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ShambaConnect: case study on the hybrid design of an application for Kenyan extension officers

Published: 06 October 2014 Publication History

Abstract

Technology is increasingly viewed as a proponent for development, including its role in improving access to information. New technology applications are being developed to disrupt traditional sectors, such as agriculture, which form the backbone of several African economies. However, we need to carefully consider the technologies we are creating, how disruptive they are to intended users' cultural and socio-economical settings and the potential for impactful usage and scaling. This is an experience paper that retrospectively reviews the development of ShambaConnect, a user-centric web- and mobile-based application built to increase the access of critical agriculture research to Kenyan extension workers and farmers. The paper outlines the use of qualitative methods, participatory ethnography and user experience tests to collect feedback from government extension workers; and the process of prototyping and testing the ShambaConnect platform based on this feedback. The paper discusses key learning points from the process including the need to consider contextual limitations such as availability of Internet, occupational habits and the key role that trust and partnerships plays in the successful development and deployment of such specialty tools.

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Agundo Harrison. (2013). Ministry of Agriculture courts technology to stem shortage of extension services. Retrieved September 26, 2013, from http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/?articleID=2000092584&story_title=ministry-of-agriculture-courts-technology-to-stem-shortage-of-extension-services&pageNo=1
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Cited By

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  • (2023)HCI Research on Agriculture: Competing Sociotechnical Imaginaries, Definitions, and OpportunitiesProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581081(1-24)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
  • (2021)Proposal for a Crop Protection Information System for Rural Farmers in TanzaniaAgronomy10.3390/agronomy1112241111:12(2411)Online publication date: 26-Nov-2021

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  1. ShambaConnect: case study on the hybrid design of an application for Kenyan extension officers

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    cover image ACM Other conferences
    PDC '14: Proceedings of the 13th Participatory Design Conference: Short Papers, Industry Cases, Workshop Descriptions, Doctoral Consortium papers, and Keynote abstracts - Volume 2
    October 2014
    278 pages
    ISBN:9781450332149
    DOI:10.1145/2662155
    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 the author(s) 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].

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    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 06 October 2014

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    Author Tags

    1. agriculture
    2. applications
    3. collaboration
    4. information
    5. open access

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    • Research-article

    Funding Sources

    • Institute of Development Studies (IDS, UK)
    • Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux International (CABI)

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    PDC '14
    PDC '14: Participatory Design Conference
    October 6 - 10, 2014
    Windhoek, Namibia

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    Overall Acceptance Rate 49 of 289 submissions, 17%

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    • (2023)HCI Research on Agriculture: Competing Sociotechnical Imaginaries, Definitions, and OpportunitiesProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581081(1-24)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
    • (2021)Proposal for a Crop Protection Information System for Rural Farmers in TanzaniaAgronomy10.3390/agronomy1112241111:12(2411)Online publication date: 26-Nov-2021

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