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Comparing web interaction models in developing regions

Published: 17 December 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Internet connections in developing regions are scarce and often unreliable. While options for connecting to the Internet are gradually being realized, progress is slow. We observed people performing web search and browsing in a low bandwidth environment in Kerala, India. We found that people in this environment experienced frustration and boredom while waiting for page loads compared to typical experiences in the developed world. Following these observations, we conducted a formal study with 20 participants at the same location comparing the conventional web search and browsing process with an asynchronous queueing model. Participants using the asynchronous queueing system performed as well as the status quo in terms of the number of tasks completed, and we observed greater interaction and information viewed for the asynchronous system. Our participants also preferred the asynchronous system over conventional search. Finally, we found evidence that the asynchronous system would have greater benefits in environments where the network is even more constrained.

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cover image ACM Other conferences
ACM DEV '10: Proceedings of the First ACM Symposium on Computing for Development
December 2010
228 pages
ISBN:9781450304733
DOI:10.1145/1926180
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 17 December 2010

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  • (2017)GraaspBoxProceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development10.1145/3136560.3136572(1-11)Online publication date: 16-Nov-2017
  • (2017)Measuring Broadband Internet Performance in NepalProcedia Computer Science10.1016/j.procs.2017.03.057107:C(64-69)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2017
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  • (2015)Measuring broadband access network performance in PakistanProceedings of the 2015 IEEE 40th Local Computer Networks Conference Workshops (LCN Workshops)10.1109/LCNW.2015.7365903(595-602)Online publication date: 26-Oct-2015
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