undergarments when moving from
place to place.
Although the teenagers managed
to keep their new phones safe, the
situated display in the environment
was victim to crime during the
technology probe deployment. The
device requires a Bluetooth dongle
to run; the display is useless without
it. The library had been subject to
crime and vandalism before, and
a librarian was quoted as saying,
“Some people here have the urge to
steal anything with no regard for the
community.” The Bluetooth dongle,
located in the back of the display,
resembled a flash drive. The librarians suspected it was stolen as a
result of this misidentification. As
a result, I resorted to gluing a new
dongle into the USB port, essentially damaging the hardware of
the screen for security reasons. But
unfortunately, this did not help: the
second Bluetooth dongle was stolen as well. After the second theft,
I had to make use of a computer
with built-in Bluetooth capabilities (together with a security cable
tied around a pillar to make sure
the computer did not get stolen)
and hope that this level of security
deterred would-be thieves.
In addition to having a high
crime rate, violent events do occur
in the area. The NGO we worked
with, Ikamva Youth (ikamvayouth.
org), was victim to a tragedy during
the course of my research. A politi-
cally affiliated group mistakenly
attacked the NGO office. The staff
was harassed, and later a petrol
bomb was thrown into the office
space. According to the NGO, “In
addition to destroying the office,
November + December 2011
• Clockwise from top: Figure 1. Young users
interact with the display in the library. Figure
2. Lock and chain securing the situated
display. Figure 3. The Ikamva office after
the bombing [ 4]. Figure 4. Melted computer
screens [ 4].
the attackers threw stones into the
Nazeema Isaacs Library and torched
the adjoining Zimele Pre-Primary
school” [ 3]. The NGO suffered property damage, equipment damage,
and data loss, among other things
(see Figures 3 and 4). Luckily, no
one was physically harmed, but the
shock of the event did take its toll
on some of the workers. My research
was affected since the NGO workers
were some of the primary users of
the system. Their operations were
severely restricted by the event,
and therefore they were not as
available to use the system as they
would have been, since they had
to sort out building a new office.
I had to take a patient approach
and work around the schedules
and limitations that were newly
imposed on the NGO workers.
Other challenges we faced were
technology related. For example,
when demonstrating a high-fidelity
prototype of a potential system to
some of the stakeholders as part of a
participatory design meeting, I used
a netbook. Unbeknownst to me, they
had never used a trackpad before,
which affected their comfort levels
during the prototype walkthrough. It
took some time to adjust to using a
trackpad, and there were feelings of
uneasiness throughout. If one were
to repeat a walkthrough, I would
suggest mimicking as closely as possible the environment in which the
users are comfortable, paying special attention to minor details such
as using a mouse instead of a trackpad. After I witnessed this event, all
future prototype demos took place
with technology the users were
familiar and comfortable with.
The Ikamva Youth NGO makes
use of a computer lab donated by
the Shuttleworth Foundation (shut-
tleworthfoundation.org), a nonprofit
organization that teaches computer
literacy and provides some technol-
interactions
