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PRESENTATION OUTLINE

1. Motivation

2. Methodology

3. Results

4. Design Recommendations

5. Conclusions and Future Work

Pre-survey question (30 seconds):

You are to design a mobile interface for a mobile banking application. You are told the target audience may include low-literate individuals. What are the top three technological features (ranked in order of importance for these users) would you include in your design?

MOTIVATION: WE LIVE IN A DIVERSE WORLD AND ARE CONNECTED BY MOBILE PHONES

• In 2008 4 billion phone users• 60% of subscribers live in developing countries• Thus many mobile apps geared for developing services• E.g. education, finance, health, etc.• However, 41% of population in developing countries are illiterate

• Previous studies have shown• Non-literate populations avoid complex functions• Non-literate primarily use phones for synchronous voice

communication

Text?

METHODOLOGY• 3 studies covered in this paper• Ethnographic study of usability barriers facing low literary subjects in developing areas• India, Kenya, the Philippines, and South Africa• 79 subjects, face-to-face, at home interview Subjects were:

(1) illiterate or semiliterate but had partial numeracy, (2) had low levels of education, and (3) no computer experience

Varied degrees of experiences with mobile phones and previous usage of mobile banking systems Selected by both nonprofit organizations and for profit corporations

• 2 studies involving 70+ subjects in India• Compared usability• Healthcare study• Mobile banking study

• Considered different interfaces• Text-based• Spoken dialog system

• Wizard of Oz

• Graphic interface• Live operator

USER STUDY RESULTSQualitative User Study 1: Automatic solutions with mobile banking task• No low literate could complete transaction with text-based interface (in native

language)• 90 subjects, 56 understand and navigate hierarchical menus• Non phone users unable to navigate menu; 16/50 phone users unsuccessful• Challenge to represent tree structures e.g. dialing from scratch vs. menu function

• 72% completed with spoken dialog• Quicker, with less assistance than graphical UI, more women successful• Mode of interaction not understood

• 100% successful with graphical UI• High task completion, yet more time to complete

Qualitative User Study 2: Live operator health solution:• Cost effective in certain areas• Ability to change interface over time• User covey detailed, unstructured info over phone• 10 times more accurate than text based interfaces

ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY RESULTSUsability barriers study in developing areas• Hierarchal navigation a challenge for discoverability• Scroll bars no initially understood 48/90 subjects• Trouble with nonnumeric inputs• Language difficulties• Could not understand message receipts• Some not familiar with banking terminology• Manuals provided overloaded with textual information• Human mediation critical for successful transactions

DESIGN RECOMMENDATIONS BASED ON FINDINGS1. Provide graphical cues

2. Provide voice annotation support whenever possible

3. Provide local language support, both in text and audio

4. Minimize hierarchical structures

5. Avoid requiring nonnumeric text input

6. Avoid menus that require scrolling

7. Integrate human mediators into the overall system, to familiarize potential users with scenarios and UIs

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK

• Results concluded that textual interface unusable by low-literary users and difficult to use accurately by novice users• Most positive result is live operator• Possible hybrid of voice UI with option for live operator• Ensure users are familiar with language, concepts, and terms

• Open research problem: to develop fully automatic interface that allows first time nonliterate users to complete tasks without assistance

SOURCES

Medhi, Indrani, Somani Patnaik, Emma Brunskill, S.n. Nagasena Gautama, William Thies, and Kentaro Toyama. "Designing Mobile Interfaces for Novice and Low-literacy Users."ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 18.1 (2011): 1-28. Web.

Thank you for your attention!