- So, I'm Lucy Pei,
and thanks again for coming out this morning.
So the title of my paper,
which is quite long and has a colon
and the word design in it (laughs loudly),
comes from something I said to my co-author, Bonnie Nardi,
when I was reflecting on a project I had once worked on.
So, this project, let's call it project X,
could be loosely classified as interventionist HCI
with social good aims.
And,
okay.
So project X had followed the right steps
of starting with the needs assessment,
and then iterating through current types
and incorporating user feedback from onset user testing,
and this is, as opposed to a wrong approach
of not interacting with users, failing to see
their context, being ignorant of their needs,
and galloping in on a white stallion
of reckless tax saviorism.
So we didn't do this, and plenty of research has shown
this to be ineffective and inappropriate.
But despite avoiding these mistakes,
project X was still unable to deliver
any lasting benefit to the community
it was intended to serve.
And this is what the it was still wrong
part of the title refers to.
So a little bit about project X.
It involved the design and development of a game platform
that could've been practice content
created by teachers.
And the reason I'm calling it project X
is not flame a project that I worked on
and that I value,
but just to sort of use it as an example.
And was designed to help English language learners
practice English outside of limited class time,
which was a need that was actually found
during the needs assessment.
And the partners of the project
was the community literacy center,
which offered free English as second language classes
to adult immigrant and reseau-refugee populations.
So two years after my involvement with project X ended,
I returned to the literacy center,
this time in an ethnographic engagement,
conducting participant observations,
while embedded as an English and technology teacher
at the center over a period of 16 months.
And during this time, several interventions
involving technology were taken up,
with more success towards sustainable impact
than project X had experienced.
These periods of field work formed the basis
for the framework I'm presenting today,
which is the framework for sustainable impact
in resource constraint setting,
where human center's need space design
can often still fall short.
So before we get into the framework,
I wanted to set up a few definitions.
So sustainable impact here refers to the capacity
of an intervention to continue to have "positive impact"
after the research team is no longer involved.
And I know positive impact can be designed
from a, can be hard to find from a variety of angles
and can be contentious,
but typically we can agree that a prototype
that is never deployed or never adopted,
or just lays about broken and out of date
is not delivering positive impact.
And project X is not alone as a project
that despite following these sort of "right" approaches
to design, fall short of delivering a sustainable impact.
And it's often in resource constraint context
that many projects following the right design approaches
still fall short.
Now in HCI, resource constraint typically is a code
for words like developing
or otherwise referring to communities that are constrained
with issues of poverty, or,
so that's an example such as where infrastructure
like literacy or electricity are lacking,
but we wanted to sort of extend this
to refer to also context where other things,
such as environmental resources, or attention,
or emotional, or social resources are also constrained
because we think that this will, this framework,
although it comes from also a more typical definition
of resource constraint, can extend into these other
areas where HCI does interventions.
So now I'm gonna pop up the framework
and we'll talk about it a little bit,
but I want you to keep in mind that,
I've got a little activity at the end,
so let this percolate in your mind,
if you have anything you've read about,
or you're thinking about starting or you're working on
that is a project that would happen
in a resource constrained context,
I will have us be doing a mapping activity at the end,
maybe simultaneously with the questions.
So the first axis of the framework
is asset utilization,
and this refers to the extent to which an intervention
recognizes and leverages resources already existing
in the community.
So these assets include physical infrastructure,
social infrastructure, skills and knowledge,
networks, and environmental resources.
And we were inspired
by the international community development literatures
where asset space community development
was articulated as a development strategy
that starts with what is present in a community,
instead of a dominant needs based approach,
which focuses on a community's deficiencies,
what they lack, and what's missing.
And so, the way we have it set up in the framework
is that it sort of goes up in the way that,
the more an intervention leverages resources
already existing in the population,
the more likely the intervention is to have
a sustainable impact.
And so we propose that, even in the most
resource constrained communities
that design should begin with
what is already there.
And this goes beyond talking to users,
or understanding their context,
or evaluating their knowledge of work processes.
It means taking the community assets seriously
as a starting point, using them as materials
to design width, and really rooting the design
and the skills and materials,
equipment and facility's instructions
that are already embedded in the community.
Novelty, which is the other axis,
refers to the extent to which an intervention
involves invention and technology practice,
and we know that novelty is a big deal in the community,
as we saw in our word count.
And we join other HCI researchers
who have criticized excessive novelty
and pointed out the drawbacks and costs of innovation.
And so, when assessing the novelty of an intervention,
we're making a distinction between inventions
and hardware and software on one hand,
and inventions and practice on the other hand,
which we refer to as
applying existing technology into new contexts.
And so here we have novelty axis,
which indicates that the more novel an intervention is,
the less likely the intervention
is to actually have sustainable impact,
and this is because technological invention
occurs high and often overlooked costs,
such as the cost of production of a new artifact,
learning and training,
new maintenance and repair strategies,
and while there are still similar costs
associated with inventions in practice,
these are usually more easily medigated,
since someone out there in the world
has already developed some of these expertises,
and you can lean on that,
even if the technologies lead to your community.
So like I said, we will be doing a mapping activity
at the end, but what we hoped for for this framework
was that it would help researchers
who are thinking about doing interventions
and resource constraint context,
to plot and then think about where could you perhaps adjust
your intervention design to leverage more assets
to really use what is already in the community
to design wit, and how can you minimize novelty
so that it's more likely that the intervention
will have legs and will be able to stay in the community
and actually do something.
And then we also use this framework to categorize
a few groups of interventions and discuss a little bit
how they tend to fare into the brinks of sustainable impact.
So these groups are the invention of new technology,
which is a group of interventions,
and we plotted here that are low in asset utilization
and high in novelty.
And we also have the adoption existing technologies,
which are novel to the population,
but not to the world at large.
And finally have the amplification of practices
already existing within the community,
where interventions facilitate further uptake
of technology practices,
that some members of the community have already adopted.
And so I'm gonna share a few examples of each of these
from my field work, and then I'm gonna talk a little bit
about why it's difficult to break up with novelty,
which we saw it is pretty embedded in the Ki community,
and we need spaced approach.
And then finally I'm gonna talk a little bit
about asset space design, which is essentially a name
that we apply to design that maximizes asset utilization
and minimizes novelty.
So, I'm not gonna get too much into the invention example,
because it's basically the story of project X
that I was telling at the beginning,
but essentially it was very successful
in terms of user testing,
responding to the community's needs,
but ultimately the platform could not be deployed
because of copyright complications.
And I think that this is a story that is not alone
in the Ki community.
There's lots of papers published about prototypes
but very small amount of follow up,
and part of that is the nature of research,
but I think that when we are really sort of trying
to make a difference in communities that are in need,
well in need and also that are underserved in many ways,
it's important to also consider sustainable impact.
And so, while we did work closely
with the literacy center,
all the interactions with the field site
really focused on needs and then on how to customize
the invention for usability and engagement,
and this focus really missed a lot of assets
that could have supported something
that could've actually reached the community
and supported them in some way.
Now the adoption example I want to share
involves the introduction of a free online platform
called Quizlet to at the literacy center.
And we were actually able to use Quizlet
to help students practice class content
outside of class time, which was a major goal
for the platform that we had invented but could not use.
And so the Quizlet was not designed
for low literate students,
we were able to teach students to navigate through the sets
and tap the sound icon to listen to pronunciation,
and so it went from these black and white worksheets,
which were all that they had,
and since they were low literate,
this didn't really allow them to practice outside of class
to being able to listen to pronunciation
and slowly gain practice through the,
through the app.
And so since Quizlet was already existing and free,
we did not have to face any hurdles with developing,
releasing, or maintaining the platform,
but we did incur some costs since Quizlet was new
to the literacy center.
But like I had mentioned before,
we had sort of existing websites and forms
that were able to help mitigate these costs for us.
And finally, I'm gonna share a quick example.
I was gonna do two, but I'm just gonna do one
because I won't have time for the activity,
about the amplification approach.
So, I'm gonna tell a story about a student named Ming.
She's not on here, these are just stock photos
to illustrate the example.
But, she was a student from China who worked at a factory
making lampshades, and she was very proud of her work,
and she had taken a photo on her phone
of a particularly impressive lampshade that she had made,
and she was showing to the student, to her teacher one day
after class.
And then in a later class,
the teacher was asking each student to share
what they did for a job,
and Ming didn't know how to say, like,
oh, I make lampshades,
but she eventually, like, pulled out her phone
and showed the picture of the lampshade she had made
and passed it around the table,
and in this way she was able to sort of express something
that she otherwise would not have been able to express,
and the teacher began to amplify this kind of practice
by encouraging other students to share more about themselves
with, by using existing photos on their phones.
And this was something that was easily sustained
because almost everybody had a phone,
brought it with them to class,
and you already had photos on it,
and you had to take photos,
and you had to view photos they had already taken,
and even the few people who maybe struggled
with these skills were easily able to get help
from their fellow students.
And so this was able to accomplish this goal
of sharing media, that there was also talk
at the literacy center about buying projectors
to accomplish a similar goal,
but this never panned out,
and it's not only because projectors are expensive,
but because of additional hidden costs,
like we don't keep the classrooms locked
because, you know, students go in and out of them,
but now if we have these expensive projectors
we're gonna have to protect them,
and the teacher's gonna have to come in early
to set them up,
and all of these other costs that, you know,
I think the literacy center was actually pretty confident
it could get grants to, you know,
there's all these grants to get new technology
if you are a non-profit,
but those additional costs are the ones
that really prevented that from being a sustainable solution
for the literacy center,
whereas something that built on things
that people in the community were already doing,
was able to accomplish a similar end.
So before I conclude,
I wanted to talk a little bit
about why it's really hard to break up with novelty
needs-based approaches,
because we are not the first people
to sort of point these things out,
and yet, you know, as we saw,
well now we have a nice visualization of the extent
to which, you know, nothing really changes
when people call out that, you know, innovation
and novelty are not necessarily sacred.
But, so,
the first of all,
the roots of this community, which is more in engineering
and invention is sort of the wheel house of people,
and even when researchers begin to engage
with resource constraint communities,
they sort of have this basis
and very resource-rich communities,
where novelty is rewarded,
so it's pretty hard to, I think, switch gears like that
and people rely on what they already know how to do
and, you know, then use like Ki often incentivize you
to invent something that's a new, visible contribution
over some, over maybe applying something
that's already been done before,
or even just showing an effective strategy
that already exists in communities
and making that further up-taken in that community.
And also, a lot of times there is an institutional
sort of baked in this of a needs-based approach
where it's already recognized around, you know,
distributing, funding to resource constrained communities
based on a specific need that they have,
or, you know, you apply by being the neediest community,
that's how you get resources and funding for your projects.
So all of these things make it quite hard
for I think, or help explain
why the field has not really changed,
even though this is not something that, you know,
I dreamed up yesterday, no one's ever thought about before.
So the final thing I just wanted to have
everyone think about is, again,
if you are considering doing interventions
and resource constrained context,
and you care about having sustainable impact,
consider using asset-based design,
which is just simply maximizing your asset utilization
and minimizing novelties.
So really looking beyond needs-based orientations
because when you focus on needs to be,
impulse is to add something, right,
that the community lacks something, we have to add it.
But once you add something in, it's really hard
to keep that thing sustained, whereas if you build
on what's already there,
that not only validates what's already in a community
that is often times basing under,
I don't know what the politically correct term is,
but that is marginalized, I guess, in some ways.
So it's really important to validate what is already there,
but it also really helps to make sure
your intervention is not just gonna disappear
when your funding dries up, you move on to a new project,
or whatever, and you're not wasting that community's time.
And additionally, minimizing novelty means,
not necessarily that you can't be creative,
but it's just trying to see how you can reconfigure things
that are already in the community,
and try to minimize costs associated with invention.
It's not trying to minimize creativity
or doing anything mean,
but rather the very costly resource-rich, splashy,
glamorous invention type of work.
So now I'm gonna end with an invitation
for you to come up there and take a Post-it and Sharpie
and yes, it's very on-brand for design,
and you can write up a little note
about a project that maybe you're thinking about working on,
you are working on, or yes, thank you.
(laughs loudly)
And plot it against the framework,
and I would love to have a little collection
and we can post it somewhere.
I'll find out where we can post it,
if anyone's interested in seeing it afterwards.
And then, also, while we do that,
we can take questions.
Thanks everyone.
(crowd claps)
(crowd talking)
Yeah, so.
I guess an example would be, like,
do you mean things like, so like skills,
like knowing how to use your phone,
or like connection that.
Oh yeah, that's really, yeah.
I guess that was something
that we hadn't explicitly looked at before,
but that's a really good one to add to, yeah, absolutely.
- [Peter] Hi, I'm Peter, from (mumbles) team.
I think this is really relevant
and I want to thank you so much for doing this right.
So, in the past two
(background noise drowns out Peter)
do you have any ideas about how we can get to percent work
that has a really great novelty,
but a high view asset utilization,
and actually get a percent there from that work of five,
or take surviving that step,
you might put into these types of papers
to make it more than likely
that people will actually think that they can (mumbles).
- Yeah, that is a really good important question.
So, I mean, I am a very junior member of this community,
but I think that part of it is probably has to do with
the way papers are viewed,
but,
there's, I think, increasingly a push for,
if not just looking at projects that, you know,
would be economically viable and would, you know,
make a great start up, or would be flashy.
There's arguments about doing things so good
and ethics in,
and I think that it's sort of a different kind
of contribution that you're making
and I think that increasingly high
can and should be trying to value that.