Aide's Aide: Bridging the Gaps
In the past decade, development of Internet technologies created a new paradigm and new opportunities for communication and information exchange. All kinds of organizations, community groups and individuals strive to realize the amazing potentials of the online collaboration and knowledge sharing; however, for some groups the modern information technology seems to pass over their lives.
An example of such ignored groups is a non-English-speaking communities that live in the United States. Usually these groups form city clusters where first and second generation of immigrants live in a close-knit setting trying to preserve the way of life they brought from their home countries. Most members know little English and have outdated professions or skills, so, they bound to accept low paying jobs inside the community. Members of such communities perceive Internet technologies as mostly irrelevant to their lives because local Internet resources are in English and Internet resources of their native country do not address their problems in the US.
For my HCI capstone project I wanted to help a Russian speaking community of practice that lives in Philadelphia and members of which work as Home Health Aides.
Design Challenge
Home Health Aide community generates and consumes a lot of information. For example, aides often need to get information for their patients about government programs, specific drugs, store coupons and discounts, etc. Since patients live in the same area, have similar lifestyles and even similar diseases, they often need similar information, so the information is duplicated for each patient by his or her aide. The aides would definitely benefit from a knowledge-based information system that would allow accumulation and storage of the information. Unfortunately, aides are mostly novice computer users, most of them are in their 50s and 60s and know little English.
The proposed Aide’s Aide website should provide instruments that would allow aides to accumulate knowledge about different aspects of their lives and work in an easy and user-friendly manner.