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Like a hustler: aligning intervention design with informal labor practices

Published: 07 December 2013 Publication History

Abstract

In this paper, we describe the findings from fieldwork conducted with low income youth in Nairobi in the context of a mobile phone based solution for employment in the informal sector. We utilize a narratives based approach to analyzing the lived experiences of our target demographic and present our findings in the form of design cues. In particular, we focus on the identity work conducted by our respondents, the barriers they face in accruing their livelihood, and the aspect of discontinuity in their employment, housing, and support systems. We present a set of design cues which are concerned with generating physical artifacts based on virtual activity, co-opting group dynamics, integration with government and civil society actors, and empowering the voice of informal workers. Our hope is to better align program priorities and delivery systems in accordance with patterns evinced from oral accounts of the intended beneficiaries.

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  • (2018)Designing Future Employment Applications for Underserved Job SeekersProceedings of the 2018 Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3196709.3196770(33-44)Online publication date: 8-Jun-2018

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cover image ACM Other conferences
ICTD '13: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development: Full Papers - Volume 1
December 2013
278 pages
ISBN:9781450319065
DOI:10.1145/2516604
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

  • IPID: International Network for Postgraduate Students in the area of ICT4D
  • University of the Western Cape: University of the Western Cape
  • Google Inc.
  • Nokia
  • Microsoft: Microsoft
  • University of Cape Town
  • Microsoft Reasearch: Microsoft Reasearch
  • IDRC: International Development Research Centre
  • IBM: IBM

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 07 December 2013

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Author Tags

  1. entrepreneurship
  2. livelihoods
  3. mobile phones
  4. narratives

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  • Research-article

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ICTD 2013
Sponsor:
  • IPID
  • University of the Western Cape
  • Microsoft
  • Microsoft Reasearch
  • IDRC
  • IBM

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Overall Acceptance Rate 22 of 116 submissions, 19%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2018)Designing Future Employment Applications for Underserved Job SeekersProceedings of the 2018 Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3196709.3196770(33-44)Online publication date: 8-Jun-2018

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