Re: [change] Special Change Seminar **Wednesday 10:30-11:30**

[Matthew Johnson]

Livestream link available here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLH2dYUkDqg

On Wed, Dec 4, 2019 at 10:31 AM Matthew Johnson 
wrote:

> Reminder that this will begin in 5 minutes, in CSE2-371!
>
> On Mon, Dec 2, 2019 at 8:03 PM Matthew Johnson 
> wrote:
>
>> Hello!
>>
>> We will have Josh Hug from UC Berkeley joining us this week for a special
>> change seminar on Wednesday at 10:30 in CSE2-371. (There will not be a
>> speaker on Tuesday.)
>>
>> We hope to see you all there, but if you can’t make it we will send out a
>> livestream link before the talk on Wednesday as well!
>>
>> *Embedding Social Impact Awareness into Introductory CS Education*
>>
>> *Abstract*
>> Computer science and data science education provide our students with
>> tremendous power and responsibility immediately after graduation. Many of
>> our graduates find themselves embedded in organizations like Facebook,
>> Google, and Amazon that shape the destinies of billions of people around
>> the world. As university instructors, we do a great job providing the
>> technical foundation for our students' future careers, but I believe that
>> we could do a much better job helping students chart the broader narrative
>> arcs of their lives.
>>
>> Berkeley has long had a dedicated Social Implications of Computing
>> Course. In this class, we discuss the impacts of computing on all aspects
>> of society, and have students discuss and reflect on some of the big
>> ethical challenges faced by technical workers and entrepreneurs, e.g. free
>> policies on social media platforms. Recently, we have begun to integrate
>> such bigger picture discussions into our technical coursework. In this
>> talk, I will describe these efforts to integrate professional development,
>> career goal reflection, and ethics into three core technical courses in UC
>> Berkeley's CS and Data Science Majors, as well as the challenges we've
>> faced along the way.
>>
>> *Bio*
>> Josh Hug is an Associate Teaching Professor in Computer Science at UC
>> Berkeley. He completed his PhD in EECS at UC Berkeley in 2011, with a
>> primary focus on reverse engineering of bacterial signal processing systems
>> and bacterial decision making and a minor focus in education. After
>> Berkeley, he taught at Princeton from 2011-2014, where he helped develop
>> the Princeton Algorithms MOOC on Coursera. He joined the Berkeley EECS
>> faculty in 2014. He most frequently teaches Data Structures, Data Science,
>> and the Social Implications of Computing, and is the Equity and Inclusion
>> Officer for CS undergraduates. His primary research interest is in learning
>> at scale, especially tools and social structures for supporting struggling
>> students. Before UC Berkeley, he was born, raised, and went to college in
>> Texas where it was very hot and there were many terrible bugs. Prior to his
>> time in the Lone Star State, he was a dispersion of random molecules,
>> unassembled into any greater being.
>> ___
>> change mailing list
>> change@change.washington.edu
>> https://changemm.cs.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/change
>>
> ___
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Re: [change] Special Change Seminar **Wednesday 10:30-11:30**

[Matthew Johnson]

Reminder that this will begin in 5 minutes, in CSE2-371!

On Mon, Dec 2, 2019 at 8:03 PM Matthew Johnson 
wrote:

> Hello!
>
> We will have Josh Hug from UC Berkeley joining us this week for a special
> change seminar on Wednesday at 10:30 in CSE2-371. (There will not be a
> speaker on Tuesday.)
>
> We hope to see you all there, but if you can’t make it we will send out a
> livestream link before the talk on Wednesday as well!
>
> *Embedding Social Impact Awareness into Introductory CS Education*
>
> *Abstract*
> Computer science and data science education provide our students with
> tremendous power and responsibility immediately after graduation. Many of
> our graduates find themselves embedded in organizations like Facebook,
> Google, and Amazon that shape the destinies of billions of people around
> the world. As university instructors, we do a great job providing the
> technical foundation for our students' future careers, but I believe that
> we could do a much better job helping students chart the broader narrative
> arcs of their lives.
>
> Berkeley has long had a dedicated Social Implications of Computing Course.
> In this class, we discuss the impacts of computing on all aspects of
> society, and have students discuss and reflect on some of the big ethical
> challenges faced by technical workers and entrepreneurs, e.g. free policies
> on social media platforms. Recently, we have begun to integrate such bigger
> picture discussions into our technical coursework. In this talk, I will
> describe these efforts to integrate professional development, career goal
> reflection, and ethics into three core technical courses in UC Berkeley's
> CS and Data Science Majors, as well as the challenges we've faced along the
> way.
>
> *Bio*
> Josh Hug is an Associate Teaching Professor in Computer Science at UC
> Berkeley. He completed his PhD in EECS at UC Berkeley in 2011, with a
> primary focus on reverse engineering of bacterial signal processing systems
> and bacterial decision making and a minor focus in education. After
> Berkeley, he taught at Princeton from 2011-2014, where he helped develop
> the Princeton Algorithms MOOC on Coursera. He joined the Berkeley EECS
> faculty in 2014. He most frequently teaches Data Structures, Data Science,
> and the Social Implications of Computing, and is the Equity and Inclusion
> Officer for CS undergraduates. His primary research interest is in learning
> at scale, especially tools and social structures for supporting struggling
> students. Before UC Berkeley, he was born, raised, and went to college in
> Texas where it was very hot and there were many terrible bugs. Prior to his
> time in the Lone Star State, he was a dispersion of random molecules,
> unassembled into any greater being.
> ___
> change mailing list
> change@change.washington.edu
> https://changemm.cs.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/change
>
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[change] Special Change Seminar **Wednesday 10:30-11:30**

[Matthew Johnson]

Hello!

We will have Josh Hug from UC Berkeley joining us this week for a special
change seminar on Wednesday at 10:30 in CSE2-371. (There will not be a
speaker on Tuesday.)

We hope to see you all there, but if you can’t make it we will send out a
livestream link before the talk on Wednesday as well!

*Embedding Social Impact Awareness into Introductory CS Education*

*Abstract*
Computer science and data science education provide our students with
tremendous power and responsibility immediately after graduation. Many of
our graduates find themselves embedded in organizations like Facebook,
Google, and Amazon that shape the destinies of billions of people around
the world. As university instructors, we do a great job providing the
technical foundation for our students' future careers, but I believe that
we could do a much better job helping students chart the broader narrative
arcs of their lives.

Berkeley has long had a dedicated Social Implications of Computing Course.
In this class, we discuss the impacts of computing on all aspects of
society, and have students discuss and reflect on some of the big ethical
challenges faced by technical workers and entrepreneurs, e.g. free policies
on social media platforms. Recently, we have begun to integrate such bigger
picture discussions into our technical coursework. In this talk, I will
describe these efforts to integrate professional development, career goal
reflection, and ethics into three core technical courses in UC Berkeley's
CS and Data Science Majors, as well as the challenges we've faced along the
way.

*Bio*
Josh Hug is an Associate Teaching Professor in Computer Science at UC
Berkeley. He completed his PhD in EECS at UC Berkeley in 2011, with a
primary focus on reverse engineering of bacterial signal processing systems
and bacterial decision making and a minor focus in education. After
Berkeley, he taught at Princeton from 2011-2014, where he helped develop
the Princeton Algorithms MOOC on Coursera. He joined the Berkeley EECS
faculty in 2014. He most frequently teaches Data Structures, Data Science,
and the Social Implications of Computing, and is the Equity and Inclusion
Officer for CS undergraduates. His primary research interest is in learning
at scale, especially tools and social structures for supporting struggling
students. Before UC Berkeley, he was born, raised, and went to college in
Texas where it was very hot and there were many terrible bugs. Prior to his
time in the Lone Star State, he was a dispersion of random molecules,
unassembled into any greater being.
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[change] No Change Seminar Today (Happy Thanksgiving!)

[Matthew Johnson]

Hi Folks,
Just a reminder that there will be no Change Seminar today!
-mj
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[change] Fwd: [Escience_bbl] Fwd: [Csde_affil] Zack Almquist to speak on Disaster Maps and Displace Populations on Oct. 18

[Matthew Johnson]

Forwarded with permission. This looks like an interesting talk with a
member of Facebook's data science team looking at disaster mapping and
recovery, hosted by CSDE.
Cheers,
-Matt J.

-- Forwarded message -
From: Sarah A Stone 
Date: Mon, Oct 14, 2019 at 10:08 AM
Subject: [Escience_bbl] Fwd: [Csde_affil] Zack Almquist to speak on
Disaster Maps and Displace Populations on Oct. 18
To: 


Please join us for next week’s talk by Zack Almquist on Disaster Maps and
Displaced Populations.  Dr. Almquist is a research scientist and
demographer at Facebook.
Population Research Discovery Seminars
Disaster Maps and a Survey Comparison of Displaced Populations in the
Cyclone Fani Region 6 Months after Landfall

Zack Almquist, Research Scientist, Demography and Survey Sciences Group,
Facebook

10/18/2019
12:30-1:30 PM PT
121 Raitt Hall 
--

Zack Almquist is a Research Scientist in the Demography and Survey Sciences
group at Facebook. From 2013-2018 he was an Assistant Professor of
Sociology and Statistics at the University of Minnesota. In 2017-2018 he
was a Visiting Scholar at the Graduate School of Education at Stanford
University. Almquist’s research interests include social network analysis,
big data, computational social sciences, mathematical sociology, spatial
analysis, demography, sociology of education, environmental policy, public
health, and human judgment and decision-making. His main research focus is
on understanding, modeling, and predicting the effects that space
(geography) and time have on human interaction (e.g., communication,
friendship, mentorship, needle sharing, etc.) and social processes (e.g.,
information passing, knowledge acquisition, skill development, disease
transmission, etc.).


Sara Curran 
Director
Center for Studies in Demography & Ecology 
Section Editor, Global Perspectives 

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-- 
Sarah A. Stone, PhD
Interim Director | eScience Institute
Executive Director | eScience Institute
Campus Box 351570
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195

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[change] Fwd: [dub] Research volunteers for Impact Innovation Challenge

[Matthew Johnson]

-- Forwarded message -
From: Frankie O'Rourke 
Date: Thu, Mar 7, 2019 at 7:00 PM
Subject: [dub] Research volunteers for Impact Innovation Challenge
To: 


Hello all!

Looking for research volunteers to help develop problem statements for a
spring social-good hackathon. Here's more info:

Impact++, UW's tech for social good RSO, is hosting the Impact Innovation
Challenge on May 4th, a social impact hackathon addressing the issues of
homelessness
& housing and healthcare & safety.  The event will focus on
developing solutions to the challenges faced by Seattle organizations that
are actively working to resolve these issues.

Research volunteers are responsible for researching these issues and
compiling problem statements for event attendees.  We are looking for
communicative team members who care about:

- engaging with community organizations
- listening, trusting others' experiences, and asking questions to learn
- recognizing privilege, sharing airspace, and valuing equity
- learning, growing, and collaborating with empathy, humility, and no savior
complex

More details and interest form:
https://www.google.com/url?q=http://tinyurl.com/SIHRG2019=D=1551741320312000=AFQjCNEysQVvQqxaNpCaYBh39E9Y7Luq4Q

If you're interested or have any questions/feedback, please email me or
reach out by submitting the interest form.

-- 
*Frankie O'Rourke*
Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering
University of Washington, class of 2020
frank...@uw.edu

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[change] Fwd: [dub] Design project idea

[Matthew Johnson]

If anyone is interested in working on language and translation, this could
be an interesting project with large general benefit!
-Matt J.

-- Forwarded message -
From: Emily M. Bender 
Date: Thu, Dec 13, 2018 at 18:36
Subject: [dub] Design project idea
To: 


Dear all,

I have an idea I'd like to pursue which I think requires collaboration
between someone with expertise in design (especially UI design) and a
computational linguist (like me!). This is just a quick sketch of the idea,
because I'd like to know if this appeals to anyone on this list. Basically,
the problem I'd like to tackle is the way that certain NLP technology makes
opaque both the source of its information and its level of uncertainty. I
think this is a contributing factor to problems like this one:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/24/facebook-palestine-israel-translates-good-morning-attack-them-arrest

I think one possible (partial) solution here is to find a way to make that
information visible to naive users. I know that when I approach machine
translation systems, for example, I bring a lot of skepticism about the
results based on what I know about how the systems work and how translation
works in general. What I'd like to explore is whether it's possible to
expose information about the system in the right way to engender similar
skepticism in non-linguist users.

Does this pique anyone's interest?

Emily

-- 
Emily M. Bender
Professor, Department of Linguistics
University of Washington
Twitter: @emilymbender
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[change] Fwd: Google AI Impact Challenge

[Matthew Johnson]

FYI, for those interested in AI for social impact.

-- Forwarded message -
From: Elise deGoede Dorough 
Date: Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 3:12 PM
Subject: Google AI Impact Challenge
To: cs-grads - Mailing List , <
vgr...@cs.washington.edu>


Hi all -

I’m writing to let you know that Google recently launched the Google AI
Impact Challenge
,
an open call for nonprofits, academics, and social enterprises around the
world to apply with proposals for how they could use AI to help address
some of the world’s greatest social challenges.

Google will help selected organizations bring their proposals to life with
coaching from Google’s AI experts, Google.org grant funding from a $25
million pool, credits and consulting from Google Cloud, inclusion in a
Google Launchpad Accelerator cohort, and more.

We’re looking for ideas across a spectrum of social impact domains and
levels of technical expertise. To help organizations learn more about AI as
they brainstorm ideas, we've posted an educational guide
 on AI with an introduction
to the technology, online resources and trainings to get started, and case
study examples.

I wanted to be sure to let you know and to encourage you to share this with
your networks. Applications are due on January 22 deadline.

Finally, please help spread the word to your social media networks.

Best,

Sepi.
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[change] Fwd: TSAS Call for Papers: Special issue on Urban Mobility: Algorithms and Systems

[Matthew Johnson]

Potentially interesting to members of this community: ACM is doing a
special Transactions issue addressing spatial algorithms and systems, with
an emphasis on things like urban mobility and last mile communication
networks.
Cheers,
-Matt J.
-- Forwarded message -
From: Walid G. Aref, ACM TSAS Editor-in-Chief 
Date: Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 7:00 AM
Subject: TSAS Call for Papers: Special issue on Urban Mobility: Algorithms
and Systems
To: 



ACM Transactions on Spatial
Algorithms and Systems
*Special issue on Urban Mobility: Algorithms and Systems *

Guest Editor
Dr. Sreenivas Gollapudi, Google

--

*Aim and Scope *

Urban Mobility deals with movement of passengers and goods in the highly
complex urban setting. This is becoming increasingly critical as we march
toward the smart city era. The goal of research is to advance the
state-of-the-art on Intelligent Transportation Systems in cities where the
challenges multiply from noisy signals, highly dynamic traffic events
resulting from changing demands, closures and accidents, multiple modes of
transport, personalized preferences, and many traffic movements, e.g.,
commute, personal, touristic, services, etc.

This special issue intends to bring together transdisciplinary researchers
and practitioners working in topics from multiple areas, e.g., Data Mining,
Machine Learning, Algorithms, Numerical Optimization, Public Transport,
City Planning, and Traffic Engineering among others. The ultimate goal of
this venue is to evaluate not only the theoretical contributions of the
data-driven methodology proposed in each research work, but also its
potential deployment/impact as well as its advances with respect to the
State-of-the-Art/State-of-the-Practice in the domains of the related
applications.

This special issue on *Urban Mobility: Algorithms and Systems* will be
published in ACM Transactions on Spatial Algorithms and Systems (TSAS)

.

*Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):*


   - Ride sharing platforms
   - Object tracking
   - Multi-modal transport
   - Last mile connectivity
   - Dynamic routing algorithms
   - Scalable routing engines
   - Incentives for congestion routing
   - Trajectory analysis (dealing with quality and uncertainty)
   - Traffic light management
   - Spatial user behavior characterization
   - Geospatial prediction
   - Similarity measures for geospatial data
   - Location privacy, data sharing and security
   - Web and real-time applications
   - Mobile systems and vehicular ad hoc networks
   - Spatial data structures and algorithms


The journal welcomes articles on any of the above topics or closely related
disciplines in the context of urban mobility. TSAS will encourage original
submissions that have not been published or submitted in any form
elsewhere, and submissions which may significantly contribute to opening up
new and potentially important areas of research and development. TSAS will
publish outstanding papers that are "major value-added extensions" of
papers previously published in conferences. Such extensions should
contribute at least 30% new original work. In this case, authors will need
to identify in a separate document the list of extensions over their
previously published paper. For more information, please visit
https://tsas.acm.org/authors.cfm or contact the special-issue guest-editor
at sgoll...@google.com.

*Important Dates*

Dec 15, 2018: Deadline for submissions of full length papers
Feb 15, 2018: Notification of initial reviews
Mar 15, 2018: Deadline for revisions
May 01, 2019: Notification of final reviews
Jun 01, 2019: Submission of final camera-ready manuscripts
July 01 2019: Expected publication

--
UNSUBSCRIBE

to stop receiving emails about publishing in ACM journals.

Association for Computing Machinery, Two Penn Plaza, Suite 701, New York,
NY 10121-0701, USA
Copyright 2018, ACM, Inc.
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[change] No Change Today (Planning Meeting)

[Matthew Johnson]

Hello Change!
Welcome back to a beautiful autumn day! The Change seminar will be
happening Tuesdays at noon as usual this quarter, featuring a mix of talks
and activities related to technology and social good. We'll be taking a
break this week though to allow the coordinating team to meet in person and
plan out the rest of the year. If you're interested in being involved with
the administration of Change, let me know, otherwise we'll plan on seeing
you next week!
With Gratitude,
-Matt Johnson & the Change admin team
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[change] Thursday 12:00 in CSE305: Ihsan Qazi - Understanding Internet Access in the Developing World

[Matthew Johnson]

Understanding Internet Access in the Developing World
Ihsan Qazi (LUMS)
Host: Anderson
Thursday, April 12, 2018, 12:00 pm
CSE305
Maps and directions 
Abstract

In this talk, I will present my recent research on Internet access in
developing countries. In the first half of my talk, I will present a study
on the characteristics of mobile devices in developing regions. Using a
dataset of 0.5 million subscribers from one of the largest cellular
operators in Pakistan, I will present an analysis of cell phones being used
based on different features (e.g., CPU, memory, and cellular interface).
Our analysis reveals potential device-level bottlenecks for Internet
access, which can inform infrastructure design for improving mobile web
performance. (This work appeared in ACM IMC 2016) Another accessibility
challenge in developing countries is the rise in Internet censorship
events, which can have a substantial impact on various stakeholders in the
Internet ecosystem (e.g., users, content providers, ISPs, and advertisers).
In the second half of my talk, I will discuss how Internet censorship poses
an economic threat to online advertising, which plays an essential role in
enabling the free Web by allowing publishers to monetize their services.
Then I will describe a system we designed that enables relevant ads while
retaining the effectiveness of censorship resistance tools (e.g., Tor).
(This work appeared in ACM HotNets 2017)
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[change] Fwd: [Researchers] Call for Papers: 2nd Workshop on Mechanism Design for Social Good at EC '18

[Matthew Johnson]

Of possible interest to folks with work on economics.

-- Forwarded message -
From: Kira Goldner 
Date: Thu, Mar 22, 2018 at 12:32
Subject: [Researchers] Call for Papers: 2nd Workshop on Mechanism Design
for Social Good at EC '18
To: , 
CC: Rediet Abebe 


Hi everyone,

I'm co-organizing the second workshop on Mechanism Design for Social Good
 this year at EC
, the primary conference in the EconCS community
(the intersection of theoretical CS and economics).

We're seeking paper submissions broadly.  If you have *research with a
social good component *that might inspire *work on algorithms and
incentives schemes*, we would love to have your submission!

Examples include: work on the developing world, privacy, or really any
domain where algorithms can be used to better align incentives and the
objective is to improve societal good or mitigate inequality.  See the call
for papers for more examples.

Alternatively, *if you're on any email lists where this might be relevant,
I would appreciate your distributing the call for papers.*  (This might
include in communities like computer science, economics, operations
research, sociology, public policy, etc.)

Thank you!
Kira

-

Subject: Call for Papers: 2nd Workshop on Mechanism Design for Social Good
at EC '18

The 2nd Workshop on Mechanism Design for Social Good
 will be taking place at this
year's ACM Conference on Economics and Computation at Cornell University on
June 22, 2018.

The goal of the workshop is to highlight work where insights from
algorithms, optimization, and mechanism design have the potential to impact
social good. In particular, we will focus on the theme of *improving access
to opportunity*. The workshop will feature keynote presentations focusing
on economic inequality, online labor markets, bias and discrimination. We
encourage submissions addressing these and other domains, such as housing,
healthcare, education, civic participation, privacy, and the developing
world. The workshop aims to showcase ongoing exemplary work on these topics
and to highlight exciting opportunities for future research. Submissions of
all types are encouraged, including theoretical or applied mechanism design
work, research that solves algorithmic or optimization problems, and
empirical research.

Topics of interest for this workshop include but *are not limited to*:

   - redistributive mechanisms to improve access to opportunity
   - economic inequality and intergenerational mobility
   - mitigating unequal economic outcomes in online labor markets
   - detecting existence or causes of exploitative market behavior in
   online labor markets
   - the design of algorithms that mitigate bias and improve diversity
   - allocating low-income housing assistance
   - allocating health insurance funds, managing access to healthcare, and
   pricing medical treatments
   - design of health insurance markets
   - evaluating students, teachers, or schools
   - design of transportation systems
   - market regulations for data and privacy
   - algorithmic solutions to encourage civic participation
   - evaluating fairness in electoral representation

Submissions will be evaluated on the following criteria:

   - Quality of submission as measured by accuracy and clarity of
   exposition.
   - Relevance to this workshop and its theme of improving access to
   opportunity.
   - Novelty of domain: we particularly encourage work on applications that
   have been less explored within the EC community.
   - Potential for follow-up work in the EC community: those from other
   communities who feel they fit this criterion are especially encouraged to
   submit.

Authors may submit papers that are already under review or accepted in
conferences or journals. However, papers accepted to this year’s EC will
not be considered for presentation at the workshop. There will be no
published proceedings.

Authors should upload a PDF of their paper to EasyChair. There are no
specific formatting instructions. Submissions may either be working papers
or papers that have been published at an established conference or journal.
In the latter case, please include a citation on EasyChair.  In addition to
the PDF, authors are asked to upload a 200-250 word description onto
EasyChair summarizing the results and their relevance to the workshop. The
committee reserves the right not to review all the technical details of
submissions.

*Important Information:  *

   - Submission Deadline: April 21, 2018, 11:59pm AoE
   - Submission page: EasyChair
   
   - Notification: May 16, 2018
   - Workshop Date: June 22, 2018

*Organizing Committee:*

Program Chairs:

   - Rediet Abebe , Cornell 

[change] UW Change Seminar 10/17: An Exploration of Smartphone based Mobile Money Applications in Pakistan & An Investigation of Phone Upgrades in Remote Community Cellular Networks

[Matthew Johnson]

Please join us for the Change Seminar this week on *Tuesday 10/17/2017 in
CSE 203 from 12-1 pm*. We will be covering two shorter conference style
talks this week, so please try and arrive on time!

*Who:* Samia Ibtasam (UW CSE)
*What: **An Exploration of Smartphone based Mobile Money Applications in
Pakistan*
*Who: *Kushal Shah (UW CSE)
*What: **An Investigation of Phone Upgrades in Remote Community Cellular
Networks*
*When: *Tuesday Oct 17
*Where:* 12pm in CSE 203 (Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science and
Engineering)

*Kushal: An Investigation of Phone Upgrades in Remote Community Cellular
Networks* In the last decade, billions of people worldwide have upgraded
from basic 2G feature phones to data-enabled 4G smartphones. In most cases,
people upgrade in areas with 4G coverage (typically cities and large
towns), but increasingly, people choose to upgrade in areas that only have
2G coverage or no cellular coverage at all. This counterintuitive behavior
– upgrading your phone despite living in an area that does not actively
support many of the features of that new device – is the focus of this
work. We investigate the rates and reasons for 4G upgrades and adoption in
two extremely remote areas in Indonesia and the Philippines. Our
mixed-methods approach combines the quantitative analysis of several years
of mobile phone registration logs with the qualitative analysis of multiple
interviews in one of these communities. *Bio:* Kushal is a Masters student
in the Information School at UW. He is working as a Research Assistant with
the ICTD lab to analyze different datasets to find ways to improve
Financial Services for the Poor. He also works on projects in other domains
such as Telecom Connectivity, Crisis Informatics and Urban Computing.
--- *Samia:
An Exploration of Smartphone based Mobile Money Applications in Pakistan*
Worldwide, two billion people remain unbanked, the majority of whom reside
in resource-constrained environments. While banks have limited reach due to
high overhead costs of physical expansion, the global increase in mobile
penetration has created opportunities to serve the unbanked using
mobile-based Digital Financial Services (DFS). However, access to mobile
applications alone is insufficient to ensure their trial, adoption, or
continued usage. In this paper, we report a three-phase learnability
evaluation (N=118) of smartphone-based mobile wallet applications conducted
in Pakistan. We discuss ways in which previous exposure or domain knowledge
improve learnability, and we recommend that metrics for learnability should
include effectiveness and help sought, independent of usability. We also
identify DFS adoption opportunities such as user readiness, interface
improvements, and women's independence. All of these opportunities stem
from awareness and understanding of relevance, which in our case occurred
as a consequence of exposure to the application under evaluation. *Bio: *
Samia is a second a second year Ph.D. student in the Paul G. Allen School
of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington and is
advised by Richard Anderson. Previously, she worked as the founding
co-director of Innovations for Poverty Alleviation Lab (IPAL) at
Information Technology University, Pakistan and taught courses like DLab:
Global Development, Human Centered Design, Design thinking, and Technology
for Global Development. She has been working as a researcher in using
Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) since
2010. She started her work with speech interfaces for low-literate users
with Umar Saif, Roni Rosenfeld and Agha Ali Raza. At IPAL, she worked to
design Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health (MNCH) solutions including
information systems, diagnosis applications etc. She also worked with
Government of Punjab, Pakistan to redesign the Immunization card and
creating digital health records for the province of Punjab. Currently, she
is using her knowledge in Human-Computer Interaction to work with unbanked
to design and adapt financial technologies and to expand the financial
inclusion. She is Acumen Fund Regional Fellow for 2015 and sometimes tweets
at @SamiaRazaq

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