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Text is not the enemy: How illiterates' use their mobile phones
source link: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266595198_Text_is_not_the_enemy_How_illiterates%27_use_their_mobile_phones
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How illiterates' use their mobile phones
Abstract
Despite 800 million illiterate people worldwide little research has aimed at understanding how they use and appropriate mobile phones. We interviewed illiterate immigrants living in Switzerland to inform the design of phones and applications for illiterate users. We report on their use, coping strategies, and appropriation of mobile devices and other media to manage their lives. We found that text represented a valuable component for managing contacts in current smart phones. We provide design recommendations for mobile phone interfaces for illiterate and semi-literate users.
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Text is not the enemy:
How illiterates’ use their mobile phones
ABSTRACT
Despite 800 million illiterate people worldwide little
research has aimed at understanding how they use and
appropriate mobile phones. We interviewed illiterate
immigrants living in Switzerland to inform the design of
phones and applications for illiterate users. We report on
their use, coping strategies, and appropriation of mobile
devices and other media to manage their lives. We found
that text represented a valuable component for managing
contacts in current smart phones. We provide design
recommendations for mobile phone interfaces for illiterate
and semi-literate users.
Author Keywords
HCI4D, ICTD, illiteracy, mobile phone use, touch screens
ACM Classification Keywords
H5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI):
Miscellaneous.
General Terms
Human Factors, Languages
INTRODUCTION
Around 800 million people worldwide cannot read or write
their mother tongue. Most of them live in developing
countries and the majority of those in rural areas. The
business model of mobile phones has proved viable in
developing countries and coverage has been improving
despite infrastructural shortcomings in terms of, e.g. the
availability of electricity. Penetration of mobile devices has
taken off despite limited power availability for charging
devices, high call charges, and high cost of ownership
relative to income. While much ICTD (information
communication for development) research has found
problems and shortcomings of mobile user interfaces (UI)
in usability tests, e.g. icons that are not culturally adapted
[7], no local language support and hardly any support for
illiterate users, uptake of these devices “in the wild” is
staggering. It is clear that incentives to overcome initial UI
hurdles are underappreciated [13]. Given the current
technological speed of advances in the mobile domain we
can assume that within the next few years low-end smart
phones (most likely with touch screens) will become
affordable for illiterates in developing countries. We look
at how illiterate immigrants in Switzerland have
appropriated smart and feature phones in their daily life to
inform the design of smart phones UIs to make them more
accessible and easier to use by illiterates.
The background summarizes previous ICTD work on
illiterates and user interfaces (UI) tailor made for them. The
results from interviews we conducted with illiterates
include their use, coping strategies, and appropriation of
mobile devices and other media to manage their lives. In
the discussion we argue for better supporting text in
conjunction with other media in mobile devices for
illiterate and semi-literates.
BACKGROUND
Literacy can be defined in many ways. The U.N. defines a
literate person as someone who can “…with understanding,
both read and write a short simple statement in his or her
everyday life” [15]. Illiterate people may have basic
numeracy skills, i.e., they can to some degree understand,
read and write numbers. The two most noteworthy
exceptions to the dearth of published research on illiterate
mobile phone use are Chipcase [2] and Lalji et al. [7].
Conducting ethnographic studies of illiterate mobile users
in several Asian countries, Chipchase reported that while
illiterates could successfully turn on their phones and
accept incoming calls, dialing numbers to make outgoing
calls proved difficult for some. Nor could the illiterate users
send text messages or use the address book on their phone.
Lalji et al. found that illiterates used call logs in lieu of the
address book [7] but that this proved challenging when
having to remember how many calls ago someone had
called.
More research on illiterates and their needs mobile phone
UIs has been conducted in lab studies. This body of
research concurred about the value of audio support and
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specific permission and/or a fee.
CHI 2012, May 5-10, 2012, Austin, TX, USA.
Copyright 2012 ACM xxx-x-xxxx-xxxx-x/xx/xx...$10.00.
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