Methods for re-imagining social tools in new contexts

Digital exclusion refers to a lack of access to technological facilities, including the blossoming arena of social interaction. People without mobile phones or PCs cannot access email, SMS or social networking websites; this includes many groups, such as the elderly, who can become vulnerable without good social contact. These people could partake in such interactions if we could enable multimodal access to social networks through a wider variety of communication channels (for example, television and telephone). This poster describes how we have used methods from HCI and Social Theory to better understand social technology