Village Phone, Photo Presentation
At the Nokia Technology Media Briefing last November I touched on the Village Phone initiative between Grameen Foundation, my employer and local micro-finance organisations in Uganda. A short photo essay about the Village Phone co-authored with my colleague Indri Tulusan is now ready for download as Powerpoint or PDF [2MB].
To recap - the Village Phone extends regular base station cellular coverage from around 15 kilometers to around 30 kilometers through the use of a village phone kit - an antenna and ten meter cable (shown above) and a coupler (shown below) connected to a regular Nokia 1100 mobile phone plus of course, a micro-finance loan. The net result? In a number of cases it provides the first convenient, reliable and affordable connectivity to the outside world for many rural communities as well as providing a stable income for the local entrepreneur that takes out the loan.
In the spirit of Future Perfect lets start with a simple question: To what extent do villagers need access to mobile phone? Who is in more need of personal, convenient synchronous and asynchronous communication - someone in London who works 9 to 5, 5 days a week or someone in rural Uganda working 5 to 9, 7 days a week? IMHO the impact on quality of life is far greater in the rural context and the some of the innovations this enables are touched on in this longish essay on Shared Phone Use. One example of the benefits of connectivity? Sente - the transfer of money via mobile phone that essentially also extends regular banking services such as the remittance of cash to these communities.
As always, related research here and you can be signed up to receive notification of new downloads by emailing to info at janchipchase dot com with the word subscribe in the subject line.
And the gent featured on the cover of the presentation? A kiosk operator for a rural village phone in Uganda. Cheers to the extended Nokia team for letting us piggyback your work - Johanna, Jens & Suzanne.
Writing from Tokyo | January 19, 2007 | Permalink
Power Up: Street Charging Services in Uganda
Uganda is a country coping with a severe energy crisis resulting in frequent power cuts. In addition, access to mains electricity in rural locations is limited. Given that mobile phones require power, and access to power can be unpredictable - how do people keep their mobile phones and other electrical devices charged? Last July a Nokia research team travelled to Uganda and explored this issue as part of a more in-depth study into shared phone use.
There are two forms of mobile phone battery charging services in Kampala - either offered as an additional service by phone kiosk operators or as a stand alone service. It costs 500 Ugandan Shillings (0.2 Euro) to have a battery recharged similar to the price of 2 or 3 phone calls. Whist both services appear to thrive there are a number of barriers to use: customers cannot use their phone whilst the battery is being charged; the customer risks, or perceives the risk that their battery being swapped for an inferior one; a perceived risk of phone theft - signs that suggest service providers are not responsible for loss or theft are evident.
For many Ugandan rural communities with no access to mains power car batteries are the primary means of providing electricity to the home. Businesses such as bars also run off car batteries but they are more likely to have their own power generator. A used car battery costs 30 to 40 dollars and can keep a household powered for a month, though in a bar the same battery might last a week. The homes we visited ran electrical items included radios, CD players, television and domestic lighting.
It can take 3 to 5+ days to have a car battery recharged at the process involves delivering the car-battery to a charging service often tens of kilometers away the nearest town that has mains electricity access. The battery is taken and returned by a trusted and friendly taxi driver or trader. It takes 3 days to charge a battery, longer if the town where the service is based itself experiences power cuts. The cost of charging a battery is around 1,000 Ugandan shillings (0.4 Euro), not including delivery. (As a comparison a mobile phone battery costs half as much to be recharged using one of the mobile phone street charging services mentioned above).
How does people's behaviour change when there is intermittent or limited access to power? How can we better support users with limited and intermittent access to power?
Two short presentations co-authored with my colleague Indri Tulusan are available for download from research.nokia.com. The first entitled Power Up: Street Charging Service in Kampala as PowerPoint or PDF [3MB] and Rural Charging Service, Uganda PowerPoint or PDF [2MB].
Readers may also like the related research into shared phone use as well as the full list of presentations and downloads.
Writing from Tokyo | January 12, 2007 | Permalink
Shared Phone Practices
What happens when people share an object that is inherently designed for personal use?
A Nokia Research team set out explore this topic during a July 2006 field study in Uganda with a brief to understand how people share mobile phones. The research builds on prior research from India, China, Nepal and Mongolia and Indonesia.
An longish essay on Shared Phone Use can be found here, and a presentation co-authored with colleague Indri Tulusan entitled Shared Phone Practices: Exploratory Field Research from Uganda and Beyond can be downloaded from research dot nokia dot com here [7MB, PowerPoint]. A full list of related research can be downloaded from here , and you can sign up to be notified of new downloads by email info @ janchipchase.com with the word subscribe in the subject line.
The research team identified 6 shared use practices: an informal service called Sente that essentially enables a mobile phone owner to function as an ATM machine; mediated communication that neatly side-steps issues of technological and textual literacy; the ever popular practice of making missed calls; the pooling of resources to buy the lowest denominations of pre-paid airtime and extend the access days for the phone that is topped up; the use of community address books to reduce errors and (supposedly) encourage phone kiosk customer loyalty; and finally Step Messaging - the delivery of text and spoken messages on foot.
Whilst the baseline benefits of sole ownership and use of a mobile phone are personal, convenient, synchronous and asynchronous communication, the personal and convenient aspects of mobile phone ownership are compromised by sharing. This support the notion that phone sharing (as it is defined at the beginning of the essay) is seen as more of a transition to sole ownership than a naturally stable state.
For many poorer consumers in emerging markets other people's perception that you are connected is the status symbol, a sign that you have arrived and in some senses are worth connecting to. When most of the members of a person's peer group , or society are connected the focus of status shifts to the brand and model of device. phone ownership is not the same as use - if there are cheaper ways to communicate these will be used.
We are increasingly coming across what have termed unlikely consumers, where feature rich and once premium devices in the hands of the very poor and the myriad of ways the devices get there we have dubbed sideways adoption. Today the front-line of telecommunications innovation is in connecting the unconnected, and its a matter of time before today's unlikely consumers become tomorrow's innovators.
Heading to Sikkim early tomorrow for altitude + fresh mountains air, will return in the new year. Oh, and whilst no-one got it totally correct there is a winner for the blinged nano - will be shipped in January.
Writing from Darjeeling | December 21, 2006 | Comments (1) | Permalink
One Size Does Fit All
An innovative solution to the problem of an oversized frame.
From a field study in Kyotera, Uganda earlier this year.
Writing from Tokyo | November 20, 2006 | Permalink
Two Wheels Good
Documenting a city or country from a car is a bit like doing human behavioural research without ever leaving a laboratory - there is worthy stuff you can learn but IMHO you'll pretty soon reach the limitations of what's interesting. Yeah I know, unless of course the focus of your research is car culture itself. But mostly getting out there requires removing the barriers between you and the world around you. What's your excuse when a motorbike and local driver can be yours for as little as 5 Euro for half a day? And even if motorcycle taxi's don't exist in a city of your choice it is possible to engage regular motorbike drivers to engagte in a bit of moonlighting.
Photos from motor cycle field research in Shanghai above, Kampala, Tehran, Hue, Fujian Province and Ho Chi Minh City below.
So you think language an issue? Some of the most effective days spent researching from the back of a motorbike have been with a driver that doesn't speak a word of English/German/Japanese and likewise me struggling to get my tongue around Farsi/Vietnamese/Chinese/Lugandan. What makes for a good research ride? A driver who is sufficiently aware of the passenger but ultimately knows exactly what he can get away with on the road/pavement/cattle path; a comfy passenger seat; plenty of cc's; and ultimately someone who is not phased by requests to stop in wierd places; and ends up anticipating places and peoples of interest.
Pillion highlights from this past year?
Interviewing boda-boda (motorbike taxi) driver's in Uganda for a study of shared mobile phone use, and on one occasion speeding through Kampala sitting Tour de France cameraman style i.e. the wrong way round on the passenger seat trying to get a good shot of a colleague Indri conducting an eventually very successful interview. Trust in your driver is a wonderful thing, especially when near misses are only witnessed after the miss and the only practical alternative is blind panic.
Being baled out of a sticky street situation by a motorbike driver in Tehran who knew just when to come and rescue me from over inquisitive officials. Watching Ho Chi Minh City wake and commute to work - Vietnam is after all still a 2-wheeled culture. The morning included a stop for a double condensed milk coffee and spending the next 30 minutes gripping and tripping.
And finally a day in the mountains of Fujian Province listening to tunes and staring contentedly at the back of a plant pot helmetted rider, who later introduced me to his favourite barber. The size of rock falls that were common in that part of the world would have wiped us out no matter how much wickerware protection he was wearing.
Bargain hard, tip well, don't expect a helmet.
Writing from Tokyo | November 10, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink
Communication, Literacy, Design
Remote communication requires a means of identifying whom to contact. How do people who can't read and write manage their contact information?
This is just one of the many questions I'll be asking at a presentation on Literacy, Communication, Design to the University of Art and Design Helsinki on the evening of the 14th September. It's hosted by Teemu Leinonen and Andrea Botero Cabrera and is open to the public. It will draw on three years of research by colleagues at the Nokia Mobile HCI Group into low literacy communication practices, a journey that took us from urban and rural India to Nepal, China, Uganda and beyond.
Related research can be found here and as usual when its all done and dusted links to the slides will be posted to here.
Writing from Tokyo | August 25, 2006 | Permalink
Shoe Gazers, Shoe Gazing
Freshly cleaned shoes sitting outside a barbers shop on the outskirts of Kampala. The photos were taken on a Sunday morning - for many locals an opportunity to dress up and head to one of the many hugely popular church services. White shoes have their moments, but they take on particular significance in a country such as Uganda where the dust and dirt makes keeping white shoes white that much more difficult. Numerous kerb-side stalls offered shoe cleaning services - first scrubbed with a toothbrush then left in the equatorial sun to dry and bleach. Which in a round about way leads me to a topic that has facinated me for a while - when you are walking the street and you see someone where do you look? Where do they look?
Walking streets from Tampere or Tokyo and beyond I've noticed that one of the first things that people look at when they check me out is my shoes. The result is the same whether the target of their gaze is a beat up pair of Pumas or brand new pair of Antas. Shoe gazing is a form of sizing-up behaviour that is prevalent particularly (though not exclusively) amongst male youths and it involves four stages. The initial recognition that occurs at a distance of 10 to 15 meters which is trying to figure out whether the person's shoes are of sufficient interest to warrant further investigation. If the wearer's shoes past muster then this is followed by a short period of looking elsewhere - it is after all rude to stare at someone coming towards you even if its at someones shoes. The third stage occurs in close proximity and involves a sequence of quick glances to check out shoe details. Occasionally there is a fourth stage that occurs once the person has walked by - it involves turning back to check out other aspects of what the person is wearing - by concentrating on the shoes other related clothing details may have been missed, the assumption being that if the shoes were cool then the other gear they are wearing fits the same bracket.
It might be that the shoe gazing effect is extenuated by the fact that I'm 'not local', the implication being that 'someone not from around here' may have access to stores and fashions to which they don't. I've been wondering whether online window shopping extenuates shoe gazing - people have a good awareness of what others are wearing worldwide but this may be the first time to see them locally and in the wild.
So how might all of this evolve in our Future Perfect? What happens when people carry to tools to digitally project who they are or who they want to be? Will someone turn around and look back knowing that their mobile device has automatically recorded all the relevant details? What are all the relevant details? And can they be recorded? What is digital equivilent of shoe gazing? If your interest is piqued then you might like to check out research by my colleagues Younghee Jung, Per Persson and Jan Blom, in particular their work on Scent and Sensor.
And what does all this to do with the elegant group of barefoot ladies above? The photo was taken in a church opposite the barber's shop, above - they're about to energetically head onto the church stage for a dance routine. It reminds me that when it comes to understanding shoe gazing, or pretty much any other behaviour, context is everything.
Writing from Tokyo | August 11, 2006 | Comments (3) | Permalink
Catering for Exceptions
It makes sense to design for the norms. What is the cost of catering for exceptional cases such as adapting a rectangular display case to cope with an excessively long-horned animal? Which cultures are likely to have to cope with what kind of exceptions? Once societal changes such as an aging demographic or rates of obesity are considered when do exceptions become the rule?
Writing from Tokyo | July 31, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink
Mobility Is Relative II
A mobile and wireless phone kiosk in Kamapala draws its power from a car battery (in the red box, photo below). Despite its bicyclesque design they were not particularly mobile - one or more tyres were often flat and they remained tethered in one place for the duration of the day.
However this design does support fine tuning the position where the telephony service is offered compared to fixed infrastructure. In what situations is mobilty is a drawback? For example, if to operate a 'street tax' has to be paid to work a particular pitch (I've got no evidence of this actually happening but bear with me) it would be easier to move non-payers away. Also easier for others to enter the marketplace and offer a similar service in close proximity.
And the country names painted on the phones? Simply a way of identifying which is which.
Spent half a sweaty sunday on the back of a boda boda trying to track down the bicycle repair factory, only to find it shut. Fond memories.
Writing from Tokyo | July 28, 2006 | Permalink
Mobility Is Relative I
Mobile phone also usable as a modem - owned and actively used by our local guide in Kampala.
Sort of related: White Phone Kiosks in Ulan Bataar.
Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink
Motivations for Warning
From Kampala golf course.
Writing from Tokyo | July 27, 2006 | Permalink
Selection Criteria
How does a consumer know whether the acid is good or not?
Writing from Tokyo | July 10, 2006 | Permalink
Cultural Norms
Headline from local Kampala newspaper.
Writing from Tokyo | July 9, 2006 | Permalink
Volumes Enabling Volumes
The physical size and volume of devices waiting to be repaired and cannabalized compared to the equivilent number of mobile phones (photo above Soweto, below Kampala) . A better demonstration perhaps of the issue of physical size, cubic volume and numbers (volumes) of objects to be repaired first touched upon here.
Writing from Tokyo | July 6, 2006 | Permalink
Cultures of Repair, Innovation
Update: a slightly more print friendly version of this post appears here and the slides of the presentation can be downloaded via here [4MB].
In an effort to understand the total user experience I've taken time out during recent field studies in emerging markets to explore local repair cultures. The journey has taken me to cities such as Chengdu, Delhi, Ulan Bataar, Ho Chi Minh and Lhasa with recent brief stopovers in Kampala and Soweto. They all contain clusters of shops and market stalls selling a mixture of used and new mobile phones, and whilst (in this instance) size does not necessarily matter, they often operate on a scale not seen in cities such as London or Tokyo. The mobile phone market around Chengdu's Tai Shen Lan Lu Market for example stretches across number of streets and shopping arcades and includes 100's of small shops and stalls. If you want a snapshot of urban mobile phone consumers in emerging markets this is a good place to start.
What sets these locations apart from cities in more 'emerged' markets? Aside from the scale of what's on sale there is a thriving market for device repair services ranging from swapping out components to re-soldering circuit boards to reflashing phones in a language of your choice , naturally. Repairs are often carried out with little more than a screwdriver, a toothbrush (for cleaning contact points) the right knowledge and a flat surface to work on. Repair manuals (which appear to be reverse engineered) are available, written in Hindi, English and Chinese and can even be subscribed to, but there is little evidence of them being actively used. Instead many of the repairers rely on informal social networks to share knowledge on common faults, and repair techniques. It's often easier to peer over the shoulder of a neighbour than open the manual itself. Delhi has the distinction of also offering a wide variety of mobile phone repair courses at training institutes such as Britco and Bridco turning out a steady flow of mobile phone repair engineers. To round off the ecosystem wholesalers' offer all the tools required to set up and run a repair business from individual components and circuit board schematics to screwdrivers and software installers.
How are mobile phone repair cultures different from the everyday repair shops for other mainstream electronics filled with televisions and video recorders? For a start consider the volumes of mobile phones in the marketplace compared to other electronics. Network effects soon kick in - it's easier to find a dead RAZR to cannabalise for spares than spares for a Sony DVD drive drive quite simply because there's more of them about. The physical size of the products to be repaired is also an factor - consider the space required to store and repair 200 mobile phones vs CRT televisions. As objects that many consider essential tools for everyday life mobile phones are carried, dropped, sat on, run over, submerged in a wide variety of situations leading to use cases outside the parameters of most phones. Finally, for many emerging market consumers the phone is considered an essential tool for conducting a successful business whether it's a boda-boda driver in Kampala (gentleman on moped in photo, below) or a midwife in Xiamen. If a person has the choice between repairing a television or a (shared) mobile phone which do you think he or she would choose first?
Each of the cities mentioned above offers more formal repair services, usually officially through customer care service centers, but the scale and sophistication of what is on offer informally is way beyond what many readers of Future Perfect will be familiar. And yes, many of the places mentioned already have networks to (from my observations) efficiently recycle, repair and re-use a wide variety objects including electronics . But in the spirit of the Future Perfect let's start with a very basic question - why do these informal repair cultures exist at all? What is so different between London and Lhasa or Helsinki and Ho Chi Minh?
The informal repair services that are offered are quite simply driven by necessity - highly price sensitive customers cannot afford to go through more expensive official customer care centers and even if they could their phones are unlikely to be covered by warrantee - having been bought through grey market channels, been sent as gifts from friends and relatives abroad, or were locally bought used, second or third+ ownership. In many cases these users cannot afford to be without their mobile phone, not in the social sense of being out of touch (which is valid enough), but in many instances because their livelihoods depend on it. On the supply side there is a ready pool of sufficiently skilled labour, ready access to tools, components and above all knowledge.
It's worth acknowledging that grey and black goods and services are also part of the mobile phone market ecosystem - whether it's passing faked goods off as originals or offering pirated software. Some markets also sell a wide variety of phones that copy the industrial designs of other products, examples are shown here and and example of how it can unfold here (these two links are unrelated). These are however, only a part of the whole market ecosystem and from my understanding are small in scale within the context of the physical markets' themselves, compared to the repair services on offer. And before you ask - no, I'm not arguing that piracy is a minor issue.
For consumers the informal repair culture is largely convenient, efficient, fast and cheap, reducing the total cost of ownership for people for whom a small drop in price may make the difference between having or not having a phone. The culture of repair also increases the lifetime of products lowering their environmental impact (though this could be offset by other factors such as inefficiency of using old batteries).
What can we learn from informal repair cultures? Aside from the benefits, what are the risks for consumers and for companies whose products are repaired, refurbished and resold? Given the benefit to (bottom of the pyramid) consumers are there elements of the repair ecosystem that can be exported to other cultures? Can the same skills be applied to other parts of the value chain? And, turning to my original interest in this topic and the work we do in the Mobile HCI Group, given the range of resources and skills available what would it take to turn cultures of repair into cultures of innovation?
I'm at Cape Town University today discussing qualitative research methods and Informal Repair Cultures. The slides of the presentation can be downloaded via here [4MB download] and related presentations here.
Writing from Cape Town | July 3, 2006 | Comments (4) | Permalink
Lacking Power
Power cuts are a daily fact of life in Uganda so it's no surprise that power, or lack of power has affected the field study in subtle and not so subtle ways: power cuts during interviews; trying to gather data over the thumping soundtrack and fumes of a nearby generator; keeping laptops sufficiently charged - especially during the long hours of image batch processing; logging the different types of charging services offered by locals; and the strategies adopted by locals to make the most of what they have.
When the power is down guests can request the use of a back-up generator for10,000 Ugandan Shillings (1.5 Euro) per hour - enough for a small hotel. You'll be happy to know it can be charged to room service.
Thanks to our local guides here in Uganda - Julius, Rose, Tonny, Elizabeth and Titus - much appreciated.
Writing from Kampala | July 2, 2006 | Permalink
Observing How the City Wakes
An early morning session spent observing Kampala and its citizens wake.
The boda-bodas take us into the city center which is followed by wandering streets and street markets. At one point we were seated at a breakfast stall sipping spiced black tea. As visitors we were given two cups - one, metal which is filled to the brim with tea, and the other plastic that is empty (photo above). Drinking first requires pouring from one receptical to another - as guests we have the priviledge of not having to scald our lips on the metal.
Incidentally, the men in our party are offered an extra dash of spice which are supposed to act as libido enhancers
Yesterday's one of our local guides described how you get 11+ people into a Toyota Corolla - the vehicle of choice for many Ugandan rural taxi drivers. Start by locking one rear passenger door, then squeeze 7 people on two layers into the back seat. Shut the other rear door (presumably to the sound of exhaled air). Two people can set on the front passenger seat, then squeeze another passenger into the left side of the driver's seat before, finally, the driver joins the throng. Gear changing is apparently a non-trivial affair.
Writing from Kampala | June 30, 2006 | Permalink
Heroes of The (Local) Modern Man
Photos and dreams for sale on a Kampala street.
In order of popularity by volume: Manchester United, political leaders then pop stars. Of course the reverse could also be true - it could be popularity by order of those left unsold.
What do the idols and heroes say about the values of a society?
Writing from Kampala | June 25, 2006 | Permalink
How You Top Up
Top up minutes for sale in Kampala.
Consumers here are highly sophisticated when it comes to optimising their use of communication channels - anything that drives down the cost of communication has a good chance of success.
The degree of sophistication is a double edged sword. On the one hand it implies user effort to stay abreast of the alternatives and introduces additional steps to the communication process - you don't just call but factor in the cost of calling permutations before you decide to call. On the other hand it reminds me how disinterested/lazy consumers are in less price sensitive markets.
Writing from Kampala | | Permalink
Something To Use, Whilst Yours Is In Repair
What do you use when you need to have your mobile phone repaired? Or your car? Or your shoes?
Customers of this shoe stand in Kampala are given temporary footwear (made from re-cycled tyres) that can be worn whilst their shoes are repaired. What are the factors that make this replacement-whilst-you-wait feasible?
Widespread ownership of one pair of shoes (or one pair of appropriate shoes) may spur demand for this kind of service. What other factors will create user pull? What factors make it feasible for the service provider to offer alternatives?
The 'tyre' shoes function well enough as (temporary) footwear but are certainly different from the originals. How different can they be? In what circumstances is it feasible for service provider to offer a temporary replacement that is better than what they are used to? Your Jaguar is in for repair? Try this Lexus for a week.
And Uganda? From what I've seen so far a very postive place to conduct research - all credit goes to our local collaborators.
Writing from Kampala | | Permalink
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