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Literacy, Communication, Design II
The Motofone is being marketed as a device that amongst other things aspires to "help bridge literacy gaps" including voice prompts to "guide the user quickly and easily through menu navigation, messaging and other functions". It's good to see illiteracy raised to the point where it becomes a marketing feature but I'm also highly aware of the non-trivial challenges that need to be overcome if they are to genuinely meet their stated aims. I've only seen the marketing blurb so I'll make an educated guess to how the feature will be implemented.
If someone can't read or write they'll understand audio prompts right? Well, not quite. Using audio prompts to read out what appears on the screen is unlikely to be the solution because it assumes a general level of technical competency - that what is read out can be comprehended by the listener. To someone without prior experience of using a mobile phone or computer what is a 'folder'? Or 'inbox'? Or 'operator settings'?
Audio prompts also assume that the phone supports the user's native language. India, for example has over 14 different official languages, and over 100's of local dialects. (It's also home to 270 million of the world's 799 million illiterate peoples so its a good case study). How many languages are supported and how do these reflect the illiterate population?
As I argued at last week's UIAH presentation, probably the biggest factor counting against the widespread adoption of this feature is one of proximate literacy - quite simply that its often easier ask someone for assistance than learn oneself. In our research we concluded that most (illiterate) mobile phone users can turn on a phone, answer an incoming call and make local calls (pre-fixes for non-local calls start to present a problem and the complexity of tasks extrapolates from there). For many people the primary motivation for owning a phone is personal and convenient communication - their motivation to spend time to work their way through and learn the meaning behind the voice prompts is likely to be fairly low if these motivations are already met. If you're a frequent visitor to Future Perfect you probably get a kick from exploring what phones are capable of, but the rest of the planet is more interested in trivial stuff like relationships and survival. The ability to answer an incoming phone call is pretty powerful in itself and we've interviewed (generally older) users whose primary goals were met by mastering this feature.
Ever tried to make your way through voice prompts when you were in a hurry? It's fun right? Now apply the same level of enthusiasm to a hurried illiterate phone user from Kolkatta, Kohima or Kharagpur. But what if you're not in a hurry? When your options are to attempt to navigate and learn the meaning of audio prompts or wait until a literate, device competent and/or friendly person is nearby then rote learn a solution which will you choose?
Closer to launch time it will be interesting to see to what extent and how these aspirant-literacy-gap-bridging features are publicized and to whom. Will the Motofone succeed as a product? Probably. Will it meet its aim to bridge literacy gaps? What do you think?
Writing from Tokyo | September 21, 2006 | Permalink