Infrastructure is a common topic in rural areas around the world. While most existing research attention has been paid to the difficulties with Internet access and the fragile infrastructure of rural areas, our study contributes an empirical understanding of digital platform-as-infrastructure - short video-sharing platforms (SVSPs) in rural China.
Through semi-structured interviews with 26 rural users including content creators and regular users, we elaborate on their practices, experiences, and perceptions of SVSPs.
We foreground that SVSPs have reshaped rural people's daily routines and enhanced their self-worth and identity, which in turn led to deeper and more sustained engagement with these platforms. We then situate our findings within the broader context of platform-as-infrastructure, discussing how rural people's adoption and usage intertwine with the infrastructuralization process of SVSPs. We end by discussing how to make future platform-as-infrastructure more engaged and beneficial to rural populations, meeting their practical usage and well-being requirements.
Patient-provider communication is an important aspect of successful healthcare, as it can directly lead to positive health outcomes. Previous studies examined factors that facilitate communication between healthcare providers and patients in socially marginalized communities, especially developing countries, and applied identified factors to technology development. However, there is limited understanding of how providers work with patients from immigrant populations in a developed country. By conducting semi-structured interviews with 15 providers working with patients from an immigrant community with unique cultural characteristics, we identified providers’ effective communication strategies, including acknowledgment, community involvement, gradual care, and adaptive communication practices (i.e., adjusting the communication style). Based on our findings, we highlight cultural competence and discuss design implications for technologies to support health communication in immigrant communities. Our suggestions propose approaches for HCI researchers to identify practical, contextualized cultural competence for their health technology design.
Educational inequalities in disadvantaged areas have long been a global concern. While Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have shown great potential in addressing this issue, the unique challenges in disadvantaged areas often hinder the practical effectiveness of such technologies. This paper examines live-streaming-based dual-teacher classes (LSDC) through a qualitative study in disadvantaged regions of China. Our findings indicate that, although LSDC offers students in these regions access to high-quality educational resources, its practical implementation is fraught with challenges. Specifically, we foreground the pivotal role of local teachers in mitigating these challenges. Through a series of situated efforts, local teachers contextualize high-quality lectures to the local classroom environment, ensuring the expected educational outcomes. Based on our findings, we argue that greater recognition and support for the situational practices of local teachers is essential for fostering a more equitable, sustainable, and scalable technology-driven educational model in disadvantaged areas.
While digital contact tracing has been extensively studied in Western contexts, its relevance and application in Africa remain largely unexplored. This study focuses on Kenya and Côte d’Ivoire to uncover user perceptions and inform the design of culturally resonant contact tracing technologies. Utilizing a wearable proximity sensor as a technology probe, we conducted field studies with healthcare workers and community members in rural areas through interviews (𝑁 = 19) and participatory design workshops (𝑁 = 72). Our findings identify critical barriers to adoption, including low awareness, widespread misconceptions, and social stigma. The study emphasizes the need for culturally sensitive and discreet wearables and advocates for awareness campaigns over mandates to foster adoption. Our work addresses the unique needs of Kenyan and Ivorian populations, offering vital design recommendations and insights to guide designers and policymakers in enhancing digital contact tracing adoption across Africa.
Unsustainable behaviors are challenging to prevent due to their
long-term, often unclear consequences. Serious games offer a promising solution by creating artificial environments where players can immediately experience the outcomes of their actions. To explore this potential, we developed EcoEcho, a GenAI-powered game leveraging multimodal agents to raise sustainability awareness. These agents engage players in natural conversations, prompting them to take in-game actions that lead to visible environmental impacts. We evaluated EcoEcho using a mixed-methods approach with 23 participants. Results show a significant increase in intended sustainable
behaviors post-game, although attitudes towards sustainability had only marginal effects, suggesting that in-game actions likely can motivate intended real world behaviors despite similar opinions on sustainability. This finding highlights multimodal agents and
action-consequence mechanics to effectively raising sustainability awareness and the potential of motivating real-world behavioral change.
It is pivotal for patients to receive accurate health information, diagnoses, and timely treatments. However, in China, the significant imbalanced doctor-to-patient ratio intensifies the information and power asymmetries in doctor-patient relationships. Health information-seeking, which enables patients to collect information from sources beyond doctors, is a potential approach to mitigate these asymmetries. While HCI research predominantly focuses on common chronic conditions, our study focuses on specialized disorders, which are often familiar to specialists but not to general practitioners and the public. With Hemifacial Spasm (HFS) as an example, we aim to understand patients' health information and top-tier medical resource seeking journeys in China. Through interviews with three neurosurgeons and 12 HFS patients from rural and urban areas, and applying Actor-Network Theory, we provide empirical insights into the roles, interactions, and workflows of various actors in the health information-seeking network. We also identified five strategies patients adopted to mitigate asymmetries and access top-tier medical resources, illustrating these strategies as subnetworks within the broader health information-seeking network and outlining their advantages and challenges.
Using smartphone apps during crises is well-established, proving critical for efficient crisis response. However, such apps become futile without an Internet connection, which is a common issue during crises. The ongoing 6G standardization explores the capability to provide local cellular connectivity for areas cut off from the Internet in crises. This paper introduces to the HCI community the concept of cellular island connectivity in isolated areas, promising a seamless transition from normal operation to island operation with local-only cellular connectivity. It presents findings from a survey (N = 857) among adult smartphone users from major German cities regarding their smartphone usage preferences in this model. Results show a shift in app demand, with users favoring general-purpose apps over dedicated crisis apps in specific scenarios. We prioritize smartphone services based on their criticality, distinguishing between apps essential for crisis response and those supporting routines. Our findings provide operators, developers, and authorities insights into making user-centric design decisions for implementing island-ready 6G communication.