Exploring Women's Everyday Mobile Phone Experiences in Nairobi, Kenya

Abstract This article focuses on a range of Kenyan women, and their everyday experiences with mobile phones. We use our qualitative findings to broaden understanding of affordability, mobility and ease of use—design themes which underlie the motives for developing mobile phone applications in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Information and Communications Technology for Development (ICT4D). We find that studying women's routine interactions with their mobile devices is useful for re-examining these themes, and for discovering new ones, including the importance of trust within mobile communication and the emotional significance women attribute to mobile devices. We then discuss the practical implications of our research, and argue that technologists should develop interventions that target Kenyan women's everyday technology problems, rather than (as is traditional) focusing on interventions meant to improve their socioeconomic conditions. We also comment on the role of feminist theory in the design of these interventions.