Indian urban slums
Posted by abhigyan on Nov 17, 2010
Design Opportunities and Challenges in Indian Urban Slums - Community Communication and Mobile Phones data sheet 2646 Views
Abstract:
The aim of this master’s thesis is to identify design challenges and opportunities for mobile based community communication services for marginalized communities belonging to Indian urban slums.
The thesis is based on two ethnographic field studies done in urban slums of India and it is grounded in the conceptual frameworks of Community Informatics, Communicative Ecology and Communities of Practices. This qualitative research is best identified as participatory bottom-up exploration.
In the context of Indian urban slums, this thesis discusses the existing practices of mobile phone's use, identifies the 'Human Nodes' of community communication, presents design opportunities and challenges for community communication services, and proposes a design concept called 'Asynchronous Voice based Community Communication Service'.
