Information and Communication Technologies and Service Design in Cuba: a case study on the Weekly Package

Abstract

In Cuba, due to the limitations of Internet access, the population created innovative solutions to obtain information available on the networks, called the Weekly Package (PS), a compendium of information that integrates different digital content, extracted from the Internet and marketed on hard drives and flash menories. The sale of the PS became a business and generated competition among sellers, configuring itself as service design organized spontaneously, arising from an emergency of the need for information consumption, assimilated by the black market. This work seeks to understand the flow of PS circulation by linking qualitative and quantitative analysis, to identify the main actors, as well as the informational preferences of the users, in the city of Santa Clara, in Cuba. Faced with the restriction of access to information in the country, the PS presents itself as a resource with great acceptance and usability among Cubans.

Keywords
Cuban; Qualitative and Quantitative Research; Digital Content Production; Information and Communication Technologies; Service design