Abstract
User-centred design methodologies are employed in many developing world design initiatives to pay more attention to and involve end-users in the design process. However, studies have shown that they need to be appropriated to the specific contexts. The paper presents an early design study that was conducted to investigate the applicability of user-centred design in the context of Yemeni culture at the example of a management system for a school in a rural area. Applied methods include rapid ethnography, focus group, interview, sketching techniques, paper prototyping, and high-fidelity prototyping. In contrast to the results of previous studies which indicate that users often do not see sufficient value in the design process itself, participants in this study found the process meaningful (although they were not fully engaged in each design activity). Some of the reasons may be in the nature of the design task and in the role of the researcher/designer and the schoolmaster who can be considered as key individuals. The present study contributes to the growing body of design-oriented field studies in the area of Human-Computer Interaction for Development.
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The authors thank the participants in the design-oriented field study.
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Bin Mothana, A., Dittmar, A. (2021). Exploring the Applicability of User-Centred Design Practices in Rural Yemen. In: Rau, PL.P. (eds) Cross-Cultural Design. Applications in Arts, Learning, Well-being, and Social Development. HCII 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12772. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77077-8_22
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