Innovating in india: designing for constraint, computing for inclusion (keynote)

A fundamental tenet of user-centered design is that the needs, wants, limitations, and contexts of end users are central to the process of creating products and services that can be used and understood by the people who will use them. Most of the time these end users aren’t all that different from the people designing the technology. But as the differences increase between designers and the people they’re designing for, understanding and empathizing with users becomes harder and even more important. As we build software for people and communities with vastly diverse backgrounds, cultures, languages, and education, we need to stretch our ideas of what users want and need and how best to serve them. The Technology for Emerging Markets (TEM) group at Microsoft Research India seeks to address the needs and aspirations of people in the developing world who are just beginning to use computing technologies and services as well as those for whom access to computing still remains largely out of reach. Much of this work can be described as designing for constraint: constraints in education, in infrastructure, in financial resources, in languages and in many other areas. In this talk, I will describe some work from our group that explores how we have tried to manage these constraints to create software and systems for people and communities often overlooked by technologists.