"Things on the Ground are Different": Utility, Survival and Ethics in Multi-Device Ownership and Smartphone Sharing Contexts

As phones have become cheaper, there are still instances where people share them. Researchers have explored the sharing in the context of developing economies and brought to light the barriers to ownership and highlight the resulting power differentials. In this work, we explore the dynamics of single and multi-device ownership and sharing in Kenya. Through interviews with 34 participants, we seek to understand what these ownership patterns inform us about affordances and unstated needs–adding to our knowledge of device usage. We find that these dimensions of ownership raise new questions about ethics and survival, and we describe how they also serve as bellwethers to designing for a developing economy–especially in the context of access to money and other financial infrastructures. We discuss the impact and harms of unregulated policies and the influence of survival on peoples’ choices, the implications on ethics, and further explore strategies for identifying, auditing, and mitigating these risks.