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Suhrid: A Collaborative Mobile Phone Interface for Low Literate People

Published: 01 December 2015 Publication History

Abstract

The design of accessible mobile phone interfaces for low literate people usually assumes an individual model of use, and are often limited by the low technical expertise and/or cognitive ability of users in marginal communities of developing countries. Drawing on previous ICTD scholarship around shared and intermediated use of technology and our own ethnographic field study, we introduce a collaborative model of use in the design of Suhrid, a mobile phone interface that helps low literate users perform common phone tasks by receiving remote help from higher-literacy members of their community. The results of our six week long deployment of Suhrid among 10 low literate rickshaw pullers in Dhaka, Bangladesh, indicate the potential of collaborative use models to help low-literate people more effectively use mobile phones while strengthening bonds between them and the people in their community who provide help.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    DEV '15: Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computing for Development
    December 2015
    186 pages
    ISBN:9781450334907
    DOI:10.1145/2830629
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    Published: 01 December 2015

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    Author Tags

    1. collaborative interface
    2. gift economy
    3. low literate user

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    • Intel Science and Technology Center for Sociall Computing
    • International Fulbright Science and Technology Fellowship

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    ACM DEV '15
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    ACM DEV '15: Annual Symposium on Computing for Development
    December 1 - 2, 2015
    London, United Kingdom

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    Overall Acceptance Rate 52 of 164 submissions, 32%

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    • (2023)Defining Functional Illiteracy to Empower Inclusive Technology DesignProceedings of the 4th African Human Computer Interaction Conference10.1145/3628096.3629064(254-258)Online publication date: 27-Nov-2023
    • (2023)‘Khep’: Exploring Factors that Influence The Preference of Contractual Rides to Ride-Sharing Apps in BangladeshProceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCAS/SIGCHI Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies10.1145/3588001.3609361(43-53)Online publication date: 16-Aug-2023
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    • (2021)Understanding the usability issues in contact management of illiterate and semi-literate usersPLOS ONE10.1371/journal.pone.025971916:12(e0259719)Online publication date: 2-Dec-2021
    • (2021)‘Oshudh Poro’: A Mobile-Phone Application to Support Low-literate Rural Bangladeshi People’s Personal Medication Management [Poster]Proceedings of the 4th ACM SIGCAS Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies10.1145/3460112.3471975(457-461)Online publication date: 28-Jun-2021
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