Background

India has seen a tremendous growth in telecommunications. From a few milion phone lines in 1990, the country has moved to 40.09 million land lines and 185.13 million mobile phones in 2007. However, the current growth comes from mainly from voice communication. Only a small fraction of Indian population can read or speak English. In contrast, use of mobile phones in non-English languages is negligible. A large part of the Indian population is semi-literate or illiterate. While voice communication on the mobile phone will continue to be of importance, it represents only a part of the total potential of a networked device. However, literacy and language issues are major barriers in adoption of technology. On a mobile phone, use of even simple applications supporting voice communications, such as phone book or identification of missed calls become major challenges because of literacy and language barriers.

There are also challenges in the methodology. Several techniques exist for carrying out user studies in the context of literate, urban, office-oriented users. Relatively much less is known about doing user studies with semi-literate, non-English speaking users when there is a lot of cultural and social distance between the users and the researchers.

While challenges are many, so are the opportunities. Literacy and language independent (or language specific) interfaces may start out as mini applications for minor conveniences, but these will push the envelope and give the confidence to the users and developers to use and create more serious applications later. In contexts where mobile phones are the only networked computing device available, such interfaces will play an important role in bridging the digital divide.

This research group in IDC, IIT Bombay aims to inform design of mobile phone interfaces in the context of literacy and language barriers in India. The group investigates strategies, opinions, perceptions, problems and solutions in the space of semi-literate and illiterate mobile phone users and people using mobile phone interfaces in a language that they do not use otherwise. The group is supported by Nokia.