Neil Clavin is a design manager for Vodafone Group User Experience. He worked as a user experience designer for BBC New Media & Technology and as a research assistant for Interaction Design at the Royal College of Art, London, before joining the Vodafone User Experience Concept Development Team based in Düsseldorf, Germany. There, he leads concept design for mobile communication, information and entertainment experiences. In his paper for receiver Clavin argues that for better design, we must first of all understand different user needs around the world. The prime design challenges he sees are: richer communication, social tools and reconfigurable interfaces.

http://www.vodafone.com

Artwork by Ren Lin Xiao

All artworks in this receiver issue are part of a student project by the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China

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"I want my phone to last for as long as I live," remarks Rajesh as he shows off his new Nokia phone. The phone cost Rajesh about a month's salary and he protects it with a plastic cover against dirt and scratches. It has a monochrome screen, a keypad and no web browser. We stand admiring the phone in the small, spartan tenement Rajesh shares with six other men in the slums of Mumbai.

Of the 1 million people who become mobile phone users every day, 85% live in the developing world. In India there are 8.3 million new mobile phone users every month; India adds only a mere 6 million PC users in a whole year. In Africa 20% of the population now have a cell phone, a quadruple increase since 2001.

Operators and manufacturers have historically designed for advanced countries. Mobile interface design has been aimed at literate, numerate users who follow text-based menus, sometimes read instruction books and have built mental models for how mobiles work based on previous technologies.

Current mobile interfaces and services are not designed for the developing regions of the world – many users have problems reading and writing, some services are not relevant and native languages not always supported. Many users complete only the basic functions of dialling a number or answering an incoming call.

Simple low literacy interfaces

Rajesh runs a fruit stand in Kandivali, an upper-middle class neighbourhood in bustling Mumbai. Business is brisk as housewives filter down the street shopping for groceries. Rajesh's phone rings – it's a call from a customer seeking a home delivery. In India, traders will make home deliveries at no extra cost. Rajesh confirms the order, hangs up, then turns to a colleague and asks, "Can you save this number for me?"

There are 799 million illiterate people in the world. Nearly half of them live in India. Low literacy users have a basic grasp of numbers and can easily make and receive phone calls. However, problems arise with reading or writing text-based messages.

Users with reading problems cannot use text menu based interfaces to store contact details, and as a result insert numbers directly to the phone. If a user needs to save a contact he will ask a literate colleague to assist with the procedure. So quite often users' phonebooks contain a maximum of only 5-10 numbers. Research shows a direct relationship between the amount of contacts and the number of calls made. To increase the number of calls made, operators must ensure that it is easy and intuitive to use the contacts book.

Simple low literacy interfaces will enable users to send messages, use the phonebook and further services.

A radical alternative was recently announced by Indian operator Spice Mobile completely dispensing with text-based interfaces by offering an ultra low cost device without a screen. The Spice Rs800 promotes the "power of the spoken word" for illiterate and visually impaired users with a Braille keypad and voice interfaces.

Social and community tools

"The only reason I am in Mumbai is to earn money to support my family," confesses Rajesh. Rajesh grew up in a small rural village in the Bihar region. He lived there with his parents, brothers and sisters. When Rajesh's father passed away, he was sent to the city to work and provide for the rest of the family. Family ties and the home village exert a strong influence on Rajesh and offer stability from the turbulence of the city.

"When I feel like it and when I have money, I visit my family in the village. I bring gifts or give presents to my colleagues who travel there to transport," he comments. The train journey from Mumbai on the western coast to Bihar in the north east bordering Nepal is very expensive and over 48 hours long. As a result Rajesh visits maybe once or twice a year. Alternative ways of maintaining contact over a distance become very important.

In many developing regions workers leave their rural village, partner, friends and family to work in the city and send money home. The city may be hundreds of kilometres from their village. In India for example high transport costs and long distances can mean a man may not see his wife and children for 1-3 years.

Besides using a mobile device for voice calls there is a desire for richer remote experiences between urban workers and the rural family – like receiving and sending images, videos and messages. Media blogging to a shared space can help reinforce family bonds. A current Nokia project will allow Kenyan users to post personal information such as CVs, family history and prices via a voice interface to an "audio homepage".

Migrant workers rely on a social network of colleagues and friends in the city to send goods and run errands between the city and home town. Mobile social networks could alert a user to associates' travel plans between the city and rural village.

Services like Dopplr can easily be adapted to provide alerts to a migrant worker of his/her contacts' future travel plans.

Legacy devices can be adapted to provide a two way communication interface for audio-visual messages and blogging. Community based kiosks with similar functionality could also be deployed and shared in a village or rural area.

Useful social tools will enable migrant workers to share experiences with remote family, locate each other to send goods home and communicate with family via legacy devices.

Better native language support

Back at his one room tenement Rajesh shows us his collection of music and movies – local Bollywood entertainment from Bihar. He smiles as he inserts a disk into the dusty player mounted on a corner shelf, lyrics sung in Bhojpuri, a dialect of Hindi, fill the room. "This is my language, my music. It makes me feel closer to home."

Not all of the developing world's problems with mobile interfaces are due to illiteracy. Native language support in mobile interfaces is so limited that even if a user can read and write he may not be able to understand the text.

For example a basic "ultra low cost" mobile device sold in India supports only 2 languages – Hindi and English. Whilst Hindi is spoken by 40% of the population, over half do not have access to native language interfaces. The Constitution of India recognizes 22 official languages in addition to 393 less common vocabularies. Different languages use different alphabets. For example Hindi contains 58 letters. Alphabetic variations mean that each language will need a bespoke keyboard for text input.

Manufacturers of low cost devices for the developing world have to date aimed for "economies of scale" – providing a single model for the entire developing world for local market customisation. It will be in their interest to design devices which do not require customized keyboards on a country or regional basis. Native language support will be improved via reconfigurable touchscreen or audio interfaces for other languages and alphabets.

A different world

How should current mobile operators and manufacturers design their products and services to meet the needs of developing markets?

The current mobile experience is designed for a literate section of the world who can expect interfaces in their native language. Another section of users have problems navigating text-based interfaces and need to reinforce links with the families they have left behind.

For successful mobile experience design we must provide alternative interfaces, social tools and better native language support. The mobile experience for developing regions will be rich with audio-visual communication, genuinely useful social networks and reconfigurable interfaces.

Designing for these user needs creates better experiences also for advanced countries. Simpler audio-visual interfaces will benefit children, elderly people and users with learning difficulties. Social networks will mature from hipster hangouts into tools for achieving meaningful and progressive goals. Touchscreen devices will become cheap enough for anyone to afford and the languages of cosmopolitan populations fully supported.

Understanding the needs of and co-designing with users like Rajesh will create a more useful, usable and engaging mobile experience for all of us.

This article was written for receiver

Contact: Neil Clavin

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