described social gatherings with friends who did not know he was living on the street. During these visits he would take care to carry a mobile phone with him, even if it was not working, because “they know if I got my mobile phone I must be doing all right.” Another man in the study explained that “I have had many phones where I hold on to them, but half the time I didn’t have the money to put the minutes on them. I walked around with ’em anyway.” Simply being in possession of a mobile phone was a way to reassure concerned friends and family—a way to be in control of how they were perceived in front of people they cared about.

Finally, for homeless individuals seeking employment, a mobile phone also aids in managing their identity at work by providing evidence of reliability and by making their homelessness less visible. The individuals I worked with expressed fear that an employer might be less inclined to hire them if they had a phone number that could be linked to a shelter or other care provider. With a mobile phone, they felt reassured that the number was theirs and that it would not be associated with their current situation.

Viewed in this light, the mobile phone provides two functions: a means of communication that maintains connections to a support network, and a kind of technological totem, imbued with social meaning. Of note is that the social potency of possessing a mobile phone comes from its being a mundane object, one that does not signify a specific status.

While the examples provided

here have focused on the mobile phone as a technology with far-reaching effects on the homeless population, the broader class of ubiquitous technologies being infused into the urban environment and modern social fabric are affecting the homeless as well. The possession of and ready access to an online identity—via an email address or participation in social networks—is becoming increasingly necessary for finding services, jobs, and managing personal connections. More substantial, however, is the subversive effect that rich technology interactions have on individuals struggling with social legitimacy.

As the mainstream becomes more engrossed in new social interactions across a variety of technologies, the effective gap between the mainstream and the margins increases, and the visibility of those at margins becomes obscured by the creative ways in which we reconstitute our world through those rich technologies. As we strive to enrich our own lives with social media, novel interactions, and uninterrupted connections that transcend our immediate geography, there is an opport unity to open our environments to interpretations that are more inclusive of diversity, with the understanding that social legitimacy should not be determined by access to technology. Where access is vital, how do we design for marginalized users like the homeless? The most important consideration is to understand that access to technology itself is not a panacea. Instead, we need to understand the particulars of the local community, their social context,

practical needs, and how those needs are currently being met. Where a mobile phone may provide an opportunity for delivering more sophisticated social services, those services need to be made available in ways that are empowering and support the management of identity, the freedom from stigma.

One way to more appropriately conceptualize the design mandate we should shoulder is through designing for dignity. While some aspects of homelessness can be viewed as problematic, inscribing paternalistic solutions into technology interventions risks further disenfranchising vulnerable members of our society. Designing for dignity is a shift in focus, away from rationalized responses to problems toward empowering people through approachable design and inclusive systems. It is a call for increased social responsibility and a bringing to bear the talent and creativity of this community to help not just the homeless specifically, but also other marginalized, disenfranchised, and difficult-to-reach communities locally and globally.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Christopher A. Le Dantec is currently a Ph.D. student in the human-centered computing program at Georgia

Tech. His research is taking aim at how marginalized communities like the homeless are affected by social change inherent in the adoption of new technologies. Prior to Georgia Tech, he was an interaction designer with Sun Microsystems and helped establish its interaction design practice in the Czech Republic.

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September + October 2008

DOI 10.1145/1390085.1390090