MIT honour for Bangalore-based researcher
Indrani Medhi is attempting to take computing to the unlettered
An interesting piece of research by Indrani Medhi, a Bangalore-based Microsoft researcher, which can potentially help millions of India’s non-literate mobile subscribers use their handsets better, has figured in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s prestigious Technology Review’s 2010 TR35 list.
Technology Review annually selects 35 outstanding technologists and scientists all under the age of 35, who “exemplify the spirit of innovation in business and technology”.
Besides Indrani, 32, Rikin B Gandhi, 29, the founder of Digital Green is another Indian, who figures in this year’s list.
Indrani has developed graphics and multimedia-based user interfaces for computers to make them more accessible to people who cannot read or write.
Speaking to Deccan Herald, Indrani said user interfaces of computing devices, including mobile phones, are based on text and place severe limitations on non-literate users.
Non-literate people use their phones mainly as landlines to make calls and miss out on most features of their devices. They are not able to send SMS or retrieve numbers from missed calls or dialled number sections. “If they have to call again a contact they have just dialled, they have to punch the numbers all over again,” Indrani says.
India’s explosive growth in mobile usage has come from subscribers at the bottom of the pyramid market, a sizeable section of who are non-literate. As they have limited use of their devices, the revenue realisation from them is also low. Mobile operators say the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) in India is below $5 a month, among the lowest in the world.
Any research that leads to better use of the phones is good news for the industry. Indrani conducted fieldwork in South Africa, Philippines and India, including Bangalore slums near Ragi Gudda, to develop a more accessible user interface for the non-literate. Her user interface eliminates text, but uses Arabic numerals, “as even non-literates are familiar with them”.
It is based on graphics, mostly hand-drawn cartoons, which come with voice annotations. It also uses video tutorials to explain the functionality of applications.
With simplified user interface, she says people start accessing information on their own or with little assistance. Though she has not documented how the user-friendly
devices would be used, Indrani says entertainment and other economic incentive applications would probably become popular.
When asked what motivated her, she says benefits from computers are limited to people who can read and write and cut off a huge section of society.
Rikin Gandhi, an aeronautical engineer from MIT, has produced video-based solutions of highly effective agricultural practices to educate farmers about modern technological tools. He demonstrated that for every dollar spent, the system persuaded seven times as many farmers to adopt new ideas as an existing programme of training and visits.
The 2010 TR 35 were selected from over 300 submissions by the editors of Technology Review in collaboration with a prestigious panel of judges.
DH News Service
