Women’s entrepreneurship is a key driver of socio-economic empowerment in the Global South, yet patriarchal sociocultural contexts limit entrepreneur’s autonomy and, despite increasing attention to gender issues in HCI, shifting digital infrastructures cause privacy, security, and logistical challenges. We conduct 15 interviews with women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh who rely on digital technology, offering insight into who they are, their business and supply chains, technology use, and the gendered challenges of balancing work with family. We present women’s accounts of navigating in-person and online harassment and crime, including through payment platforms, and banking tools that legally enforce gender discrimination. We discuss how digital technology design must adapt to these pervasive issues and propose digital interventions to support developing their businesses and achieving financial independence. Our work contributes to understanding how HCI can take a transformative role in overcoming barriers and advancing mechanisms for women’s financial empowerment in the Global South.

Although listening to community voice is a core value in HCI4D, we have limited methods to capture the community voice of marginalized groups within disadvantaged communities. Working with NGOs and 24 marginalized women farmers in Bangladesh, we promoted psychological safety and empowerment through our configuration of the process. Our stakeholders decided to record and produce a radio-style audio recording that presented their counter-collective narratives for development projects. We reflect on this process using the Benefits of Community Voice framework to document rich insights into community contexts, lived experiences, local knowledge, and building trust and buy-in and through interviews with three NGO workers. We discuss the fundamental need of stakeholders for a safe place to share, the value of letting stakeholders guide method selection, the significance of counter-collective narratives, the benefits of participatory audio to hear community voices for democratizing and sustaining development and design implications of our work for HCI4D.

The HCI community has attempted to understand the role theatre can play in systems design, but the ways inclusive design methodologies could benefit from inclusive theatre are underexamined. To better understand inclusive theatre practices for technology design, we worked with the first professional inclusive theatre ensemble in Greece, which faced difficulties due to social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic. In this paper, we attempt to better understand inclusion within such theatre practices through the co-designing of a prototype digital system for Touch Tours, an experience through touch service. We conducted a series of research through design activities with the group, building on eighteen months of ethnographic research. Our goal was to develop a service based on their practices. We contribute design implications for inclusive services, with respect to equity in experience, which enhance the activistic character of the movement, and HCI research concerned with developing technologies that support inclusion.

Peer-support has long been recognized as valuable for mental health, and has been commonly practiced online over the Internet. However, it is often reported that peer exchange online can have harmful effects, and there has been limited research on how to ensure its effectiveness and safety. Our ethnographic study of formalized mental health peer-support practices in Scotland uncovers the infrastructural work involved when setting up and managing conditions upon which peer-support can take place in an effective and safe way. We illustrate that peer-support for mental health is not only about bringing peers together to interact with each other, but also about ensuring availability, timeliness, proactive care, positivity and safety of peer-support as a service, by weaving various social, spatial and technical elements together and managing groups and their boundaries. Our findings illuminate the work behind these peer-support practices, and suggest design implications.

We present the results of one year spent engaging people living with intellectual disabilities with an electronics and programming package. The program was run in collaboration with a disability support organization and delivered by support workers. We evaluate key qualities of the package at three sites via ongoing communication and reflective interviews with five support workers, along with observation of sessions and contextual inquiry with eleven people with a range of disabilities. Our findings demonstrate the importance of physicality in enabling experiences by creating real-world analogues and supporting diverse group interactions; how groups support members’ attention, motivating each other, and allow space for coping mechanisms; and participants’ growing confidence and creativity in problem solving, and the emergence of self-directed activities. We discuss the importance of diverse repetition for skill development, how skills develop over the year, and pragmatic lessons for conducting a long-term research program with a disability support organization.

International program development is a complex process involving many stakeholders. Current international practice affords limited, if any, opportunities for direct community-led input into the program commissioning process, resulting in programs that may not meet the specific needs of communities on the ground. Community voice is one source of data that could help focus the design of effective development programs and interventions. However, development programs are primarily formulated based on representative and often quantitative data conducted by experts from outside the community. Through a participatory video production process with disadvantaged women farmers in rural Bangladesh, we explore the opportunities for including meaningful community voices in these institutionalized processes. We present practical design implications for how community-generated voices can act as rich data, establishing confidence, community bonds and senses of accountability to inform early stages of project development, and to specifically augment and contextualize other data sources.

In low-and middle-income countries like India, people with severe mental illness (PSMI) rely on their families as a primary source of care, given the lack of support from healthcare systems. The demanding nature of caregiving places significant physical and mental demands on caregivers, who are the primary source of support to PSMI. We explore how caregivers in under-resourced settings can be better supported through everyday digital technologies. We conducted interviews with caregivers (from urban and rural India), as well as workshops with professionals from Indian NGOs that work directly with PSMIs. We found that technology has the potential to (1) provide carer-centred support that empowers carers who experience stigma and issues with existing support networks; (2) provide support for carers to overcome barriers and progress in the recovery of the PSMI. We conclude with design considerations, proposing how an online peer community can leverage carers’ expertise to actualise support provision.

Previous research on employee voice has sought to design technological solutions that address the challenges of speaking up in the workplace. However, effectively embedding employee voice systems in organisations requires designers to engage with the social processes, power relations and contextual factors of individual workplaces. We explore this process within a university workplace through a research project responding to a crisis in educational service delivery arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. Within a successful three-month staff-led engagement, we examined the intricacies of embedding employee voice, exploring how the interactions between existing actors impacted the effectiveness of the process. We sought to identify specific actions to promote employee voice and overcome barriers to its successful establishment in organisational decision-making. We highlight design considerations for an effective employee voice system that facilitates embedding employee voice, including assurance, bounded accountability and bias reflexivity.

Community voice is widely used in computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) and human-computer interaction (HCI) work with underserved communities. However, the term is unresolved, denoting disparate activities, methods, and phenomena that are at their most useful when combined. We argue for a rethink by setting out a more nuanced understanding of "community" and "voice". Building on our own experiences of HCI for development (HCI4D) work and the existing literature, we propose a framework for the benefits it can bring to those who actively engage with communities as part of their work. This framework can be understood in terms of its four constituent benefits for CSCW and HCI4D practitioners: (i) understanding context, (ii) creating empathy, (iii) leveraging local skills and knowledge, and (iv) building trust and buy-in. We reflect on how an improved understanding of these benefits applies to three prior projects with women living in Bangladesh and discuss the issues and need for more work on community voice. Finally, we discuss how this more detailed perspective on community voice helps us understand power dynamics and polyvocal communities in development contexts.

Mothers of preschool children with cerebral palsy are often responsible for delivering multiple home therapy programs. Technology could be a way to bridge some of the challenges of home therapy delivery, such as lack of regular contact with professionals and the need for support continuity. We interviewed seven mothers and four speech therapists to explore their challenges, and the types of support they currently receive (or give). Key issues included limitations of existing communication channels between mothers and professionals, the mothers’ social support needs, and the level of commitment required to self-deliver home therapy. Based on findings indicating video sharing as an existing practice among mothers, we conducted three workshops to further investigate how a video-based platform could support home therapy delivery. We conclude with a number of design considerations for such technologies, to improve communication and collaboration between professional therapists, mothers and members of their wider social network.

Speech-enabled smart speakers are common devices used for numerous tasks in everyday life. While speech-enabled technologies are widespread, using one’s voice as a computing modality introduces new accessibility challenges for people with speech disfluencies such as stammering (also known as stuttering). This paper investigates the smart speaker user experiences of people who stammer over three weeks. We conducted diary studies and semi-structured interviews with 11 individuals to identify their daily routines, difficulties with successful interactions, and strategies to overcome these barriers. Our analysis demonstrates key factors such as device location, its affordances, and the structure of commands had a strong impact on user experience. Participants highlighted different linguistic strategies to try and overcome interaction difficulties and discussed the potential of using smart speakers for speech and language therapy. We emphasise the need to further understand the experiences of people who stammer in smart speaker design to increase their accessibility.

The accessibility and affordability of tangible electronic toolkits are significant barriers to their uptake by people with disabilities. We present the design and evaluation of TapeBlocks, a low-cost, low-fidelity toolkit intended to be accessible for people with intellectual disabilities while promoting creativity and engagement. We evaluated TapeBlocks by interviewing makers, special educational needs teachers and support coaches. Analysis of these interviews informed the design of a series of maker workshops using TapeBlocks with young adults living with intellectual disabilities, led by support coaches with support from the research team. Participants were able to engage with TapeBlocks and making, eventually building their own TapeBlocks to make personal creations. Our evaluation reveals how TapeBlocks supports accessible making and playful discovery of electronics for people living with disabilities, and addresses a gap in existing toolkits by being tinkerable, affordable and having a low threshold for engagement.

Supporting independent living for the ageing population in later life is an often-cited application area for ubiquitous computing. Telecare services such as remote monitoring systems are now coming onto the consumer market but there is little knowledge of the impact these technologies may have on relationships between family members and older relatives. We present findings from a live field trial of SHel--a telecare system that allows nominated caregivers to remotely monitor activities--in 17 older adult's homes. Interviews were conducted with the 17 older participants and 11 of their nominated caregivers before, during and after using the system. We establish that such technologies transform existing hidden care routines between family members into care work, and the impact they have upon the sense of independence and privacy of those who are being monitored in their home.

Invisible Design is a technique for generating insights and ideas with workshop participants in the early stages of concept development. It involves the creation of ambiguous films in which characters discuss a technology that is not directly shown. The technique builds on previous work in HCI on scenarios, persona, theatre, film and ambiguity. The Invisible Design approach is illustrated with three examples from unrelated projects; Biometric Daemon, Panini and Smart Money. The paper presents a qualitative analysis of data from a series of workshops where these Invisible Designs were discussed. The analysis outlines responses to the films in terms of; existing problems, concerns with imagined technologies and design speculation. It is argued that Invisible Design can help to create a space for critical and creative dialogue during participatory concept development.

Monitoring nutritional intake is an important aspect of the care of older people, particularly for those at risk of malnutrition. Current practice for monitoring food intake relies on hand written food charts that have several inadequacies. We describe the design and validation of a tool for computer-assisted visual assessment of patient food and nutrient intake. To estimate food consumption, the application compares the pixels the user rubbed out against predefined graphical masks. Weight of food consumed is calculated as a percentage of pixels rubbed out against pixels in the mask. Results suggest that the application may be a useful tool for the conservative assessment of nutritional intake in hospitals.

We describe the development, application and evaluation of a design method tailored for working with people with mild to moderate dementia. Our experiences with the approach highlighted areas where designers and participants held radically different views. The tenet of our approach was that to overcome these differences we needed to create an empathic relationship between participants and designers. To achieve this we modified participatory design techniques to foster respectful engagement with participants in the development of a digital aid to facilitate "safe walking". The process begins with broad qualitative scoping and design work then moves to developing personally tailored, individual designs to further exploration of the experiential elements of the domain while reducing the need for the participants to engage in abstract thought. Reflection highlights a number of important areas that demand consideration when undertaking research in this area and, more generally, when performing design work with people with dementia.

The use of digital technologies is increasingly proposed in health and social care to address the aging population phenomenon but, in practice, the designers of these technologies are ill equipped to design for older people. We suggest participatory design as an approach to improving the quality of design for older people but, based on previous work and our own experiences, identify four central issues that participatory design approaches need to address. We describe an approach to early engagement in design with older people that address each of these issues and some of our experiences applying the approach in a variety of different design projects. We conclude by discussing some of the issues that have been highlighted when attempting apply this approach in different design contexts and the issues that have been raised when working with partners who are less committed to the idea of engaging with older adults in participatory design.

This paper reports findings from a series of participatory design workshops with ten people over eighty years old. The focus of the workshops was new banking technologies for the older old. Participants were asked to discuss their current experiences of banking and given packs of concept cards which contained design sketches and brief outlines of concepts for new financial services. The designs on the cards were deliberately provocative and aimed to encourage criticism and debate. Participants wrote and drew on the cards and the workshops were recorded and transcribed. The participants were extremely critical of current banking practices and most of the new concepts we presented to them. Their questions and comments led to a number of insights and further iterations. The paper argues that critique is an essential resource for design, both in terms of identifying problems and iterating ideas.

A cheque is a paper document that orders the transfer of money between bank accounts. Whilst an eighty-year-old in the UK is predicted on average to live at least another ten years, cheques may not. Despite many older peoples extensive use of cheques, UK banks are eager to abolish them and design electronic alternatives that are less costly to process and less vulnerable to fraud. This paper reports on two qualitative studies that explored the banking experiences of 23 people over eighty years old. Cheques support financial collaboration with others in ways that digital payment systems do not. We argue that whilst it might be possible to improve the design of digital payment systems to better support financial collaboration, the case for retaining and enhancing cheques is stronger. Rather than replace cheques, we must design ways of making them less costly to process and better linked to electronic payment methods.

We present the development of a socially acceptable cueing device for drooling in Parkinson's disease (PD). Sialorrhea, or drooling, is a significant problem associated with PD and has a strong negative emotional impact on those who experience it. Previous studies have shown the potential for managing drooling by using a cueing device. However, the devices used in these studies were deemed unacceptable by their users due to factors such as hearing impairment and social embarrassment. We conducted exploratory scoping work and high fidelity iterative prototyping with people with PD to get their input on the design of a cueing aid and this has given us an insight into challenges that confront users with PD and limit device usability and acceptability. The key finding from working with people with PD was the need for the device to be socially acceptable.