The social complexities of user-centered design in ICTD: Experiences from four schools in India's villages and slums

Low levels of education remain a barrier to economic empowerment in the developing world. In our work on English language learning among underserved communities in India since 2004, we have observed differences between school communities in terms of their access to educational opportunities outside school, access to ICTs including cellphones and digital gaming, enthusiasm for visitors, and the relationships between students. We report on these observations and argue that they call for the greater use of a comparative approach in constructing models of the micro-cultures at various schools, so that user-centered design processes and methods can better account for the unique differences across communities.