What is Least-First Design and why it should matter
This article introduces a principle called Least-First Design, which establishes delivering value to people with the least access to wealth and infrastructure as the top priority in technology development and delivery projects.
This design principle shares similar concerns and values as appropriate technologies, where technology is developed to be scaled and priced to suit the budget of a marginalised community, but the primary intents and propositions vary. While Least-First Design promotes sustainability and human-centred design, core to appropriate technologies, the primary objective is to influence the way mainstream technology projects are prioritised, driven and rewarded. It is proposed that this injection of empathy and awareness in our mainstream Information Communication Technology (ICT) development practices could help reduce the impact the ICT industry has on globally widening gaps in wealth and information. Secondly, taking a different perspective on viable scenarios and desirable outcomes typically leads to innovation and revealing ideas and demands that would have otherwise remain hidden.
Through my recent volunteering with a Christian charity called Dignity, supporting the development and delivery of their technology vision, the inspiration for Least-First Design was formed. Dignity’s mission is to help people know Jesus and to fight poverty together, which doesn’t immediately suggest investing in technological innovation. Furthermore, the contradiction between fighting poverty and spending funds on technology is hard to overlook in discussion. Getting to know more about Dignity and their ways of partnering with communities in places such as Sub-Saharan Africa, led me to reflect on the technology research and development projects I have been involved in over the years. The direct contributions to delivering value to those living in poverty have been marginal or non-existent.
There is a global agenda to eradicate extreme poverty where people are forced to live on less than $1.90 USD (around £1.45) per day by 2030. Recent studies show that this target will not be reached and will in fact be worsened over the next few years, should we continue demanding, spending, consuming and wasting resources. Studies also show that the middle-class continues to grow, even as the world’s poorest and most vulnerable become more displaced from society. According to the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), at least 430 million people are predicted to be living in extreme poverty by 2030, an increase of 7.5% on previous projections.
This suggests that global efforts to reduce extreme poverty are failing. In fact, ODI calculations find that, compared to 2018 figures, an additional 30 million people will be living on less than $1.90 a day by the end of the next decade. Although the data defines poverty as a lack of financial wealth, there is an understanding that poverty is more than a lack of money. It is the lack of capability and agency to pursue the things that one actually values. In short, poverty is a lack of freedom and technology can be a shackle or a key, and a blockade or a pathway.
As a technologist living and working in an economically privileged nation, it is difficult to disregard the surplus of wealth available to fund exorbitant ICT research and development projects, in comparison to what we are willing to spend and donate toward providing basic human needs for others. Our job securities and continued income increases benefit from the growth of the global ICT industry, which is estimated to grow to $6 Trillion USD by 2022, according to the International DataCorporation (IDC) 2019 forecasts (note that these forecasts have been revisited since the outbreak of COVID-19, but the implications remain the same). Our industry is outdone only by the financial services sector, consumer transport and public sector. The poor distribution of wealth and resource is the problem. Not only are the benefits and values of the ICT industry concentrated in certain cultures, communities and classes, so too are the opportunities to influence and engage.
Mirza et al. in their 2019 paper show an economic model that makes 2 significant observations regarding how technology plays a role in inequality, poverty and resource depletion, especially in societies that evolve to a stable state of a few wealthy and many poor:
- Distribution of wealth depends on how access to technology is distributed. Access to technology and infrastructure provide opportunities to earn, trade and participate in the global market, such that wealth follows technology and technology follows wealth, though the latter seems to be the predominant progression.
- Even though technology may contribute to opportunity, according to Mirza et al, access to technology may be the very mechanism that fuels resource degradation and consequently pushes most vulnerable members of society into a poverty trap.
These two observations present a conundrum when developing technology to serve or in partnership with people having less access to wealth and ICT. Firstly, if digital media is the default place for promoting and acting on opportunities, those with less ICT access are disconnected from the knowledge and capability to draw value through their own initiative. Hence the middle-class continues to grow and the wealth-to-poverty gap widens. This is also known as the digital or information divide, which has been discussed in information technology and policy academic and industrial circles since the late 1990s. Secondly, large ICT providers increasingly benefit from personal and social network information, such that uninformed users may be targeted by marketing or locked into deals that are beyond a sustainable economic level.
The key question we should ask as leaders, administrators, designers, engineers, technologists, educators, analysts and architects is, “whose needs are being served and for whom are we developing technology?” Mainstream technology roadmaps and priorities are shaped for and by the global elite, in particular those leading large corporations and technology companies. They appear to accurately predict the future and technology trends but the reality is that these predictions and trends are reflections of their internal priorities and roadmaps, as they control, dictate and fund what comes next. Technology then serves them first and foremost. Sumit Dagar sums it up well in this article, “Why are the benefits of technology scarce among those who need it most?”:
Currently, the benefits of technology are skewed towards those who can keep up, as opposed to those who need it most. Technology is designed to cater to the luxuries of ready made adopters (Sumit Dagar, 2015).
The figure below illustrates how technology priorities function in the world today, where we could divide technology users into 7 categories, based on access to wealth and ICT against their capability to adopt and effectively employ ICT technology should they have access.
While the first priority goes to the actual tech influencers and owners of tech businesses, investors and celebrity endorsement are priority number 2, enabling well-known faces and personalities to steer technology priorities. These priorities tend to highlight convenience and opulence, such that certain brands emerge as popular by association and status. In the middle is the expanding middle class — 3, 4 and 5 — who then become the largest market for technology. The middle class can be split into professional tech users (techies), who are themselves the main developers and deployers of technology, average consumers and the smaller sector of people with limited technology know-how, capability or interest due to age, occupations that don’t necessitate tech or time for tech, or special needs that have additional accessibility requirements. The final 2 sectors are area 6, which consists of people who would probably do great things with technology but are not equipped and 7, people who are neither equipped or with access to infrastructure. The group in 6 are often exploited for ideas and skills but never properly compensated as a result of living in a “lesser economy”. Many never progress beyond crowd-sourced data entry and processing jobs, which pay very little and are created as sources of cheap labour for tedious, monotonous work. Finally, those with the least access to infrastructure and the least equipped to make use of technology are completely overlooked or presented with equipment that is outdated and out of support. Otherwise, they only see technology in its post-decommissioning state in the growing landfills that end up in the poorest of nations. Electronic waste from ITC equipment is a growing, global problem.
The digital divide, the disparity of opportunity access, the risks of financial exploitation and the potential harm of e-waste summarise why we need a better way of developing and delivering technology.
The principle of Least-First Design turns the map of priorities on its head, as shown in the diagram below.
The principle then poses the following questions and challenges:
- What if from the onset we conceived technology roadmaps shaped around serving the declared needs of those with the least access to infrastructure and the least education or equipment for developing and operating technology?
- What if we empowered and ensured that those who were aspiring technologists with limited access to infrastructure would not be exploited but properly compensated and recognised?
- What if we held back mainstream release until solutions were signed-off as accessible by those who were disadvantaged?
- What if we could influence and encourage the wealthiest in society to be generous and sincerely get behind such initiatives, not just for the business incentives but because of the pure joy and need to respond to the call of compassion?
In conclusion, the principle is called Least-First and not Least-Only. This is significant, as the intent is to drive profitable innovation that can deliver value to everyone but in a more equitable manner. This could mean opening up opportunities for poorer countries and communities to lead and partner in delivering pioneering and sustainable solutions, instead of being at the mercy of corporate benevolence or afterthought. It could call for a slowing and scaling down of release cycles for technology, where the pace of redundancy and obsolescence are reduced, making way for more durable, sustainable products and less electronic waste. For charities such as Dignity, embracing the principle of Least-First Design keeps what is important upfront even when discussing technological innovation — serving people and helping to bring an end to poverty.
