Abstract
During the last decades Europe has witnessed a societal progress supported by the adoption of information technology in daily activities. Yet, 30 % of Europeans have never used the Internet and lack digital skills to perform tasks which are expected to be carried out online. Bridging that gap is one of the key goals of the European Research and Innovation programme, Horizon 2020 (H2020).
Many developing countries are fighting against digital divide adopting successful strategies that rely on the use of mobile technology and smartphones to improve people’s quality of life. In this paper we suggest that similar strategies could be profitably adopted in European countries to capture the 30 % portion of illiterates. We therefore propose a community-oriented mobile interaction design methodology to enhance digital literacy and inclusion in Europe, starting from a deep understanding of target users and of their needs.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Medhi, I., Patnaik, S., Brunskill, E., Gautama, S.N.N., Thies, W., Toyama, K.: Designing mobile interfaces for novice and low-literacy users. ACM Trans. Comput. Hum. Interact. 18(1), Article 2 (2011)
Mayhew, D.J.: The Usability Engineering Lifecycle. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco (1999)
Preece, J., Rogers, Y., Sharp, H.: Interaction Design. Apogeo, Milano (2004)
Rosson, M.B., Carroll, J.M.: Scenario-based design. In: Jacko, J.A., Sears, A. (eds.) The Human–Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications, pp. 1032–1050. L. Erlbaum Associates Inc., Hillsdale (2003)
Department of Agriculture web site, http://www.agridept.gov.lk/
Di Giovanni, P., Romano, M., Sebillo, M., Tortora, G., Vitiello, G., De Silva, L., Goonethilaka, J., Wikramanayake, T., Ginige, T., Ginige, A.: User centered scenario based approach for developing mobile interfaces for social life networks. In: Usability and Accessibility Focused Requirements Engineering (UsARE), pp. 18–24. IEEE (2012)
Ginige, T., Ginige, A.: Towards next generation mobile applications for MOPS: investigating emerging patterns to derive future requirements. In: International Conference on Advances in ICT for Emerging Regions (ICTer), pp. 117–118. IEEE (2011)
Ginige, A.: Social Life Networks for the Middle of the Pyramid, International Project. http://www.sln4mop.org/sln/home/index/home (2011)
Sebillo, M., Tortora, G., Vitiello, G., Di Giovanni, P., Romano, M.: A framework for community-oriented mobile interaction design in emerging regions. In: Kurosu, M. (ed.) Human–Computer Interaction. Users and Contexts of Use. LNCS, vol. 8006, pp. 342–351. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)
Vosloo, S.E., Walton, M., Deumert, A.: m4Lit: A teen m-novel project in South Africa. In: Proceedings of mLearn (2009)
Laliji, Z., Good, J.: Designing new technologies for illiterate populations: a study in mobile phone interface design. Interact. Comput. 20, 574–586 (2008)
Putnam, C., Rose, E., Walton, R., Kolko, B.: Mobile phone users in Kyrgyzstan: a case study of identifying user requirements for diverse users. In: Professional Communication Conference (IPCC), pp. 1–13. IEEE (2009)
Dey, A.: Understanding and using context. Pers. Ubiquitous Comput. 5, 4–7 (2001)
Mancini, J.A., Martin, J.A., Bowen, G.L.: Community capacity. In: Gullotta, T.P., Bloom, M. (eds.) Encyclopedia of Primary Prevention and Health Promotion, pp. 319–330. Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York (2003)
Hoober, S., Berkman, E.: Designing Mobile Interfaces. O’Reilly, Sebastopol (2011)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Vitiello, G., Sebillo, M., Tortora, G., Di Giovanni, P., Ginige, A. (2015). Overcoming the Digital Divide in Europe: Let’s Learn from Emerging Countries!. In: Mola, L., Pennarola, F., Za, S. (eds) From Information to Smart Society. Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09450-2_18
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09450-2_18
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-09449-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-09450-2
eBook Packages: Business and EconomicsBusiness and Management (R0)