This is the age of making impossible possible. I am amazed at how world is evolving as one single entity. I truly believe that Technology is the most important or may be the only factor making it possible. Technology is bringing the whole world all together. Its funny that I am coming up with different ideas to blog up at almost end of the semester. I was stressed out before about being admitted to the Master's program and all the paper work I have to do to get in. Finally I am admitted to the MSIS program at EMU and I feel so much better now.
Anyways back to the topic, Indrani is a student of design and she has been working on text-free user interfaces for illiterate and semi-literate users.
She has developed text-free user interfaces (UIs). These are design guidelines that would enable any first-time illiterate person, on first contact with a computer, to immediately realize useful interaction with minimal or no assistance. Isn't this great!
There is a huge population in India and many other developing countries who are way too away from technology. I was surprise when I came to America that there are people here who can barely read or write. I think this kind of technology will be useful to so many different countries and not just India.
"Medhi's applications are based on a few key principles: extensive use of hand-drawn, semi-abstracted cartoons with voice annotation in the local language, aggressive mouse-over functionality, a consistent help feature, and looping full-context video dramatizing the purpose and mechanism of the application. She has applied these principles to design four applications: job-search for the informal labor market, health-information dissemination, a mobile money-transfer system, and an electronic map. "Medhi has painstakingly and methodically conducted research to understand how to design user interfaces for computing devices such that illiterate and semi-literate users can use them. She has spent a lot of time in the slum communities understanding the needs and aspirations of the people of those communities and their daily lives," says Kentaro Toyama, former assistant managing director of Microsoft Research India."
Check Technology Review India for further Info : Click Here
It is so neat how technology can help so many people.
ReplyDeleteI think that this is great. I love studying about HCI, I actually thought about going to U of M for my Master's because they have an IS program dedicated to it. I'm glad that what we're learning about is actually being used to help people.
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