Compared to other fields of research, HCI4D seems
particularly prone to risks of conflating research activity
and development practice. An economist gathering
data on, say, unemployment, is likely to be
content to collect his or her data and be done with
it. But an HCI4D researcher has often already gone
to the trouble of designing a technological artifact
as part of the research project. Why not leave that
system behind where it might continue to do good?
If the prototype seems promising, why not “scale it
up,” even if doing so may not contribute to the
originally stated research goals? This situation
reflects a tension throughout HCI4D research. The
tension reflects the interests of different stakeholder
groups in the research process—between the researcher
who may be concerned to advance his or
her career through publication, the community in
which the research is being conducted who are contributing
to the work, professionals working in the
development sector, and the other individuals and
communities who may benefit from the knowledge
generated and reported by the researchers. While
none of the papers and articles we reviewed explicitly
mention this sense of tension, each of the authors
has often heard such sentiments expressed
informally