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Multidisciplinary design studio leveraging MIT technical and business skills

ICT4D is a design studio course in which students learn about, and work on, applications of information and communication technologies (ICT) for use in developing countries and underserved communities. Students work in multidisciplinary teams on term-long projects in collaboration with community partners, field practitioners, and experts in relevant fields. They will be expected to leverage hands-on technical skills in both mobile and fixed digital technologies together with social insight in order to address relevant development problems in areas such as health, microfinance, entrepreneurship/economic innovation, education, and civic activism/people empowerment. Emphasis will be placed on projects aiming to serve actual underserved communities (through international project partner organizations). Students with technically viable, sustainable projects may apply to obtain funding for travel and stay in their target communities, in order to truly understand the constraints faced when designing for developing countries.

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Course Goals

  • To understand the impact that ICTs can have in low-income communities in developing countries
  • To learn to design, implement, and apply ICTs that are technically appropriate and socially informed, so as to enable true and sustainable adoption
  • To practice creative design in an extreme, real-world context
  • To learn evaluation methods and metrics for the impact of ICT projects on the ground
  • To help shape the vision of how connectivity can bring about social and economic improvement for low-income people, in qualitatively new ways

Instructors

Course Assistants

The course staff can be contacted at ict4dinstructors@mit.edu.

Projects and Partners