digital inclusion

Perspectives

Making Tech More Accessible: An Ethnographic Lens on Ability and Disability

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Mural on a street in Croydon, London in blue, light brown, black and cyan colors. A busy image with many different figures that are both humanoid and rectangular/robotic. A central image has three large eyes arranged vertically.
"An ethnographic lens influences us to define ability and disability in a way that is maximally inclusive...many different abilities are present in our world, and each deserves to be taken as its own reality and respected as such." —RICHARD BECKWITH (Research Psychologist, Intelligent Systems Research Lab) & SUSAN FAULKNER, (Research Director, Research and Experience Definition), Intel Corporation EPIC Members Richard Beckwith and Susan Faulkner (Intel) have assembled a panel of luminaries in accessible tech research, design, and engineering for our January 26 event, Seeing Ability: Research and Development for Making Tech More Accessible. In anticipation, we asked them a few questions about their approach to accessibility and key first steps all of us can take to do more inclusive work. How do you define ability and accessibility? How does an ethnographic lens influence your definitions? Ability has to do with what an individual is capable of perceiving or physically doing with their body; accessibility has to do with...

Intelligences

Searching for the Next Billion: Global Design for Information Seeking across Cultures

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JENNIFER ZAMORA Google Inc. While billions of people are established internet users, there are still billions of new users who have just come online in recent years and this growth will continue, especially on mobile in non-Western countries. Information seeking is essential to online behavior across the world, yet many prominent information-seeking platforms are heavily influenced by Western design patterns and use cases that originate from desktop. As we anticipate the future of information-seeking designs for new users, we explore opportunities to improve the experience by establishing a framework to evaluate common barriers to information seeking online across cultures. Qualitative insights were collected from 164 participants to understand information-seeking patterns and barriers for users across three countries: Nigeria, Mexico, and India. Interviews were conducted with participants in their day-to-day environment, including home, work, internet cafes, markets, and university campuses. For every region, the overarching...

Intelligences

Tutorial: Digital Ethnography in Domestic Spaces

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JENNY KENNEDY RMIT University ROWAN WILKEN RMIT University Overview This tutorial explores research in people’s homes through digital methods. The instructors focus on how to utilize participant’s existing digital skills and materials to undertake ethnographic research on and in their home environment, and develop a greater awareness of how geographical and socio-economic circumstances impact the research process. Participants collaborate to discuss how understanding of domestic contexts might frame our research design and specific methods, and consider ways for enhancing the collaborative and participatory process of data collection in the domestic space. This tutorial was presented in full at EPIC202020. The video includes instructor presentations; discussions and breakout sessions are excluded for the privacy of the participants. Instructors BROWSE ALL TUTORIALS...

Intelligences

Everybody’s a Winner: How Unidimensional Scaling up as an Entrepreneurial Rite of Passage is Beginning to Be Resisted in India’s Startup Capital

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GITIKA SAKSENA LagomWorks Consulting & SOAS University of London ABHISHEK MOHANTY LagomWorks Consulting & SOAS University of London Taking India's startup capital Bangalore as its field, the paper researches the absence of conventional scale as a potentially positive emic experience for the entrepreneur. The study leverages a mixed methods approach, employing semi-structured interviews with select entrepreneurs, employees, investors, advisors, and staff from startup-incubators, participant observation at both startups and startup-incubators, textual analyses of business literature, semiotics of popular culture as well as auto-ethnographic reflection by the authors themselves on account of having co-founded a company in Bangalore in 2018, therefore establishing their positionality as ‘an-other’ (Sarukkai 1997, 1408), by ‘thick participation’ (Samudra 2008, 667). The authors examine the current assemblages within the startup ecosystem, to demonstrate that even the dominant and conventional notions of scale have...