Human Centered Design for Development

This paper describes the challenges faced in ICTD by reviewing the lessons learned from a project geared at improving the livelihood of marginal farmers in India through wireless sensor networks. Insufficient user participation, lack of attention to user needs, and a primary focus on technology in the design process led to unconvinced target users who were not interested in the new technology. The authors discuss benefits that ICTD can reap from incorporating human-centered design (HCD) principles such as holistic user involvement and prototypes to get buy-in from target users and foster support from other stakeholders and NGOs. The study’s findings suggest that HCD artifacts can act as boundary objects for the different internal and external actors in development projects.