Rakshit Agrawal, Mridu Atray, S. Krishna Sundari · Rakshit Agrawal, Mridu Atray, S. Krishna Sundari •Trends in Indian Mobile market •Emerging low-cost variants of Smartphone

Rakshit Agrawal, Mridu Atray, S. Krishna Sundari

• Trends in Indian Mobile market

• Emerging low-cost variants of Smartphone

• Relevance of Smartphone Apps in Agriculture

• Research in Interface for Low-literate users

• Design constraints and respective solutions indevelopment of Apps for Indian farmers

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• Previous research shows that designing user interfaces suited to the needs ofcommunities with lower literacy greatly helps improve usability

• Design guidelines:• Minimal use of text/completely text-free UIs (Medhi et al., 2007)

• Usage of icons (Findlater et al., 2009, Laliji et al., 2008, Medhi et al., 2007), but important toadapt them culturally

• Voice annotations to better understand meaning of the icons (Medhi et al., 2007a, 2007b,2009, Patel et al., 2010)

• Incase of semi-literate users, usage of text to certain degree greatly improvesusability((Findlater et al., 2009)

• Specific to agriculture, number of ICT based initiatives taken for low-literacyfarmers• Avaaz Otalo (Patel at al., 2010) and Tamil Market (Plauche, 2006) use the medium of voice

• Bhav Puchiye enhances Agmarknet portal from GOI providing a text-free interface to thefarmers

• Rangoli (Joshi et al., 2008) and m-shayak (Saha et al.) design suitable mobile phone interfaces

• m-shayak is a smartphone app allowing farmers to click photographs of his crop, recordaudio/video and send them to agriculture experts who then revert back via call/SMS

Short survey with 56 phone dealers over two locations:

• Bulandshahar district in Uttar Pradesh state

• Ranchi and surrounding areas in the state of Jharkhand

43 farmers at an IARI(Indian Agriculture Research Institute) festival belonging to the states:

• Uttar Pradesh

• Haryana

• Madhya Pradesh

• Bihar

• Rajasthan

A group of 6 farmers from Bulandshahar district, U.P.

• Two of them, around the age of 40 were uneducated and were farming since childhood

• Their wives, both in 30’s were also uneducated but were associated more with their kidswho did go to school.

• Sadhu Ram, of around 28 years of age had studied till Class VIII and was helping us themost

• Sadhu Ram’s father who himself had studied till Class V as well





• Uttar Pradesh

• Haryana

• Madhya Pradesh

• Bihar

• Rajasthan






23%

31%9%

37%

Percentage of phone types possessed by farmers

Basic & ColorScreen Phone

Multimedia &Camera Phones

QWERTY keyboardphones

Chinese multi-featured phones

59%

41%

Price range of mobile phones owned by Farmers

0 - 2500

2500 -5000





• Uttar Pradesh

• Haryana

• Madhya Pradesh

• Bihar

• Rajasthan






55%

4%

8%

2%2%

9%

2%

9%

9%

Kisan Call Center

Reuters Market light

IFFCO Krishi Sanchar Limited

Warana

eSagu

Nokia Life Tools

Awaaz De.

TATA mKrishi

Others

100.00

26.7923.21

7.14

76.79

96.43

0.00

20.00

40.00

60.00

80.00

100.00

Making a call Sending SMS Playing Games

Using Internet

Capturing Photographs

Listening to Songs or

Radio

Percentage of farmers being able to do the following tasks on mobile phone

Data Logging and management

• Manure Monitor

• Wireless Monitor

Location based apps

• Delaware Fresh

• Michigan Farm Market Finder

Agriculture specific calculation apps

• MRTN Calculator

• Feed Cost Calculator

News and information

• Farm Progress

• Ag Weather Tools





• Uttar Pradesh

• Haryana

• Madhya Pradesh

• Bihar

• Rajasthan






Observation:

• Four of our surveyed users could not perfectly read any language but could verywell identify and understand numbers. They were capable of making calls fromphones and could do simple calculations using numbers as well.

• For ex., to name a number like 28, they were not be able to say it as ‘twenty eight’ intheir language, but they could correctly identify it as being ‘2 subtracted from 30’ intheir language (do kam tees).

Our Solution:

• Written input from user has to be majorly numerical only. For every text

information, it has to be listed for selection by the user with an index number.

• Every block object on the app screen is numbered as well

• This will help them memorize the selection option and usage would become much

easier and faster.

Observation:

• They always prefer instructions as audio.

• If an audio clip asked them to press some recognizable button at some point oftime, they were able to do it correctly.

• Written instructions for a task were troublesome for the ones who could read

Our Solution:

• For confirm output messages, use of recorded audio messages.

• Audio associated with Selection menu items played upon pressing

• Audio instruction for every screen

Observation:

• Concept of vertical scrollbars is confusing and irritating for them.

• They generally assume that whatever is visible on one screen should cover up allthat should be there. For next step they expect a change in screen and not morecontent scrolling from down below.

• They were also scared of scrolling through by mistake and then not being able tofind where they were before.

Our Solution:

• No vertical scrolling to be followed in our apps

• We can have multiple horizontal pages in the App but size of each of these has to

be restricted to standard screen size only

• Also to give the appropriate sense of task completion per screen, we ensure only

one input information on one screen.

Observation:

• Randomness in objects on a screen creates a lot of problem to these users

• They usually associate and memorize position of a button with its operation

• Popping messages for confirmation or help only confuse them.

Our Solution:

• We make a dedicated position for Back and Next on the app screens and the two

operations will be placed only there.

• Also if it is the first screen or last screen, the position of Back and Next will still not

be utilized by anything else. Those positions were simply left blank

• Every instruction stays on the base screen layer only and no popping message

Observation:

• We are used to seeing common options like "Done", "Next" etc., and always knowwhere to move once we have filled in some information. This doesn't come thatnaturally to these users.

• After finishing a task, they might not know how to finish that step or how to get ridof the keyboard appearing for that input.

• Sliding and appearing keyboard was actually annoying for them.

Our Solution:

• If there is any screen where input is needed, a static keyboard is present there and

doesn’t slide in or out.

• The very presence of a keyboard on a screen, therefore, means that an input is

needed on that view.

• Once this input is made, no message for confirmation appears, only the standard

Next button is to be used to move forward.

Observation:

• They usually learn menu driven features by the count of steps.

• For eg., if radio was the fifth item in menu, then they memorized that to play radiothey first press the selection button once, then the direction button five times andthen again the selection button once.

Our Solution:

• Every screen has sequence number that remains consistent

• Input screen and Result screen both are a part of same sequence

• It can be therefore memorized that on screen no. X (step no. X), an input has to be

given, and then at screen no. Y (step no. Y), a result message will be seen.

Observation:

• They all were quite comfortable with associating symbols and images with differentthings.

• Identifying an operation is much easier for them if it is represented by an associatedsymbol.

• They can easily select a crop or pest from image even if they can’t read its name.

Our Solution:

• Menu or selection list are equipped with images that can be easily understood by

the farmers.

• Icons for well-known tasks among apps should be used as standard symbols

• For weather forecast also we use images representing weather conditions along

with text.

• Farmers can select crop or pest in respective apps by selecting the image.

Observation:

• Use of colors as identifiers is an additional advantage.

• Even though they might not know names of colors, but they are easily able todifferentiate among different colors and then memorize to associate different taskswith them.

Our Solution:

• We have made a standard sized color bar on the top of every screen page

• This color varies with the screen number and is fixed for a particular number

• User could memorize a color for a particular screen and task

• Since a visible change in color would take place on transition from one screen to

another, the user could always be sure of having made the transition successfully.

• Note: Color cannot be taken as a separate measure as it becomes useless in case of

color-blindness.

App for current weather conditions and

forecast with image and textApp for cropping data management

with image based selection menu


forecast with image and text

Screen Sequence NumberColor bar

Fixed Next button

Image representing output

Audio instruction button using symbols


forecast with image and textApp for cropping data management


App for cropping data management


Screen Sequence NumberColor bar

Fixed Next/Back button

Image representing input

Audio instruction button using symbols

Earlier studies suggest and prove beneficial use of more iconic, text-free interfaces for users from low-

literate communities.

Other than these, we discovered that additional design rules such as the following can significantly help

low-literacy users in being comfortable with Smartphone Apps:

• Keeping the keyboard fixed on screens demanding input

• Limiting number of inputs per screen to one

• Making every screen show a digit corresponding to its depth in the menu

• Fixed position of specific operation buttons

• Removal of vertical scrolling

• Audio instruction and audio output

• Maximum use of numbers over text

• Use of images and symbols

• Smartphones consume battery power very quickly. Their short battery life becomes

a bigger problem in areas where electricity isn’t even available for half of the day.

• Using normal phones only they face this problem when battery can support phone

for around 36-48 hrs. In case of smartphones, it doesn’t generally last longer than

10 – 15 hrs.

• This problem needs to be solved before Smartphones can make significant progress

in rural areas.

Documents

Rakshit Agrawal, Mridu Atray, S. Krishna Sundari · Rakshit Agrawal, Mridu Atray, S. Krishna Sundari •Trends in Indian Mobile market •Emerging low-cost variants of Smartphone