Matthew Kam
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Publications by Matthew Kam (bibliography)
» 2009 «
Kam, Matthew, Mathur, Akhil, Kumar, Anuj and Canny, John (2009): Designing digital games for rural children: a study of traditional village games in India. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2009 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2009. pp. 31-40. Available online
“Low educational levels hinder economic empowerment in developing countries. We make the case that educational games can impact children in the developing world. We report on exploratory studies with three communities in North and South India to show some problems with digital games that fail to match rural children's understanding of games, to highlight that there is much for us to learn about designing games that are culturally meaningful to them. We describe 28 traditional village games that they play, based on our contextual interviews. We analyze the mechanics in these games and compare these mechanics against existing videogames to show what makes traditional games unique. Our analysis has helped us to interpret the playability issues that we observed in our exploratory studies, and informed the design of a new videogame that rural children found to be more intuitive and engaging.”
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Sambasivan, Nithya, Ho, Melissa, Kam, Matthew, Kodagoda, Neesha, Dray, Susan M., Thomas, John C., Light, Ann and Toyama, Kentaro (2009): Human-centered computing in international development. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2009 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2009. pp. 4745-4750. Available online
“This workshop continues the dialog on exploring the challenges in applying, extending, and inventing appropriate methods and contributions of Humancentered Computing (HCC) to International economic and community development, borne out of tremendously successful HCI4D workshops at CHI 2007 and 2008. The workshop aims at 1) providing a platform to discuss interaction design practices that allow for meaningful embedding of interactive systems in the cultural, infrastructural, and political settings where they will be used 2) addressing interaction design issues in developing regions, as well as areas in the developed world marginalized by poverty or other barriers. We hope to continue to extend the boundaries of the field of Human-centered Computing (HCC) by spurring on more discussion on how existing methods and practices can be adapted/ modified, and how new practices be developed, to combat.”
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» 2008 «
Kam, Matthew, Agarwal, Aishvarya, Kumar, Anuj, Lal, Siddhartha, Mathur, Akhil, Tewari, Anuj and Canny, John (2008): Designing e-learning games for rural children in India: a format for balancing learning with fun. In: Proceedings of DIS08 Designing Interactive Systems 2008. pp. 58-67. Available online
“Poor literacy remains a barrier to economic empowerment in the developing world. Of particular importance is fluency in a widely spoken "world language" such as English, which is typically a second language for these low-income learners. We make the case that mobile games on cellphones is an appropriate solution in the typical ecologies of developing regions. The challenge is to design e-learning games that are both educational and pleasurable for our target learners, who have limited familiarity with high technology. We propose the receptive-practice-activation cycle that could be used as the conceptual model for the designs. We then report how this format could be refined, based on our experiences in the field with three games that have collectively undergone nine rounds of iterations. In particular, it appears that maintaining a distinction between learning and fun to some extent is necessary for effective designs.”
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Kam, Matthew (2008): Involving local undergraduates in fieldwork. In Interactions, 15 (4) pp. 58-60
» 2007 «
Ramachandran, Divya, Kam, Matthew, Chiu, Jane, Canny, John and Frankel, James F. (2007): Social dynamics of early stage co-design in developing regions. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2007 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2007. pp. 1087-1096. Available online
“Technology arguably has the potential to play a key role in improving the lives of people in developing regions. However, these communities are not well understood and designers must thoroughly investigate possibilities for technological innovations in these contexts. We describe findings from two field studies in India and one in Uganda where we explore technological solutions in the domains of communication, microfinance and education. Two common underlying themes emerge from these studies: (1) local stakeholders can contribute cultural information relevant to design such as needs and practices through interaction with technology artifacts and (2) unique social network structures embedded within communities are crucial to the acceptance and potential adoption of technology. We end with a synthesis of the three experiences that draws some practical lessons for ICT designers to elicit meaningful feedback and participation from local stakeholders in developing regions communities.”
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Kam, Matthew, Ramachandran, Divya, Devanathan, Varun, Tewari, Anuj and Canny, John (2007): Localized iterative design for language learning in underdeveloped regions: the PACE framework. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2007 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2007. pp. 1097-1106. Available online
“Poor literacy remains a decisive barrier to the economic empowerment of many people in the developing world. Of particular importance is literacy in a widely spoken "world language" such as English, which is typically a second language for these speakers. For complex reasons, schools are often not effective as vehicles for second language learning. In this paper we explore game-like language learning on cell phones. We argue that phones are an excellent technology platform in the typical ecologies of developing countries. We present the PACE framework that is intended to support the rapid, scalable development of language learning software localized for a particular community of learners. These learners are usually skeptical of formal education and of cultural biases they encounter in learning "remote" languages in particular. Localization of content is crucial to make the language relevant to them and to encourage them to adopt it.”
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» 2006 «
Kam, Matthew, Ramachandran, Divya, Raghavan, Anand, Chiu, Jane, Sahni, Urvashi and Canny, John (2006): Practical considerations for participatory design with rural school children in underdeveloped regions: early reflections from the field. In: Proceedings of ACM IDC06: Interaction Design and Children 2006. pp. 25-32. Available online
“This paper draws on a 2-week design workshop conducted at a rural primary school in northern India to provide recommendations on carrying out participatory design with school children in rural, underdeveloped regions. From our experiences in prototyping low-tech and hi-tech English language learning games with rural student participants, we advocate that researchers build a more equal relationship that is qualitatively different from one between teachers and students, enlist local adults and children as facilitators, and explore hi-tech prototyping to inspire the best designs.”
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» 2005 «
Kam, Matthew, Wang, Jingtao, Iles, Alastair, Tse, Eric, Chiu, Jane, Glaser, Daniel, Tarshish, Orna and Canny, John (2005): Livenotes: a system for cooperative and augmented note-taking in lectures. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2005 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2005. pp. 531-540. Available online
“We describe Livenotes, a shared whiteboard system and educational practice that uses wireless communication and tablet computing to support real-time conversations within small groups of students during lectures, independent of class size. We present an interface design that enables group members to interact with one another by taking lecture notes cooperatively, as well as to augment student note-taking by providing instructor slides in the background to annotate over. Livenotes was designed to facilitate more efficient, stimulating modes of learning that other collaborative approaches do not. We report how the system impacts cooperative learning in an undergraduate class and how students interacted with background slides in the workspace. We conclude with directions for improving the system and learning practice.”
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Brewer, Eric A., Demmer, Michael J., Du, Bowei, Ho, Melissa, Kam, Matthew, Nedevschi, Sergiu, Pal, Joyojeet, Patra, Rabin K., Surana, Sonesh and Fall, Kevin R. (2005): The Case for Technology in Developing Regions. In IEEE Computer, 38 (6) pp. 25-38
Kam, Matthew, Ramachandran, Divya, Sahni, Urvashi and Canny, John F. (2005): Designing Educational Technology for Developing Regions: Some Preliminary Hypotheses. In: ICALT 2005 - Proceedings of the 5th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies 05-08 July, 2005, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. pp. 968-972. Available online
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Mar 18th, 2010
Changes to this page (author)
14 Feb 2010: Enabled abstracts to be shown on Matthew Kam's author page.17 Jun 2009: Author was edited 03 Jun 2009: Author was edited
01 Jun 2009: Author was edited
09 May 2009: Author was edited
09 May 2009: Author was edited
07 Apr 2009: Author was edited
29 Jun 2007: Author was edited
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19 Jun 2007: Author was added to the bibliography
