"Everyone Brings Their Grain of Salt": Designing for Low-Literate Parental Engagement with a Mobile Literacy Technology in Côte d'Ivoire

Significant research has demonstrated the crucial role that parents play in supporting the development of children’s literacy, but in contexts where adults may lack sufficient literacy in the target language, it is not clear how to most effectively scaffold parental support for children’s literacy. Prior work has designed technologies to teach children literacy directly, but this work has not focused on designing for low-literate parents, particularly for multilingual and developing contexts. In this paper, we describe findings from a qualitative study conducted in several regions of rural Côte d’Ivoire to understand Ivorian parents’ beliefs, desires, and preferences for French literacy. We discuss themes that emerged from these interviews, surrounding ideas of trust, collaboration, and culturally-responsive design, and we highlight implications for the design of technology to scaffold low-literate parental support for children’s literacy.