William David Tucker

Walking and the social life of solar charging in rural africa

We consider practices that sustain social and physical environments beyond those dominating sustainable HCI discourse. We describe links between walking, sociality, and using resources in a case study of community-based, solar, cellphone charging in villages in South Africas Eastern Cape. Like 360 million rural Africans, inhabitants of these villages are poor and, like 25% and 92% of the world, respectively, do not have domestic electricity or own motor vehicles. We describe nine practices in using the charging stations we deployed. We recorded 700 people using the stations, over a year, some regularly. We suggest that the way we frame practices limits insights about them, and consider various routines in using and sharing local resources to discover relations that might also feature in charging. Specifically, walking interconnects routines in using, storing, sharing and sustaining resources, and contributes to knowing, feeling, wanting and avoiding as well as to different aspects of sociality, social order and perspectives on sustainability. Along the way, bodies acquire literacies that make certain relationalities legible. Our study shows we cannot assert what sustainable practice means a priori and, further, that detaching practices from bodies and their paths limits solutions, at least in rural Africa. Thus, we advocate a more “alongly” integrated approach to data about practices.

Experiences, challenges and lessons from rolling out a rural WiFi mesh network

The computing for development community knows that technology interventions involve consideration of social, technical and environmental factors. Research into WiFi solutions has fallen off as ubiquitous mobile solutions penetrate even the deepest rural communities worldwide. This paper argues that the latest wave of WiFi mesh networks offers benefits that traditional top-down WiFi and mobile networks do not. In addition, we propose ethnographic and participatory methods to aid the effective rollout of mesh inverse infrastructure with and for a given community. This paper describes and then analyzes a mesh for voice rollout within a situated context. We explain how to conduct informed community co-design and how to factor in local socio-political concerns that can impact on the design, rollout and subsequent maintenance of community-based wireless mesh networks. While we have not yet analyzed baseline and initial usage data, we do have new lessons to offer.

Making a community network legal within the South African regulatory framework

Community networks often operate at the fringe of legality with respect to spectrum, network infrastructure and providing services. We have been involved with such a network in a rural community, and together with them, have devised a way to become legal within the South African regulatory framework. A not-for-profit co-operative was formed and successfully applied for license exemption to operate the network infrastructure and offer services. Revenue is used to sustain the network and can also be used for other community needs. The network has equipment that is not 100% type-approved, and operates at a higher output power than is allowed. However, we have a simple plan to comply with such regulations. This paper offers our experience as a precedent for how to go about making a community network completely legal in South Africa and other countries that have a similar regulatory environment.

Improving usability and correctness of a mobile tool to help a deaf person with pharmaceutical instruction

The computing for development community knows how to build user interfaces using qualitative methods for text illiterate users, especially on mobile devices. However, little work has been done specifically targeting Deaf users in developing regions who cannot access voice or text. This paper describes a multi-disciplinary collaboration towards iterative development of a mobile communication tool to support a Deaf person in understanding usage directions for medication dispensed at a pharmacy. We are improving usability and correctness of the user interface. The tool translates medicine instruction given in English text to Sign Language videos, which are relayed to a Deaf user on a mobile phone. Communication between pharmacists and Deaf patients were studied to extract relevant exchanges between the two users. We incorporated the common elements of these dialogues to represent content in a verifiable manner to ensure that the mobile tool relays the correct information to the Deaf user. Instructions are made available for a Deaf patient in signed language videos on a mobile device. A pharmacy setup was created to conduct trials of the tool with groups of end users, in order to collect usability data with recorded participant observation, questionnaires and focus group discussions. Subsequently, pre-recorded sign language videos, stored on a phones memory card, were tested for correctness. Results of these two activities are presented and discussed in this paper.

Co-designing a Billing System for Voice Services in RuralSouth Africa: Lessons Learned

Access to information and communication technologies remains unaffordable for many in rural areas despite recent progress in providing voice services to remote communities. The sustainability of alternative technical solutions is a challenge, which can be addressed when local knowledge is taken into account during the design process. This research reflects on the process of co-designing a billing system for voice services provided by a Community Network in rural South Africa. Several payment methods were explored with users and operators of the Community Network, focusing on the legal, financial, technical and social feasibility - as well as constraints - of each method. Those methods that suited the communitys needs were implemented and tested with stakeholders. The process revealed factors embedded in the provision of voice services by traditional voice operators in South Africa that prevent economically poor and illiterate users from fully benefiting from voice services. Solutions to these factors were explored with users and were implemented as a billing system. The system is currently being deployed in a rural South African community. Both the problems experienced and solutions proposed may inform similar initiatives.

An in-depth study of the ICT ecosystem in a South African rural community: unveiling expenditure and communication patterns

There is no doubt of the contributions made by mobile phones and mobile network operators in increasing access to communications in rural areas of developing countries. Yet how affordable is this ubiquitous access in such an ICT ecosystem? Using data from two stratified random surveys conducted in a South African rural community, this paper provides a unique in-depth picture of the expenditure and communication patterns of its dwellers. Results show a high access ratio of people using mobile phone services weekly and a high proportion of disposable income dedicated to a very constrained set of mobile phone services. Factors such as mobile phone charging and the extra charges added by airtime resellers contribute to increase the communication costs. This data and its analysis can be used by the following: regulators and government agencies to better design their policy implementations to provide universal service and access; competing industry players to understand the dynamics within rural communities to better target their products; civil society organizations to use it as a case in their efforts to make affordable communications a constitutional right.

Community-based solar power revenue alternative to improve sustainability of a rural wireless mesh network

Given needs for a clean and easy way to maintain and secure powering rural wireless networks and to generate revenue to guarantee the sustainability of its intended goals, an approach to leverage solar power to address both needs simultaneously is presented herein. Results comprise empowered locals trained to ensure local maintenance and appropriation; local usage and maintenance data; and a costing of the solution and its maintenance after a year of operation. It is shown that the solution presented can be locally maintained and provide additional revenue for a rural wireless network to continue providing intended communication goals.

Abstractions for designing and evaluating communication bridges for people in developing regions

This paper describes two novel abstractions that help software engineers work in developing regions to align social and technical factors when building communication systems. The abstractions extend two concepts familiar to engineers of computer networks and applications: the Open Systems Interconnect stack for design, and Quality of Service for evaluation. The novel nature of the abstractions lies in how they help cultivate awareness of socio-cultural and technical issues when designing and evaluating communication bridges in the field. Advantages of the abstractions are that they can be understood easily by software engineers, they aid communication with beneficiaries, and can therefore facilitate collaboration. The paper makes an argument for these socially aware abstractions, describes the abstractions in detail, provides examples of how we used the new abstractions in the field and then gives practical guidelines for how to use them. The simple nature of the new abstractions can help software engineers and end-users to work together to produce useful information technology based communication systems for people in developing regions.

ETHICS AND MONO-DISCIPLINARITY: POSITIVISM, INFORMED CONSENT AND INFORMED PARTICIPATION

There are a number of pressures on researchers in academia and industry to behave unethically or compromise their ethical standards, for instance in order to obtain funding or publish frequently. In this paper a case study of Deaf telephony is used to discuss the pressures to unethical behaviour in terms of withholding information or misleading participants that can result from mono-disciplinary orthodoxies. The Deaf telephony system attempts to automate multiple aspects of relayed communication between Deaf and hearing users. The study is analysed in terms of consequentialist and deontological ethics, as well as multi-loop action learning. Discussion of a number of examples of bad practice is used to indicate both the compatibility of ethical behaviour and good scientific method and that ethical behaviour is a pre-requisite for obtaining meaningful results.

Connecting bridges across the digital divide

Connecting people across the Digital Divide is as much a social effort as a technological one. We are developing a community-centered approach to learn how interaction techniques can compensate for poor communication across the Digital Divide. Preliminary trials have yielded interfaces that deal with poor quality by adapting Instant Messaging techniques for multiple modalities, providing improved semi-synchronous communication. Lessons learned suggest new ways to design user interfaces specifically for the developing world.