Understanding money transfer matters: using ethnography to inform initial remittance design ideas

This paper presents the findings and examples of resulting design concepts from ethnographic fieldwork in the context of remittance. The aim of this work is to critically examine and document the lived experiences of foreign workers using remittance in Singapore for the purpose of designing products and services that directly address opportunities found in our observations. The common approach of looking at remittance as merely an economic activity is incomplete, and we conclude by showing how examining remittance as a social transaction has informed our initial designs ideas.