Design Science Research and Activity Theory in ICT4D: Developing a Socially Relevant ICT Platform for Elderly Women in Remote Rural South Africa

Smith, Ronel; Turpin, Marita

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-59111-7_29

Cited by 11 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Similarly, AT was chosen by Smith & Turpin (2017) as the theoretical framework to guide the evaluation of an ICT platform designed to empower elderly women in a rural community in South Africa. Their reflections showed that the sociocultural aspects of AT helped them to make the social and political dimensions of the local community and the relationship between the user (elderly women) and the design intervention (the installed ICT platform in the local community) visible to design researchers.…”

Section: Individual and Societal Levelmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the other side of change : Exploring the role that design can play in retaining sustainable doings

Chu

2021

Linköping Studies in Science and Technology. Dissertations

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The world keeps changing more rapidly. Induced by context change disruptions such as individual life-course changes and macro socio-economical events, the way people carry out their everyday life doings is also undergoing a dynamic transition process, which may open up windows of opportunity for design to transit people's behavior in a more sustainable direction. A successful behavior transition entails not only changing people's wrongdoings but also retaining the existing desired doings. However, over the last decade, the field of Design for Sustainable Everyday Life seems to have grown accustomed to the concept of change. The potential role that design may play in retaining people's existing sustainable doings has been ill-addressed. This dissertation aims to develop an activity-based theoretical approach to help design researchers and practitioners better understand how people transit behavior when they undergo context change disruptions, and further explore design implications informed by the sustainable behavior retention perspective. The study comprises two parts. In the first part, six explorative case studies were used to investigate the applicability of adopting activity theory (AT) as a theoretical lens for understanding context change-induced behavior transition phenomena. As a result, an ATbased framework was iterated, developed and validated. In the second part, by incorporating the proposed framework with the theoretical understanding generated from a prescriptive meta-synthesis study, an AT-informed toolkit prototype was developed and evaluated. Three key findings can be identified. First, at a conceptual level, the study reveals that the design for sustainable behavior retention perspective may complement the design for behavior change perspective by facilitating a bottom-up and context-focused relative approach to achieve sustainability. Second, at a design analytical level, three dimensions of AT: i). hierarchical structure, ii). long-term development and iii). reality-based contextual scales of analysis are especially useful for systematically analyzing the impacts of context change disruptions on people's everyday life doings. Third, at a design synthesis level, the ATinformed design toolkit prototype and the extracted design implications can provide a systemic view that helps designers take both sustainable behavior change and retention perspectives into early-stage design ideation. The contribution of the dissertation is two folds. First, it introduces the perspective of sustainable behavior retention into the field of Design for Sustainable Everyday Life. Second, it provides an activity-based theoretical framework as a potential lens for designers to better cope with context change disruptions.

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Section: Individual and Societal Levelmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the other side of change : Exploring the role that design can play in retaining sustainable doings

Chu

2021

Linköping Studies in Science and Technology. Dissertations

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“…Internationally 30 Digital Doorways have been deployed in Uganda, four in Australia and one each in Lesotho, Ethiopia, and the Solomon Islands. The Digital Drum, a Digital Doorway in a 20 gallon drum developed with UNICEF for use in Uganda, was nominated by the Time Magazine as one of the top 50 inventions in the world for 2011 (Smith & Turpin, 2017). Most of the sites support VSAT Internet connectivity enabling them to transmit near-real-time data (comprised of many parameters) back to a monitoring server and support desk.…”

Section: The Ict Artefactmentioning

confidence: 99%

Co-Creating an Ict Artefact With Women in South Africa

Smith

Turpin

Herselman

2019

12th IADIS International Conference Information Systems 2019

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The active involvement of rural women in ICT4D initiatives is essential to ensure that they benefit from the initiative in general, and the technology artefact in particular. Usually ICT4D projects are male centered and the relevance of ICTs to the women within their contextual realities are not always considered. The purpose of this paper is indicate how an ICT artefact was co-created with rural women in South Africa in a resource constrained context. Participatory approaches like co-creation are important when implementing ICT4D initiatives aimed at rural women. Through the application of Design Science Research as the methodology an ICT artefact was co-created in a specific context in South Africa with rural women only. It is a longitudinal study that is still evolving. The lessons learnt and process that was followed will be shared. The main finding was that the active participation and feedback of the users of a system are essential when aiming to address their immediate and long term needs. If this is not the case the ICT artefact will not be used and it will yet again become part of the statistics of why Information Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) projects fail.

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“…Yeo & Grant) while others focus on design-related mechanisms to support development goals, through for example action design research (Sein, Henfridsson, Purao, Rossi, & Lindgren, 2011), design to inform theory development, and design science research methodologies. Earlier work has explored aspects related to the role of design in ICT4D initiatives (Barclay, 2014;Grobler & de Villiers, 2017;Islam & Grönlund, 2011;Li, Thomas, Rana, & Stoner, 2017;Ngonzi, 2010;Smith & Turpin, 2017;Uwaoma & Mansingh, 2018;Van Biljon, Marais, & Platz, 2017). In the following sections we reflect on the use of abduction and the concept of 'design science for development.'…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contextual reflections on innovations in an interconnected world: theoretical lenses and practical considerations in ICT4D – Part 2

Osei-Bryson

Bailey

2019

Information Technology for Development

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Design Science Research and Activity Theory in ICT4D: Developing a Socially Relevant ICT Platform for Elderly Women in Remote Rural South Africa

Cited by 11 publications

References 13 publications

On the other side of change : Exploring the role that design can play in retaining sustainable doings

On the other side of change : Exploring the role that design can play in retaining sustainable doings

Co-Creating an Ict Artefact With Women in South Africa

Contextual reflections on innovations in an interconnected world: theoretical lenses and practical considerations in ICT4D – Part 2

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