having been exposed to HCI. As
such, in connection with the
broader implications for HCI education in the developing world,
involving local undergraduates
from developing regions in our
international-development projects is one way to provide them
with meaningful exposure to HCI
that they are unlikely to have
otherwise. The process also gives
them an outlet for their creativity and ambition to achieve.
I encourage other researchers,
educators, and professionals in
our community to explore similar symbiotic arrangements. Our
efforts may not be on the same
scale as formal institutionalized
approaches to HCI education in
the developing world, but they
may nevertheless contribute to
local capacity building in HCI
and facilitate eventual adoption
into mainstream curricula. More
important, we set the stage for
nurturing the next generation
of HCI practitioners who can
contribute to the growth of our
community with a more diverse
international outlook. In doing
so, we lay the foundation for HCI
to become a more positive force
in economic development.
July + August 2008
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ABOUT ThE AUThOr
Matthew Kam is a Ph.D.
candidate from the
University of California,
Berkeley, affiliated with the
Berkeley Institute of Design.
His dissertation focuses on e-learning
games on cell phones that target language
and literacy learning in the developing
world. He has previously studied a microfi-nance transaction technology in Uganda.
NGO partners with maturity is
the most essential quality. For
example, enlisting the support
of community leaders such as
the village priest is instrumental to encouraging participation
from the village community in
our user studies. While our NGO
partners had to introduce us to
these leaders at the beginning,
language barriers had prevented
me from developing these relationships to the fullest extent.
In the end, it was the local
undergraduates in my team who
helped by liaising tactfully and
professionally with the community stakeholders in their native
languages.
Once the priest was convinced
about the educational potential
of the prototypes that we were
testing, he became our strongest
champion. He added that if we
were willing to conduct our technology trials with the children in
his village for the next 10 years,
he would personally convince
their parents to support their
ongoing participation. Given his
influence as a religious figure
in this predominantly Hindu
village, his vote of confidence
meant a lot to the success of our
project there.
We not only had to manage
relationships with adults in the
community, but also needed to
establish rapport with the children themselves. One issue arose
when the children at one of the
rural schools wanted to take us
to visit the temple in their village. In fact, they became angry
with us and lost their enthusiasm for the user study until we
obliged them. On our way to the
temple, the children insisted
that we skirt around a part of
the village that was inhabited by
some of their classmates who are
“dalits” (i.e., the “untouchables”
caste). The local undergraduates in my team knew about the
cultural implications behind this
action; they decided that on our
return journey, the team should
walk through the area inhabited by the dalits. This gesture
cheered up the children from the
dalit caste who were upset that
their peers wanted us to avoid
their residences and helped to
promote a more inclusive atmosphere in our user study.
That is not to claim that local
team members never encounter
barriers when interacting with
end-user communities. However,
local team members are argu-ably more informed about the
local culture to work around
these obstacles. At one time, for
example, we carried out contextual studies of the traditional
games that children play in the
villages, so that we could design
e-learning games patterned after
these games. It was the local
undergraduates who first noticed
that the children showed us
only the urban games in India.
It seemed that games were a
marker of social identity, such
that our young informants feared
that we, as urban dwellers, might
look down on their village games.
The local undergraduates finally
coaxed the children to reenact
how they play their everyday
games by enthusiastically
describing the village games that
my team knew about.
From the larger perspective,
human-computer interaction is
only beginning to take root in the
mainstream undergraduate curriculum in India and many other
so-called developing countries.
Most students would therefore
graduate and enter the workplace or graduate school without