End-user engagement in the design of communications services: lessons from the rural Congo

Abstract

End-user engagement is considered essential when designing new socio-technical systems, but in the context of designing large-scale infrastructural systems, such as communications networks, this ideal is rarely put into practice. We examined the challenges in engaging end-users in the design of communications services, by exploring how communities from 15 villages in the rural Congo, incorporated mobile phones into their daily lives. To analyze the changes in social and cultural capital that resulted from mobile phone use, we applied Bourdieu’s capital theory. This analysis exposed the difference in perceived value of the communication services between end-users and the business owners of the infrastructure. The paper concludes by suggesting new forms of partnership with end-users in order to craft ways in which infrastructures, and related organizations and practices, can best cohere with local cultural views, specifics, beliefs, needs, or realities of concerned participants.