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Mobile and Africa: Are Smartphones Really Smart?
by Souleymane Boundaouda Camara
Whitepaper: Reflections on the context and potential of the African mobile market.
Reflections on opportunities in the African mobile market.
Commentators have remarked on the opportunity... more
Reflections on opportunities in the African mobile market.
Commentators have remarked on the opportunity for mobile handset manufacturers, operators and mobile apps in sub-Saharan Africa for years. But, with the exception of M-PESA, a popular money transfer service, the pace of product, service and commercial development seems slow.
In this whitepaper I explore the context and potential of the African mobile market. This research is part of my ongoing monitoring of technology adoption and use in Africa. Further studies are currently underway with the biggest mobile phone market in Africa (Nigeria) and in two East-African countries (Kenya and Tanzania).
Exploring sociotechnical gaps in an intercultural multidisciplinary design project
by Souleymane Boundaouda Camara
Co-authored with Abdelnour-Nocera, J.
This paper highlights the need for the creation of artefacts that make visible the gap between social requirements and... more This paper highlights the need for the creation of artefacts that make visible the gap between social requirements and the technical affordances of technology. Augmenting the visibility of this gap can lead to a better integration of stakeholders’ perspectives in intercultural and multidisciplinary design projects. Sociotechnical matrices are presented as artefacts that can help to explore this gap. This is illustrated with a case study of the design of interactive systems for farmers in rural Kenya. We discuss experiences in the use of these matrices and new challenges that have emerged in using them.
DownloadValidating Cultural and Contextual Traits of a Collectivist Community
by Souleymane Boundaouda Camara
In: Ess, C. and Sudweeks, F., (Eds.) Proceedings of the Fifth Conference on Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication (CATAC). Vancouver, Canada, June 2010
Sub-Saharan African communities are classified as collectivist societies. But, what exactly is meant by collectivism... more Sub-Saharan African communities are classified as collectivist societies. But, what exactly is meant by collectivism and to what extent individuals adhere to this given the differences in their socio-economic conditions? This paper is an empirical exploration of the contextual and cultural traits of a rural sub-Saharan African community in order to facilitate their interpretation towards technology design and adoption. Card sorting is used to validate and make explicit contextual and cultural traits previously identified during interviews. It is a confirmation of the collectivist nature of these cultures with more details such as eagerness to confirm personal views and requirements with that of the group in order to save “face”, among other traits.
A resource kit for participatory socio-technical design in rural kenya
by Souleymane Boundaouda Camara
Co-authored with Walker, K., J. Underwood, T.M. Waema, L. Dunckley, J. Abdelnour-Nocera, R. Luckin and C. Oyugi
We describe our approach and initial results in the participatory design of technology relevant to local rural... more We describe our approach and initial results in the participatory design of technology relevant to local rural livelihoods. Our approach to design and usability proceeds from research in theory and practice of cross-cultural implementations, but the novelty is in beginning not with particular technologies but from community needs, and structuring technology in terms of activities. We describe our project aims and initial data collected, which show that while villagers have no clear mental models for using computers or the Internet, they show a desire to have and use them. We then describe our approach to interaction design, our expectations and next steps as the technology and activities are first introduced to the villages.
Socio-Technical Evaluation Matrix (STEM): A Collaborative Tool to Support and Facilitate Discussion on Socio-Technical Issues of a Design Process
by Souleymane Boundaouda Camara
Interact 2009, August 24-28, 2009 in Uppsala, Sweden.
STEM is an interactive web application designed to support and facilitate socio-technical discussions in a... more STEM is an interactive web application designed to support and facilitate socio-technical discussions in a collaborative environment. This interactive demo shows how STEM aims to encompass issues with collaborative tools such as organisation of discussion threads by relevancy, interdependency and iteration of previous discussions.
Exploring the problem domain: a socio-technical ICT design for the developing world
by Souleymane Boundaouda Camara
PDC 08, Indiana, USA, October 08
The paper is a work in progress that explores the use of socio-technical matrices to try and design a fit for purpose... more The paper is a work in progress that explores the use of socio-technical matrices to try and design a fit for purpose ICT for two sub-Saharan Africa farming communities. Rooted in Hansen's (2006) socio-technical experiments in design processes and Summerville and Dewsbury's (2007) system dependability model, the paper offers a systematic design route from initial field study results to the development of use cases and scenarios that are in turn evaluated in iterative socio-technical matrices. The approach offers a solution in multi-disciplinary and geographically diverse structures of design that explore the problem domain, concluding by highlighting the merits and difficulties of the approach.
Augmenting Usability: Cultural elicitation in HCI
by Souleymane Boundaouda Camara
Conference on Human Work Interaction Design (HWID 2009): Usability in Social, Cultural and Organizational Contexts, Pune, India, October 7-8, 2009
This paper offers context and culture elicitation in an inter-cultural and multi-disciplinary setting of ICT design.... more This paper offers context and culture elicitation in an inter-cultural and multi-disciplinary setting of ICT design. Localised usability evaluation (LUE) is augmented with a socio-technical evaluation tool (STEM) as a methodological approach to expose and address issues in a collaborative ICT design within the Village e-Science for Life (VeSeL) project in rural Kenya. The paper argues that designers need to locally identify context and culture in situ and further explicate their implications through the design process and at the global level. Stakeholders’ context, culture, decisions, agendas, expectations, disciplines and requirements need to be locally identified and globally evaluated to ensure a fit for purpose solution.
Measuring ICT Adoption, Acceptance and Use in the Developing World
by Souleymane Boundaouda Camara
IST-Africa 2009 Conference , ICT for eInclusion and eAccessibility, Kampala, Uganda, 2009.
This paper tackles the understanding and measurement of technology adoption and use in sub-Saharan Africa. The primary... more
This paper tackles the understanding and measurement of technology adoption and use in sub-Saharan Africa. The primary objective is to facilitate policy making for accountability, usefulness and sustainability of ICT projects in the region.
The paper is a proof of concept and a call for a formalised measurement of ICT projects in the region. It does so by adapting and validating the Mobile Phone Technology Adoption Model (MOPTAM), which derives from the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). Researchers interviewed 200 mobile phone users in the urban city of Conakry, Republic of Guinea to identify factors that influence the technology adoption and use.
In addition to a good understanding of the current mobile phone trends in urban Africa, the approach offers a way forward in adopting and adapting the MOPTAM towards the evaluation of ICT projects.
Village eLearning: An offline mobile solution to rural communities’ knowledge requirements
by Souleymane Boundaouda Camara
The 24th BCS Conference on Human Computer Interaction - HCI2010, Dundee, Scotland, 6th – 10th September 2010
This paper presents an offline mobile eLearning concept as an ICT solution to address the knowledge requirements of a... more This paper presents an offline mobile eLearning concept as an ICT solution to address the knowledge requirements of a rural sub-Saharan farming community. A socio-technical customisation and deployment of WikiReaders is proposed to support offline mobile access to digital content. A future use scenario is presented as a demonstration of cheap but sustainable innovation emerging from a longitudinal evaluation of users, their needs and their context.
A Socio-Technical Approach to Making Explicit Interculturality in Collaborative Multi-disciplinary Settings
by Souleymane Boundaouda Camara
3rd ACM International Conference on Intercultural Collaboration (ICIC 2010), Copenhagen, Danmark, 18- 20 August, 2010
This paper proposes a socio-technical approach to making explicit cultural issues in collaborative and... more This paper proposes a socio-technical approach to making explicit cultural issues in collaborative and multidisciplinary teams in information system design. Requirements and design processes of international, multicultural and multidisciplinary partners are put through a series of socio-technical experiments and evaluated to develop and refine a conceptual tool: socio-technical evaluation matrices (STEM). STEM has provided a platform to effectively explore, explicate and reflect on cultural and contextual implications in design processes among stakeholders (including end users).
Bridging the Global Digital Divide with Participatory Customisation
by Souleymane Boundaouda Camara
CATAC 08, Nimes France, June 08
The authors present participatory customisation as a way forward to implement information and communication... more The authors present participatory customisation as a way forward to implement information and communication technologies (ICT) in the developing world. This is achieved by describing an ongoing project of universities in the UK and Kenya aimed at supporting rural farmers as well as presenting experiences from previous ICT implementations for social development. A participatory design approach sensitive to cultural differences and socio-technical aspects of stakeholders and user communities is explained as part of this project. The paper concludes by highlighting the value of participatory customisation and some of the challenges faced in designing to bridge the global digital divide.
Socio-Technical Issues of Participatory Design in the Developing World
by Souleymane Boundaouda Camara
International Journal of Sociotechnology and Knowledge Development, 1(3), 1-14, July-September 2009, IGI-Gobal - Co-authored with Dunckley, L., Abdelnour-Nocera, J. and Waema, T.
This paper describes how the VeSeL project which involves a distributed team of technologists and users from different... more This paper describes how the VeSeL project which involves a distributed team of technologists and users from different cultural backgrounds is attempting to manage the process of user involvement and participation. In this case the developers are distributed but linked by a number of communication technologies while the users have very few technological means of communicating with the developers. It describes how the contrasting social and community issues of both the developers and the users can be understood and managed.
Cross-Cultural Participatory Design in the Developing World
by Souleymane Boundaouda Camara
CHI 2008 Workshop Distributed Participative Design, April 2008, Florence, Italy.
The paper describes how the VESEL project which
involves a distributed team of technologists and users
from... more
The paper describes how the VESEL project which
involves a distributed team of technologists and users
from different cultural backgrounds is attempting to
manage the process of user involvement and
participation. In this case the developers are distributed
but linked by a number of communication technologies
while the users have very few technological means of
communicating with the developers.