MOBILE LITERACY

Designing Mobile Technology for Emerging Markets

Mobile Literacy was a design and research project whose goal was to understand how mobile technology can work more effectiv ely in emerging markets. Adaptive Path sent researchers to to rural India to investigate the impact of mobile technology in this region of the world. Using insights gleaned from field data, we developed a set of product and service concepts that would meet the needs of people living in rural India.

PROJECT GOALS:

Understand how mobile technology is currently being used in rual India. Use research insights to create hardware recommendations and service design concepts to meet the needs of users in Rural India.

KEY CONCEPTS:

Steampunk Mobile Device
Steampunk became the conceptual wrapper for the mobile device we envisioned. Similar to the exposed inner workings of a motorcycle, works of art created to reflect the Steampunk genre possess a look of craftsmanship and cobbling. It's an aesthetic that invites the touch of the human hand and it encourages engagement and foster curiosity and play. Read more about this concept...

MobilGlyph
In rural India, being able to store a number in contacts and then call that contact is a primary mechanism for overcoming traditional infrastructure challenges, like learning the prices of goods at market. However, currently, most mobile phones available to people in rural areas of India, have a text driven interface, making it near impossible for illiterate users to obtain and store contacts. Solving the "save a contact" problem for illiterate users became one of the focuses for our project. To show how data could be made tangible, and how illiterate users could easily share contact information, we created a concept called MobilGlyph. Read more about this concept...

LINKS

• Research Findings
• Steampunk: A Mobile Device Concept for Rural India
• MobilGlyph: Making Data Tangible