Reference Information:
Title: Exploring Mobile Technologies for the Urban Homeless
Authors: Christopher A. Le Dantec
Presentation Venue: CHI 2010 April 10-15, 2010 Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Summary:
This paper focused on the practical and social impact of technology on the urban homeless. Two studies were done to better understand digital technologies impact. The first one was to look at homelessness as a context for design and the other was to look at the context of the non-profit organization and their constraints.
In the first study of designing technology for the homeless mobile phones proved the most useful. The study showed how to address technology for this community. Culturally situated efforts proved to be more important when addressing means of access and economically focused efforts not as important.
In the second study field work and interviews were done at two non-profit agencies. In these agencies there was a high reliance on volunteer workers. There is a need for a better workflow system.
A Community Resource Map(CRM) was used to better understand how mobile technologies are used with the constraints of the homeless. The CRM mapped information about places of interest for the homeless, such as soup kitchens and shelters. Real time data was also added and the CRM was given the group of homeless that the author was working with. The CRM was used to examine three things, legibility, literacy, and legitimacy.
Legibility is studied by observing the ways the homeless understand and interpret access to certain services based on their location, need, and identity. Literacy is studied by observing how the homeless use an added capability to a familiar technology, the mobile phone. Legitimacy is studied by looking at the ways legitamcy influences legibility caused by this technology.
Discussion:
I think that this paper proposes an interesting idea but a strange one. The best thing that I can think of is that it discusses designing new technology for a different group of people that have large constraints. This could be helpful if the group of people the technology is being designed for is large enough and can afford it. I'm not saying I'm against helping the homeless because I do think this would be helpful to this group of people but would probably change greatly from city to city. I think factors such as how many homeless people are in an area and how far they have to travel for certain things could affect the study greatly. This study was done in Atlanta, which is a large city.
I agree, this sounds like a very strange idea. I do like that it presents a new audience for technology, but it seems as if providing this technology to the homeless may not be the greatest idea. Most likely they would not be able to afford it, and someone has to be able to pay for it.
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