were unable to taste and smell the food during the video training. The adoption rate for the latter practice was similar between the two groups.

A survey of 191 randomly selected rural farm households in central Malawi was completed to provide a better estimate of mobile phone access in a country that falls at the lower end of published mobile subscription rates. We further ask whether there remains evidence of a mobile divide, across both socio-economic status and gender, in such a context. Detailed analyses of mobile phone ownership, usage practices, and the sources that phone and non-phone owners use for farming-relevant information highlight problems with the current over-reliance on mobile phones as a primary conduit for agricultural information and services.

Technology developers continue to develop new information and communication technologies (ICTs) aimed at addressing longstanding problems in international development. However, the sheer number of unsuccessful projects shows the importance of better understanding the ways in which a given population uses technology, before attempting to build novel applications for that population. We argue that this means adopting a methodological approach that recognizes that ideas develop slowly over time. As a first step in realizing this process, we present results from an exploratory qualitative study of mobile phone and social media use among residents of an informal settlement, or "slum", in Nairobi, Kenya. Our fieldwork reveals how contextual factors unique to slum environments affect mobile phone ownership and Internet access. We use these findings to propose an alternative approach to design, which accounts for the realities of living in a slum, and engages with residents. We also address the need for greater reflexivity in ICTD research.

What are rural farmers in sub-Saharan Africa's current attitudes towards their mobile phones? We draw from qualitative studies of smallholder farmers in Kenya and Zambia to answer this question. A review of ongoing efforts to develop mobile phone services for farmers paired with critiques of the "colonial impulse" embedded in future-oriented visions of technology use guided our study. Our findings suggest there is a mismatch between the design of mobile phone applications and our participants' perceptions and usage of their devices. We also discovered several understudied barriers that hinder adoption of mobile services: the influx of counterfeit and substandard mobile phones, distrust of the content being delivered via SMS and reservations about the spiritual and health consequences accompanying phone use. We use these findings to encourage Information and Communication Technology and Development (ICTD) researchers and practitioners to re-examine the mobile phone. Specifically, we suggest developing interventions that teach farmers how to better use phones and present recommendations for improving their design.

Uneven access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in parts of the African continent make it challenging for some Africans who migrate to the U.S. to communicate with family members in their countries of origin. However, Internet access is becoming more widespread throughout the continent and this development presents an opportunity to explore how future interactive systems can support exchanges between families with members living in developed and less developed countries. To investigate these design possibilities we interviewed 27 African-born students, currently living in Virginia, U.S., and asked them how they used ICTs to connect with family members in their home countries. Our findings informed the development of a low-fidelity prototype that eight students lived with for four to five months. Findings from this deployment study motivate a discussion regarding features to include in interfaces designed to support transnational family communication. Features include personally meaningful imagery, country specific content, and the ability to monitor the weather and changing currency rates in migrants' countries of origin.

Facebook is a global phenomenon, yet little is known about use of the site in urban parts of the developing world where the social network's users are increasingly located. We qualitatively studied Facebook use among 28 young adults living in Viwandani, an informal settlement, or slum, in Nairobi, Kenya. We find that to overcome the costs associated with Internet use, participants consolidated diverse online activities onto Facebook; here we focus on the most common practice--using Facebook to support income generation. Viwandani residents used the site to look for employment opportunities, market themselves, and seek remittances from friends and family abroad. We use our findings to motivate a design agenda for the urban poor built on an understanding that Facebook is used, with mixed-success, to support income generation. A key part of this agenda calls for developing ICT interventions grounded in users' existing practices rather than introducing new and unfamiliar ones.

Can human-powered devices solve the electricity gap for the millions of rural Africans adopting mobile phones? Findings from our long-term evaluation of two personal crank-based charging systems in Kenya reveal that small hand and leg-powered devices do have potential to meet the needs of rural mobile phone users. Unfortunately, device breakage, theft and incompatibility with handsets, coupled with lack of consumer credit and poorly functioning markets for these goods mean these represent only a partial solution to the mobile phone charging problem. Drawing from our fieldwork, we motivate a HCI4D/ICTD design and evaluation agenda that better accounts for unique individuals' geographic, financial, and economic circumstances or their human computer ecosystem. Key strategies for implementing this agenda are engaging with diverse users on their own terms and conducting long-term qualitative evaluations to reveal how acceptance and usability change over time.

Facebook use is pervasive in developed countries where computers, smartphones, high-bandwidth Internet, and electricity are ubiquitous. In this paper, we examine Facebook use in a country where social media participation is growing, but less developed technological infrastructures and uneven access to technology limit use. We conducted observations and 24 interviews at Internet cafés in rural Kenya. Our findings reveal how costs associated with using the Internet, limited access to computers and smartphones and unreliable electricity hinder online participation. We draw on these results to discuss the critical role of constraints in understanding social media use, to raise questions about broadening online participation and to highlight ethical issues researchers must consider when studying Facebook use in developing regions.

Mobile phone users in rural parts of the developing world, especially Africa, adapt to lack of electricity, poverty, remote locations, unpredictable services, and second-hand technology. Meanwhile, the technology developers are forging ahead, designing for "smartphones," high-speed data packets, and Internet access, not the "dumb" phones and parsimonious voice calls of the rural householder. We draw from fieldwork in Kenya with mobile phone owners to relate specific practices and issues facing rural users. Problems such as "spoiled" phone batteries and "China-makes" suggest larger design implications. We use our findings to motivate a design agenda for the rural poor built on the assumption of off-grid use and limited power, simple cheap phones, and Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) protocol. A key part of this agenda calls for developing usable technologies aimed at the infrastructure rather than mobile phone interface level.

Although computer-mediated family communication remains a longstanding focus of study in Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), families who face challenges in communication due to differences in technology infrastructures remain understudied. To address this gap in the literature, we interviewed 39 Kenyan migrants living in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. who regularly communicate with friends and family members living in their homeland. The contributions of this work are primarily empirical. Findings from our study reveal how high costs, identity management, and infrastructural differences between rural and urban areas in Kenya, impact decisions families and their extended members make when using information and communication technology (ICT). We present design implications and reflect on how understanding Kenyan migrants' ICT practices can positively influence design for the broader population.

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.

The Value Sensitive Design (VSD) methodology provides a comprehensive framework for advancing a value-centered research and design agenda. Although VSD provides helpful ways of thinking about and designing value-centered computational systems, we argue that the specific mechanics of VSD create thorny tensions with respect to value sensitivity. In particular, we examine limitations due to value classifications, inadequate guidance on empirical tools for design, and the ways in which the design process is ordered. In this paper, we propose ways of maturing the VSD methodology to overcome these limitations and present three empirical case studies that illustrate a family of methods to effectively engage local expressions of values. The findings from our case studies provide evidence of how we can mature the VSD methodology to mitigate the pitfalls of classification and engender a commitment to reflect on and respond to local contexts of design.

Despite increased knowledge about how Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) are used to support religious and spiritual practices, designers know little about how to design technologies for faith-related purposes. Our research suggests incorporating sacred imagery into techno-spiritual applications can be useful in guiding development. We illustrate this through the design and evaluation of a mobile phone application developed to support Islamic prayer practices. Our contribution is to show how religious imagery can be used in the design of applications that go beyond the provision of functionality to connect people to the experience of religion.

We present results from a study examining how American Protestant Christians' faith affects their domestic life. There are two contributions of this work for the HCI community. First, we provide empirical evidence demonstrating how topics of interest to HCI researchers (e.g., material artifacts, routines, and ICT use) are used for religious purposes. Our findings show how Christians distinguish these aspects of domestic life from their secular counterparts. Second, we use our findings to reflect on current directions of future domestic ICT applications. Specifically, we critically evaluate the "problem solving approaches dominating the design of future technologies, and present extraordinary computing or systems that promote and honor the special value accorded to some aspects of domestic life.

We present results from a qualitative study examining how Charismatic Pentecostals use Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) in São Paulo, Brazil. This work contributes to the growing body of research that broadens Weiser's vision by exploring technology use in novel and unfamiliar contexts. Our findings reveal how "extreme" and non-rational beliefs frame users' ICT experiences. We argue that if ubicomp is to be global and ubiquitous, accounting for alternative value systems is necessary. We discuss the implications of our findings and present issues the ubicomp community should consider when imagining a future that includes users from parts of the global south.

In this paper, we report on design-oriented fieldwork and design research conducted over a six-month period in urban centers in the United States and Kenya. The contributions of this work for the CHI/CSCW community are empirical and methodological. First, we describe how recent design discourse around "designing technology for religion" creates an artificial distinction between instrumental and religious ICT use, particularly in developing regions. As illustrative examples, we relate three themes developed in the course of our fieldwork, which we term mindfulness, watchfulness, and embeddedness, to both "secular" and "religious" aspects of life in the communities studied. Second, we make a methodological contribution by describing how we used design sketches of speculative design concepts to extend and complement our fieldwork. By producing these sketches and soliciting feedback, we elicited additional data about how participants viewed the relationship between religion and ICT and prompted self-reflection on our own ideas.

In this paper, we report findings from a study of American Christian ministers' uses of technologies in religious practices. We focus on the use of technologies for spiritual purposes as opposed to pragmatic and logistical, but report on all. We present results about the uses of technologies in three aspects of religious work: religious study and reflection, church services, and pastoral care. We end by examining how the collaborative religious uses of technologies cross and blend work and personal life.