The missing H in ICTD: Lessons learned from the development of an agricultural decision support tool: Mobile HCI and Technical ICTD: A Methodological Perspective Workshop

This paper describes the challenges faced in ICT-D 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 adopting the new technology. We present some of the benefits ICTD can reap from incorporating human-centered design (HCD) principles and holistic user involvement and methods that have been shown to improve the design of socio-technical systems in the field of human computer interaction (HCI). In turn, to meet the challenges in the development arena HCI and HCD have to incorporate well established (participatory) action research and rural appraisal approaches that help achieving sustainable outcomes.