Kshitiz Anand

I recently attended a talk by Elizabeth Churchill, Principle Research Scientist at Yahoo Inc, California. She was presenting her ideas from a HCI perspective and as a part of the Big Thinkers Series, organized by Yahoo Research and Development, Bangalore.

The talk focused around the idea of SocioTechnical Design and Engineering. The context was primarily in understandings for the Internet Experience Domain. It was a great talk! I enjoyed every moment of it. It is especially important in the context in which we have opened up Deskala. At Deskala, we are exploring the reach of technology in emerging markets and coming up with design solutions, services and innovations.

With the context of communities changing everyday (Sherry Turkle et al. ), the way we conduct research on users is also changing. What was the notion of a community a few years ago is not the same today.  Cyber-ethnography has become the most appropriate tool in reaching a definition of the virtual community.

In the context of an emerging market like India, the need for defining newer methods of user research is important. The penetration of technology is limited to the mobile experiences amongst the emerging markets population. But with the ever changing technological scenario, the technological intervention will expand to other forms of technology.

One of the key propositions going on in the design research field is to bridge the gap between the offline and the online. In India at-least, inspite of having a good reach of technology, there are only 32.1% of the population who are online and are accessing internet from devices.

The notion of cyber space, is therefore not limited only to the online world. One has to expand the understanding of the cyber space. So in the ideal case of cyber-ethnography, one would spend hours in this cyber space, enacting roles, understanding virtual and real space, defining and redefining social interactions etc. This could go on for hours.

As Interaction Designers who have worked for clients who are mostly located in the West, we all have done cyber-ethnography at some point of time. This is a result of the inability of the designer to interact face to face with the likely users. So cyber-ethnography comes into the picture here.

In a question in the conference I had asked that what are the challenges that we face in India (and other emerging markets) when we are looking at doing cyber-ethnography for the users in areas that do not have so much of an online presence, but are still getting their dose of Technology. Elizabeth, mentioned these below set of challenges and I think the points were very valid.

To start with, perhaps the most important is to understand the mutual benefits that one is looking at when doing cyber-ethnography. What are the benefits that the designers and the communities on whom the research is being done upon have? Secondly there is always a challenge with the time frames. Due to the infrastructure capability of the emerging markets in context of the internet reach and broadband connectivity, getting the right research done in the right span of time will always be a challenge.
Thirdly, defining the Business Values that the cyber-ethnography could bring along in-order to finding design ideas and solutions is a challenge.

One always has to question the usage patterns and the likely usage scenarios amongst the users. This comes with its own set of challenges as everyday the scenario changes with more and more people in the emerging markets getting onto the Internet. This usage patterns are time bound, sociological bound and also always debating the role of the community.

Here’s an update of the remaining things I noted at CHI Boston 2009 conference. I think it was a truly enriching experience.

I attended a few sessions on Mobile applications, on User Experience and on Application of Design in the Developing World.

There was a consensus on the call for HCI and User Experience to expand itself and reach out to communities where it had not been so successful. From what I felt, people are ready and willing to (budget permitting) to collaborate with researchers and local people who have a strong understanding of the locality and at the same time be an expert in HCI / UI / UXd/r. As I previously mentioned India did feature a lot during the presentations along with Africa. In fact in one session all the presentations were done in India. In Karnataka to be precise! Groups from universities in UK, Microsoft Research, and Nokia presented their works done in India on user research. There was a call for the expansion of the applications made for the mobiles for varying purposes. The UK group called for the role of Participatory Media in Community Development and its approach.

There were again some studies on voice based UIs, Text based UIs, and Rich Multimedia UIs. However one interesting thing was the focus on Semi-literate users. This was interesting as it allowed for the expansion of the UIs from the text only to graphics included. Rich multimedia UI was tried out, and there was a few projects done by people on iPhones (which I was not too impressed by). A person from UNICEF’s Innovation Division, in a panel discussion asked the HCI community for a 5$ mobile phone with easy interface to reach out to the millions in developing nations. I think that’s an interesting challenge.

There was quite a few studies and presentations on focusing on Children as potential users for the next generation of Interfaces. Perhaps this is an area that needs to be tapped, but I clearly saw this as being US/and the West focused as there are so many other issues to focus on in other parts of the world.

As mentioned earlier, Collaboration again was a common theme across the projects. Collaborating with local agencies (NGOs, Government bodies, Individuals)

On the User Experience point of view, one of the 7 Best Papers at CHI was a paper on “Trajectories (and the focus on Transitions) as a key to understanding User Experience”. This is unlike looking at discreet experience, which we mostly do presently. Interesting stuff.

Jeffery Bardzell (he is also one of my profs whose class I attended last semester) , whose talk must have gathered the most audience on the last day, stressed on the need for Interaction Design to embrace Aesthetics and Criticism and as a result better definition of the field.

Some other buzzwords were Co-Creation, Sustainability (yet again!!!), Transforming people’s lives, Media based learning etc.  Health care and how HCI can play a role there was a messy discussion with varied opinions. Some for and some against.

The next year conference is in Atlanta. Unfortunately I will be in India and might not be attend it the next year. But this year’s conference was a great experience! I do look forward to see the HCI field growing beyond its present boundaries and applications. I think HCI as a discipline would grow much more rapidly then.

My short talk titled, “Research Strategies for Designing for Social Impact” was selected to be presented at Ignite Bloomington event.

Ignite is a night of presentations on a variety of topics, with a twist. Each presentation has 20 slides, that automatically advance after 15 seconds. It is a worldwide movement, and Bloomington is hosting its first on April 16th at 6pm.

This inaugural edition has some amazing speakers and it should be fun.

I am excited to be sharing my pictures and talking more about my project. It was a challenge to put together the presentation, but at the end of it, I think people will like it.