CityReads│How to Develop Digital Apps for Low-Income Workers?

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How to Develop Digital Apps for Low-Income Workers?

We need more digital Apps that meet the needs and constraints of low-wage workers to improve their work and life.

Saskia Sassen, 2017.Digitization And Work: Potentials and Challenges in Low-Wage Labor Markets, Open Society.

Source: http://saskiasassen.com/PDFs/Digitization%20And%20Work%20Potentials%20and%20Challenges%20in%20Low-Wage%20Labor%20Markets.pdf

Digitization has become a way of restructuring not only the workspace but also the living space of these workers. It is inconceivable today that workers can or does simply leave it all behind when closing the door of his/her office for the day—on those few days every week when she/he might actually work in the office.

However, most digital applications have been geared to the middle classes and high-end workers and households. Very little has been developed to meet the needs for low-income workers, their families, and their neighborhoods.

The data indicate that most of the low-income workers and their families have access to digital apps, and are willing to spend some money on acquiring apps. We also know that access to digital apps is overwhelmingly through their phones–especially Android phones, rather than through email or iPhones–which is another constraint that leaves many low-income potential users of digital apps at a disadvantage. We need more innovations that meet the needs and constraints of low-wage workers.

Digitization can enhance the work life of low-income workers by addressing the specific needs of these workers at their workspace and in their neighborhoods. Low-wage workers can gain from the development of digitized apps and tools that address their needs

Transforming The Neighborhood Into A Social Back-Up System

What would most enable low-wage workers is the extension of digitization to the larger space within which these workers operate: not only the workplace narrowly understood, but also, and very importantly, their neighborhood.

Digitization can help transform the neighborhood into a social back-up system. The home and the neighborhood have long been support spaces for the working class. Today, the workspace and the neighborhood are underperforming when it comes to support, mostly due to changes in the condition of low-wage workers. Digitization can help rebuild some strength in these spaces. For instance, in case of trouble (a sick child of a parent who is at work, police violence, etc.) a digital application on all neighborhood residents' phones can be a call for quick deployment of neighbors, grandmothers, hair dressers, shop-keepers, and other somewhat stationary people. This can also become a first step in a trajectory towards greater neighborhood integration and expanded use of diverse digital capabilities.

The lack of digital apps that meet the needs of low-income workers and neighborhoods is an added disadvantage for low-wage workers, their families and their neighborhoods. For instance, it reduces their capacity to connect promptly the three of domains of their lives (work, family, neighborhood) when needed. Low-wage workers have their phones, but a telephone call is far more visible at the workplace (and likely to be seen as invasive by the boss) than clicking on an app on their phones: it will do the work of communicating if the neighborhood is part of a network.

The Underutilization Of Digital Tools And Apps In Low-Income Neighborhoods

The underutilization of digitization in the larger life-space of low-wage workers is a subject that we must address but has thus far received little attention, which stands a sharp contrast with the intense use of digitization in the work and life space of high-end workers. This digital under-utilization constructs a radical differentiation between work space and life-space (i.e. the neighborhood) for low-wage workers. This is disabling and adds to the difficulties in their daily life at work and off work

The question then is what can we do with current technologies but are not doing because of diverse reasons: lack of resources, lack of motivation, lack of interest in low-income households, individuals and localities, and so on. What is too often overlooked, is that the types of digital applications that are being developed mostly do not address the needs/limited resources of low-income workers, their households, and their neighborhoods.

Low-income individuals in the US are users of digitized devices, most especially through mobile telephones, and then particularly Android models. In one of their recent overviews, the Pew Center found that 45% of households living with less than $30K per year and 39% of those living on $30K -$50K use mobile phones as their primary way to access the internet. In poor areas of Africa, extensive use of mobile telephones by modest-income and poor women is also found. The mobile phone is what allowed these women to run their businesses, which were mostly diverse types of small-scale trading.

Low-income households and low-income workers need mobile-friendly products. The use of web solutions is at this time limited, in contrast to what is the case for high-end workers both at the workplace and at home. The available evidence shows that music and other entertainment apps are the most used by low-income individuals or members of low-income households: these are standardized mass markets to which all consumers are welcome, including low-income buyers. But most available apps and most of the new apps coming online are geared to the middle classes, not to low-income individuals, households or neighborhoods. For instance, there are long lists of apps for contacting or finding spas, high-end restaurants, and a long list of other such pricey luxuries. But there are few if any apps that give you information about a healthy food shop in a modest-to-poor income area in a city. In short, what is absent is applications that address the needs of low-income individuals and households.

Some of the Useful Apps For Low-Income Workers And Neighborhoods

Kinvolved is an application for teachers and after school program leaders that makes it easy for them to connect to parents in case of a student's lateness or absenteeism.

https://www.google.com/search? =Kinvolved++app&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiq_pGyyOLcAhVK57wKHXH8DZMQ_AUICygC&biw=1536&bih=710#imgrc=3Qaeph-qTkQTTM:

Propel, simplifies applying for government services, a notoriously time-consuming process. Now there is the option of a simple mobile enrollment application.

http://finlab.cfsinnovation.com/challenges/2015/propel/

Neat Streak, lets home cleaners communicate with clients in a quick non-obtrusive way.

https://www.behance.net/gallery/19359859/Neat-Streak

Panoply: an online intervention that replaces typical therapy involving a health professional with a crowd-sourced response to individuals with anxiety and depression. It has the added effect of mobilizing a network of people, which may be one step in a larger trajectory of support that can also become a local neighborhood network. Panoply coordinates support from crowd workers and unpaid volunteers, all of whom are trained on demand, as needed. Panoply incorporates recent advances in crowdsourcing and human computation enabling timely feedback and quality vetting.

https://www.google.com/search?q=panoply+app&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjy7ZLyyOLcAhWCXrwKHQtaAVQQ_AUICigB&biw=1536&bih=710#imgdii=706e5QUwHhBriM:&imgrc=cGzsf_9CYwABUM:

Oculus Rift, one of the fancier apps aimed at scientists or corporations, but these should also become part of the tools (and experiences!) of low-income workers and neighborhoods. Here is one that might well be great also for immigrants who have dear ones far away but need/want to be part of their education broadly understood. For instance, take a Filipino mother who is working as a nurse or a domestic worker here in the US, and has her children at home, a very common fact. An MIT Media Lab project (The Communication Of The Future Is So Real You Can Touch It) aims at going well beyond the currently remote communication options by mobilizing one's sensorial response. Currently, remote communication (including that done in working environments) is an elementary, and in that sense, incomplete experience. The app aims at experiencing “…a faraway friend's footsteps walking alongside me as we share an afternoon stroll. Different streams of interface broaden our meaning of a physical world" 

https://www.google.com/search?q=Oculus+Rift+app&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjj-ZytyeLcAhXBTrwKHQDCCygQ_AUICygC&biw=1536&bih=710#imgrc=84Gn_dFB3e5Z0M:

Interactive Telesonography, another important long-distance option is telemedicine, which for low-wage workers with constraints to their mobility given little home support, can be a major help. Or it can be used to argue the mobility constraints of low-wage workers, who may lack full time nannies, and may have elderly living at home, all of which reduces their options of leaving home.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Interactive+Tele+Sonography+app&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjNpYPtyeLcAhWKWLwKHbCyA9gQ_AUICigB&biw=1536&bih=710#imgrc=_

Apps That Can Strengthen The Collective Space

A sense of their worth in a general societal sense should become part of the experience of low-wage workers. High-end workers often are praised for adding value to our economies, for their intelligence and capacity to do complex work, and so on. Low-wage workers should also be recognized as mattering for the larger social good. The sense of self worth of workers can be enhanced by recognition from a larger social context, notably the neighborhood, and that this in turn has positive effects regarding collective initiatives at the workplace and in the neighborhood. There are diverse ways in which the worth of these workers as individuals can become a sort of collective good—meaningful to the workers themselves and to a larger community.

The Netherlands provides a good example of such recognition of worth. Its health system is based on the principle of universal care. It includes a neighborhood system as a key part of the medical apparatus. When a patient can go back home but still needs care, the immediate neighborhood is promptly alerted and designated residents (who have time, and are not ill) organize themselves to ensure 24-hour oversight: the patient will at all times be able to use a simple app to call on the neighborhood care-givers, and the latter will also make regular visits. All these care givers, but also the whole neighborhood, are recognized as being a sort of public actor contributing to the public good.

The key image is that even modest neighborhoods and modest-earning workers are immersed in spaces that collectivize specific needs of neighborhood residents.

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