This forum looks at how the fields of interaction design and HCI can extend to cover “developing” communities around the world, ones that are gaining access to digital technology for the first time.

gary Marsden, Editor | [e-mail]
While the Meter is Running:
Computing in a Capped World
Marshini Chetty

Georgia Institute of Technology| [e-mail]

Richard Banks

Microsoft Research | [e-mail] A.J. Bernheim Brush Microsoft Research | [e-mail]

Jonathan Donner

Microsoft Research India | [e-mail]

Rebecca E. Grinter

Georgia Institute of Technology | [e-mail] March + April 2011

interactions

Most readers of this magazine live
in an always-on, ultra-connected
world. Many of us enjoy all-you-
can-eat bandwidth at reasonably
high speeds. But what happens
when your Internet use is palpably
constrained? What happens when
you only have a fixed amount of
bandwidth per month and where
every byte you access uses up this
precious resource? Or worse, what
happens when you have to share
that bandwidth pool with the three
other Internet users in your house-
hold? These are the questions raised
when we begin thinking about how
users interact with the Internet
in metered bandwidth situations.
By answering these questions, we
can help Web developers, interac-
tion and application designers, and
even Internet service providers
(ISPs) customize their experiences
for situations in which each byte
delivered has a monetary value.
In this article, we report initial
insights from our experiences
studying how households in South
Africa use metered bandwidth.