Understanding and Designing for Intermediated Information Tasks in India
IEEE Pervasive Computing
Sustainable interaction design: invention & disposal, renewal & reuse
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Wii all play: the console game as a computational meeting place
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
On the Absence of Obsolescence
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
An exploratory study of unsupervised mobile learning in rural India
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Where there's a will there's a way: mobile media sharing in urban india
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Mapping the landscape of sustainable HCI
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Examining appropriation, re-use, and maintenance for sustainability
CHI '10 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
ICTD'09 Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Information and communication technologies and development
Improving literacy in rural India: cellphone games in an after-school program
ICTD'09 Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Information and communication technologies and development
Practices in the creative reuse of e-waste
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
User acceptance of hedonic information systems
MIS Quarterly
Cutting Chai, Jugaad, and Here Pheri: towards UbiComp for a global community
Personal and Ubiquitous Computing
Repair worlds: maintenance, repair, and ICT for development in rural Namibia
Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work
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One consequence of rapid advances in computer technology is the obsolescence of hundreds of millions of computers each year. This paper explores strategies for increasing the reuse of outdated computers through an investigation of an 8-bit home computer that is still popular in developing countries. We observed the use of the computers in 16 households in Ahmedabad and Bangalore, India in order to gain insight into the contextual factors that support the continued popularity of the device. While most computers become obsolete in less than a decade, this 30-year-old computer technology remains useful because it provides exciting, multi-user family entertainment. While having minimal processing power and virtually no connectivity, the 8-bit computer supports input and output channels that are especially suited for co-located social game play. In contrast, PCs are primarily designed for individual use. Therefore, we offer low-cost design recommendations that would enable outdated PCs to support greater shared use and increased utility within the constrained material context of low-income households. These simple interventions, if adopted by computer refurbishment industries, have the potential to significantly extend the useful lifespan of PCs.