1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Aalto University, Finland
Department of Information and Service Economy, Aalto University, Finland

2. Introduction
Research Objectives
Study Results
Future Work
 Discussion

3. • Mobile phones quickly penetrated into the resource
constraint development world.
• 80% of the world’s population is dwelling in developing
world that constitutes to about 20% of the global
economies.
• Designing technology for low income, low literate
development world is still a young field of research.
• PerComp practitioners must understand the local needs,
social habits and behavior of the users.

4. • Direct relationship between social implications and
technology design.
• We studied the information sharing practices and
implications of technology use in two rural communities of
Africa.
• It was found that ICT is in abundance but underutilized,
oral communication is preferred and need for an invisible
technology.

5. • To examine the current ownership of ICT in resource
constraint communities.
• To understand the implications of technology use in
development world.
• To identify the existing problems and opportunities
for future PerComp solutions

7. • Participants and study sites
- Alice is more advanced compared to Dwesa
- Alice is closer to city while Dwesa is too remote.
- Old, farmers, women, youth and other professionals
- Dwesa has mainly old and youth (rural – urban migration)
- Both communities were resource constraint and low literate.
• Research Methods
- Field studies were done twice in 6 months
- Set of quantitative and qualitative methods were used for data collection.
- Local researchers were involved for data collection process.

8. o Existing practices are inappropriate and inefficient
o Unavailability of the content in local language
o Local needs are not catered
o Mobile phones can become excellent carriers for
PerComp initiatives
o Oral communication is still preferred because its free.

9. o Replacing existing practices through
mobile/technology might result in negative
implications – fear among people.
o Low literate have poor acceptance to information
sharing through mobile phones.
o Accessibility versus choice
o Fear of technology usage and dependency habits

10. o Look for affordable, omnipresent and appropriate
instrument for reaching masses.
o Radio, TV and mobile phone are current options.
o Support local language, local relevance (to society) and
even text free to support illiterates.

11. o The affordability should not be in terms of a one-
time purchase but also that of subscription, repairs,
maintenance and up-grades.
o Universal design icons
o Embedding ICT applications in existing mediums
o Made to break type of designs
o Low upfront but same price
o Aim for economic sustainability and prosperity

12. Defined as the dependence on other technologically
skilled parties for accessing technology.

13. o Possible reasons - use could be illiteracy, age, gender,
and fear of technology use and dependency habits.
o Multi-user use of mobile phones
o Limited use of inbuilt functionalities
o Device-specific machine learning for context prediction
o Appropriate icons, graphics and embedded
intermediately support in the local language.

14. o What is considered good or bad in any community
defines social compatibility.
o Addressing social compatibility might lead to higher
positive attitude towards the usage of PerComp.
o Face-to-face communication for information sharing.
o Different literacy levels, age, openness to new
technology and economical status.
o Adding new functionalities to the technology currently
existing in the developing regions such as TV, radio and
mobile phones.

15. o Consuming less energy or almost zero energy is
appreciated in such communities
o Consuming less money or lesser upfront cost but
instead regular recharge, repair, etc.
o Supporting learning in daily life for example having
educational use.
o Strong practical relevance is must.
o Supporting social rules of different communities.

16. Our study results suggest that low resource users do not
appreciate the need for privacy especially those who do not
fully understand the technology
Is their any need for invisible technology for users dwelling in
resource constrained, low income and low literacy regions ?
1.4 Billion People?

18. o Essential design implications for PerComp practitioners
and researchers were put forward.
o Social implications of technology use has direct impact
on technology design.
o Technologies are often developed to achieve certain
goals however in practice they might be used for other
purposes.
o PerComp practitioners must built their solutions based
on the real needs and expectations of the developing
world.

19. o Existing study has one major limitation that we focused
on general technology rather than PerComp.
o We aim to repeat such studies in different geographical
areas such as Africa, Middle-east and India so as to
perform cross-cultural impact.
o Three main research orientations –
- Development World
- Teenagers (Gaming and Chat)
- Non-office contexts

20. What should be the interesting directions of "Social
Implications of PerComp technologies in emerging
countries?”
How should we examine and investigate different social
implications in context of developing world (low income
and even illiterate users)? methods?
amandeep.dhir@aalto.fi
amandeep.dhir@helsinki.fi