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Food-availability SMS system for U.S. homeless communities

Published: 04 January 2019 Publication History

Abstract

We present the design and preliminary evaluation of a mobile text-based system and that provides homeless people in the United States with information about the availability of free meals. The system, piloted in Ann Arbor, Michigan, provides information about when and where free meals are offered based on zipcode as entered by users. It has features to address issues around information access, incompleteness, and irrelevance. We found that SMS text messages are preferred by our homeless users even when they are non-literate and own smartphones, and that formal systems are useful even in contexts where word-of-mouth predominates.

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  • (2023)The Human Behind the Data: Reflections from an Ongoing Co-Design and Deployment of a Data-Navigation Interface for Front-Line Emergency Housing Shelter StaffExtended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544549.3585694(1-7)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
  • (2023)eDakterBari: A Human-Centered Solution Enabling Online Medical Consultation and Information Dissemination for Resource-Constrained Communities in BangladeshHeliyon10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e23100(e23100)Online publication date: Nov-2023
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    cover image ACM Other conferences
    ICTD '19: Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development
    January 2019
    422 pages
    ISBN:9781450361224
    DOI:10.1145/3287098
    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]

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    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 04 January 2019

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    Author Tags

    1. ICT for homeless
    2. food insecurity
    3. improving information access
    4. underserved populations

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    View all
    • (2023)Exploring the Barriers and Potential Opportunities of Technology Integration in Community-Based Social Service OrganizationsACM Journal on Computing and Sustainable Societies10.1145/36107201:1(1-28)Online publication date: 22-Sep-2023
    • (2023)The Human Behind the Data: Reflections from an Ongoing Co-Design and Deployment of a Data-Navigation Interface for Front-Line Emergency Housing Shelter StaffExtended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544549.3585694(1-7)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
    • (2023)eDakterBari: A Human-Centered Solution Enabling Online Medical Consultation and Information Dissemination for Resource-Constrained Communities in BangladeshHeliyon10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e23100(e23100)Online publication date: Nov-2023
    • (2021)Dakter BariProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34491185:CSCW1(1-30)Online publication date: 22-Apr-2021
    • (2020)Informing the design of a LoRa™-based digital bracelet for the timely assistance of indigentsJournal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing10.1007/s12652-020-01732-613:11(5335-5350)Online publication date: 24-Jan-2020

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