Content creation and dissemination by-and-for users in rural areas

  • Authors:

  • Sheetal K. Agarwal;Arun Kumar;Amit Anil Nanavati;Nitendra Rajput

  • Affiliations:

  • IBM Research, India Research Lab, New Delhi, India;IBM Research, India Research Lab, New Delhi, India;IBM Research, India Research Lab, New Delhi, India;IBM Research, India Research Lab, New Delhi, India

  • Venue:
  • ICTD'09 Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Information and communication technologies and development
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

83% of the world population does not have access to Internet. Therefore there is a need for a simple and affordable interaction technology that can enable easy content creation and dissemination for this population. In this paper, we present the design, development and usage pattern of a VoiKiosk system that provides a voice-based kiosk solution for people in rural areas. This system is accessible by phone and thus meets the affordability and low literacy requirements. We present usability results gathered from usage by more than 900 villagers during four month of the on-field deployment of the system. The on-field experiments suggest the importance of locally created content in their own language for this population. The system provides interesting insights about the manner in which this community can create and manage information. Based on the use of the system in the four months, the VoiKiosk also suggests a mechanism to enable social networking for the rural population.