Prospecting HCI challenges for extreme poverty communities: Redefining and optimizing user experiences with technology

Abstract

According to the United Nations (UN), 1. 4 billion people live in extreme poverty conditions, about 1/5th of the planet population. Beyond the financial condition, extreme poverty is defined by the lack of access to information. This paper proposes to investigate the HCI challenges related to giving access to information for those communities, especially related to illiteracy, functional illiteracy and empowering them of technologies. Those challenges include not only the access to information, but questions about reaching the community, adapting information technology tools to their real needs, and empowering them to be not just consumers of information and systems, but also creators of new knowledge.