9 minute read
Designing for humans
3IDEA 3hree
SPEAKERS
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AL Boris Alvarez — Fellow Group
BI Francesca Basiato — ITCILO
CA Dan Calacci — MIT Media Lab
DI Tomas Diez — Fab Labs
ES Esther — Summit participant
GR Susie Gronseth — University of Houston
GO Laura Gröbel — Nordlicht IT Solutions
Digital services and content have the capacity to improve quality of life through education, healthcare, public safety, and economic development. Curating digitally inclusive learning journeys promotes education for all. Innovation and scalability are intertwined, calling for more inclusive human-centered design in this digital revolution. A multitude of principles and guidelines are out there to make this transition a reality.
HE Ellen Helsper — LSE
HO Andreas Horfurther — Common Sense eLearning
MA Marco Martinez — Kumoontun
NE Marcello Newman — Riconnessioni
NW Nnenna Nwakanma — WWWF
PI Daniel Pimienta — FUNREDES
PO Sylvia Poll — ITU PU Yves Punie — European Commission
ST Christoph Steck — Telefónica
TR Erika Trabucco — Humanity & Inclusion
UN Tim Unwin — UNESCO Chair
WI Roxana Widmer-Iliescu — ITU
XI Jian Xi Teng — UNESCO
Sustainability and open/digital culture
NW Digital culture is using technology to solve problems, anticipate problems, and solve those anticipated problems. Digital culture is part of education – not just literacy but digital education. Open data and open governance, open processes, multi-stakeholder efforts – all of that is digital culture.
NW The Worldwide Web was an open invention – to make it for everyone, for humanity, it was and is a “permissionless” space.
PI Literacy is not a question of digital literacy, it is a question of culture. Information literacy is the culture of cyberspace.
Teachers in Bangladesh develop teaching content through an online platform for use in their classrooms and to share with other teachers in need. 1,000 teachers are generally recognized for their pro bono contribution and rewarded at an annual conference. Similarly, teachers in Korea create their own content in their own language, due to the need for more teaching resources in the language.
Kumoontun addresses the lack of resources in indigenous Mexican languages by connecting with the community and empowering the community through children, parents, and grandparents. It uses internationally available tools and platforms to create and translate content into indigenous languages such as StoryWeaver (an Indian open-source platform for child literacy resource creation).
XI
MA
ST We have to think of sustainable deployment of technologies. Economic feasibility is important – it is needed for everything to work in the long term.
HO We should create global communities to share all great innovations so that they would be useful for all. This is how designs can be inclusive.
ACCESSIBLE E-LEARNING SPOTLIGHT
Common Sense e-Learning & Training Consultants
Common Sense supports organizations with training needs in the implementation/ development of e-Learning. This is done by offering capacity building for course developers, online tutors, and e-Learning managers to enable e-Learning activities based on local resources. For this, they develop and deploy sensible and sustainable technological solutions (mobile, thin clients, etc.) for even the most challenging environments where the target group lacks internet, electricity supply, or IT skills.
Mobile technologies may not be accessible for all. People from lower economic backgrounds still don’t have access to high-tech gadgets. One solution is to opt for lower-tech options such as SMS-Text and IVR-based solutions. Another solution is to adopt a “go-to learning” approach, which is already being used in countries such as Morocco.
In Bangladesh, only 41% of persons with disabilities own mobile phones, while 76 % of non-disabled persons own mobile phones.
Innovation and scalability
ST We also have to think of innovation of technologies for scalability.
PI People think that if you have a good idea, it will be scalable but it is not easy. If you are always on the edge or at the innovation level, scalability is impossible because you are innovating in a place where people are 20 years behind you.
SMART TECH SPOTLIGHT
Dot Incorporation
Dot is a pioneer in smart technology for the vision-impaired and the deafblind, helping them to lead more independent lives. Multilayered smart devices are developed using tactile dots. While conventional technologies are expensive, Dot technology is cheaper and affordable to vulnerable groups such as the visually impaired.
“Dot incorporation creates technology based on the needs and demands of their end-users. Differently-abled people identify a problem and they design and develop their technology service from that identified problem.” - Ahrum Choi, Dot Incorporation
Inclusive design: Human-centric, holistic, tailored, and diverse
ES If you are developing content for a certain ecosystem, think of the languages used, infrastructures, audiences, etc. Understand your ecosystem first.
HO We need to translate open resources into local languages (for communities). We also need to harness authoring tools, to make content more translatable.
WI We are all different, so technology should be approached. Technology should be
inclusive to be successful.
BI Cognitive bias exists in our way of thinking. When it comes to vulnerable people, we should be careful of the assumptions we create. We need to think human, see beyond labels and categories and avoid replacing old bias with new bias.
Think big, think small, think human.
The content divide is much deeper a problem than the digital divide, which is driven by the linguistic divide.
The average person and average trajectory do not exist, so services and tools cannot be designed following a universal criterion. There is no “one shoe fits all” or standard, therefore everyone should be included in the process. We should see a transition
from excluding people to including people.
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PI
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GR Technology serves as a conduit to support more inclusive design. We must listen to our learners and understand all their needs before learning, during learning, and after learning.
Making technology available does not mean that the technology will be usable by all. People with disabilities or those from a different linguistic background may not be able to make use of it.
Trade unions who want to reach workers have to think about the tools we use to communicate with workers. It is important to build digital tools as unionists to help workers connect, build solidarity in the workplace, and tell their stories.
Design processes to build tools for workers are not democratic. They don’t listen to the real voices of workers or vulnerable groups. So, we have to create new ways of building technologies. Such ways and processes should be created and shared with everyone.
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GO We have to consider people’s access or ability to reach them. When designing a tool, we have to make them part of the designing process.
GR Organizing digital communities is different to face-to-face communities, so skills need to be designed and built-in trade unions and representatives. The key to fighting precariousness is to use digital tech as ammunition.
HO The lack of relevance is a big challenge. For instance, while content in MOOCs is relevant to northern regions (Americas and Europe), it is not relevant to southern regions (Asia and Africa).
UN Our attitudes about people with disabilities are our greatest handicap.
Socio-economic issues of communities need to be taken into account. “One size fits all” should not be the way. We should map inequalities and how to help people based on the availability of the community’s resources.
HE
HE Move away from thinking about tech, but about how the technology can help the community specifically.
NW We are not just investing in computers or computer knowledge but in the aggregate, which I call “allied knowledge,” to use technology and develop themselves. If you want to invest in an ICT class for a woman who works 8 hours, it won’t work. So, you have to invest in an agriculture plan for women to be freed or a crèche for their children or a kindergarten to free their time for ICT.
NW Digital knowledge is a small part of the digital ecosystem and that is where we should
be investing now.
Think big, think small, think human. Francesca Biasiato, ITCILO
INCLUSIVE COMMUNICATIONS SPOTLIGHT
Hand Talk success story
Hand Talk is a free education application, which translates and interprets spoken and written Portuguese into Brazilian Sign Language. It aims to improve social interaction for mobile users.
“Laura from Sao Paulo downloaded the app and learned basic sign language to be able to communicate with a deaf person for the first time ever. She was able to communicate to him that she loved him and tell him he can stay with her for as long as he wishes, which was a very touching moment for both the mother-son duo and Hand Talk.” - Thadeu Lu, Hand Talk
Need for universal toolkit/ framework/ design
PO ICTs have to be designed with a universal design in mind. Working together, governments and policymakers have come up with a toolkit. It’s the responsibility of all actors.
Once you create a framework, like describing competencies and proficiencies, it becomes concrete and operational, more functional and instrumental.
PU PU
DI The digital fabrication revolution will disrupt the way in which production happens, especially because of climate collapse and the relationship of how humans exploit humans and the environment.
We have all become producers of content. Whereas 50 years ago, we were mere consumers.
DI
OPEN SOURCE SPOTLIGHT
Fab Labs’ open knowledge
In a Fab Lab in Jordan, they made on-demand prosthetic hands and legs for children, with the support of the global network and open-source designs. The key learning is that it shows how access to digital fabrication can bridge the gap of affordability (for access to affording prosthetics for example). Fab Labs are democratizing knowledge, which has an impact on inclusivity and will create change in the global economy.
“Knowledge will be interpreted differently across different cultural settings.” - Tomas Diez, Fab Labs
Forced or “negative” digitalization
HE The imposition of technologies, which is a great risk that could affect the environment due to a non-understanding of the context of that environment.
MA In the case of Kumoontun, each household involved with them had at least one mobile phone with internet access. The community Kumoontun App empowered people of the same language community forming strong links are formed through persons like the head of the household, allowing challenges to be easily resolved. Therefore, digitalization was welcomed and relatable, and not seen as being forced
upon.
In the past, there have been national-level pushbacks by teachers, failures in their initial training, and pilot projects due to imposed classroom technologies, so Riconnessioni adapted a co-design model and worked with teachers to solve the problem.
By placing emphasis on trickle-down training, teachers could decide which technology and what resources or tools would be useful for them. By doing so, teachers and providers were able to understand the needs better. From there, the technologies penetrated into schools more easily.
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Data creation, protection, and governance
CA There are organized tech workers in the US, who are collaborating with one another and building tools - they are workers who can do it as part of their union membership. The tools are built internally, out of which some could potentially be shared for usage.
We need to think of an alternate data governance and protection model, where worker-owned and donation of data would become prevalent. We have to build (and allow the building of) alternatives to existing tools, processes, and frameworks like design principles.
CA
CA Unions can and should be at the forefront of new forms of data governance, the way in which design and how data can be designed to serve justice.
Knowledge will be interpreted differently across different cultural settings. Tomas Diez, Fab Labs
