Designing for Sustainability: Involving Communities in Developing ICT Interventions to Support Water Resource Management

Ssozi-Mugarura, Fiona and Blake, Edwin and Rivett, Ulrike (2015) Designing for Sustainability: Involving Communities in Developing ICT Interventions to Support Water Resource Management, Proceedings of IST-Africa Conference 2015, 6-8 May 2015, Lilongwe, Malawi, 1-8, IEEE Xplore.

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Abstract

Rural Africans have poor access to clean and safe water compared to other developing areas. Many Information and Communication Technology (ICT) interventions have been implemented to address the information gaps that hinder improved service delivery but have subsequently failed. The inability to provide suitable content, failure to address priority needs of communities and foster local buy-in are seen as the main causes. The transition from developing technologies for users to developing with users has created the need to harness collective ideation. Developing community-based ICT interventions collaboratively with the user communities provides a better understanding of the cultural nuances that can easily affect the use and adoption of an intervention. In this paper, we present a landscape analysis of rural water supply management in Uganda and an ICT intervention implemented to support the community management model. We present findings and a justification for a more user-centered approach to developing sustainable ICT interventions through co-design.

Item Type:	Conference paper
Subjects:	Human-centered computing
Date Deposited:	08 Jul 2015
Last Modified:	10 Oct 2019 15:32
URI:	http://pubs.cs.uct.ac.za/id/eprint/1019

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