Designing for Innovative Digital Inclusion and Participation

The Digital Inclusion and Participation Toolkit is a combination of innovation methods and open-source, future-looking digital and mobile tools created with and for currently under-served users in diverse communities in South Africa, India and Kenya.

This overall framework is the outcome of a four-year multi-disciplinary, multi-sited project, led by Swansea University, funded by the EPSRC and undertaken in collaboration with a range of stakeholders including IBM, Microsoft, the University of Cape Town, IIT Bombay and Google.

Methodology

A key contribution of the toolkit is the methodology we used throughout the process of co-creating the resulting apps and services. Documentation is included in the reports of two separate innovation sprints.

Better Together

Better Together is a plug-in based platform designed to disaggregate the components of complex services, allowing separate mobile phones to each represent and provide a single component of the overall interaction.

APPropriate

APPropriate is a small storage device that contains the owner's digital possessions, allowing them to leave their phone behind, but pick up and use any other device at will, as if it were their own.

StreetWise

StreetWise is a human-powered smart speaker system for use in public emergent-user settings. After asking a question, the user receives a code, which can be entered after 10 minutes to receive a human answer.

Sustainabot

Sustainabot is a small robot printer that deposits everyday materials – foodstuffs, powders and so on – on flat surfaces to create patterns and shapes directly from a mobile device.

Chameleon

Chameleon devices can change colour to blend into their surroundings, while also providing subtle glowing cues for notifications that not only respect their users' privacy, but also minimise social interruption.

Shopping Beacons

Using Bluetooth low energy beacons, this system gives small businesses the ability to quickly create a simple online presence and broadcast it digitally to the local environment to attract potential customers.

This work was funded by EPSRC grant EP/M00421X/1