Design for Digital Inclusion

Cell phone reception in rural areas in the US

2007-10-13T21:13:00.000-07:00

This editorial makes the case of why building infrastructure in terms of cell phone connectivity is essential in rural areas, such as the Olympia Peninsula in Washington state. Written by James Peters, chairman of the Squaxin Island Tribe in Mason County.

We cannot afford to leave rural Washington behind

People living in rural areas deserve equal access to modern wireless technologies as those living in more densely populated towns and cities. High-quality wireless service creates new economic opportunities and increases productivity and connectivity for local businesses. In addition, ensuring the expansion of wireless networks in rural Washington narrows the technology gap between rural and urban areas.

MySpace en Espagnol

2007-04-25T22:55:00.000-07:00

MySpace en Espanol launched yesterday with it's beta version for U.S. residents, along with a Spanish language version of the MySpace IM client. For Latin American users, MySpace has also launched MySpace Latinoamerica. MySpace Mexico is coming soon and MySpace Brazil is planned for this summer.

"Transform the way you text" is Samsung's new slogan

2007-04-22T19:53:00.000-07:00

The new Samsung u740 boasts "pivoting" action. With the use of dual-hinges the phone can be opened up vertically or horizontally. They claim the phone will "transform the way we text."

It seems, in an effort to provide more versatility and flexibility to use many different services easily, there is more and more a trend of moving phone pieces and even in some cases detachable parts. Here are a couple of patents I've come accross: Sony Ericcson's "flip phone" and what I'm going to take a wild guess, is a new Treo housing a detachable mobile phone.

A Wireless Umbilical, Cut

2007-04-22T19:44:00.000-07:00

When the Blackberry network went down for 12 hours last week, users lost more than a communication device. They lost an addictive sense of belonging. Read more >

Think Cycle

2007-04-22T19:41:00.000-07:00

Distributed collaboration design initiative focusing on underserved communities: http://www.thinkcycle.org/

Google Phone knows what you want before you search

2007-04-10T22:47:00.000-07:00

The team at mad4mobilephones has located a patent for either a Google mobile phone OR Google mobile phone UI. The implications of such a location aware technology are great. Using their fancy algorithms, it is conceivable that Google will be able to take our previous searches to determine when and where we look for food, entertainment, health practitioners - you name it - and send us recommendations.It seems they are getting ready to take us one step closer to a " come to me web."

Social Software Building Blocks

2007-04-10T22:25:00.000-07:00

Gene Smith provides a conceptual framework for social software and an interesting look at popular Web 2.0 sites such as flickr, digg and twitter. Social Software Building Blocks is a good primer for understanding different types of social software and its basic elements.

MicroCharts

2007-02-21T15:41:00.000-08:00

Here is a way to show micro charting in excel. This blog also has a bunch of other interesting things about analytics.
MicroCharts, A Different Take on Excel Charting

Mobile phones facilitate romance in modern India | University of Washington News and Information

2007-02-13T17:24:00.000-08:00

An article on UW News highlights Carolyn Wei, UW Phd Candidate's work on mobile phones and courtship. Check it out here: Mobile phones facilitate romance in modern India

Remittances: Sending money back home

2007-02-13T07:28:00.000-08:00

In the broadest sense, a remittance is a bank transfer sent from one person to another, typically over a long distance. Placing this definition in context, remittances are a way to supplement family members, and by extension, local economies in impoverished conditions. A main impetus for immigration/migration is economic. The members of a family or community that move into an economicly promising location, are often indebted/obliged/committed to sending money to families back home.

In Krygystan this seemed to work in a variety of ways. People who move to Eastern Europe, would send money to families back home. Also, some of the people we spoke to in Krygystan also sent money to their family members in China.

Another example from here in Seattle is of Mexican immigrants moving to Seattle for economic opportunity (the recent story I heard on NPR about "taco trucks" - those mobile food stands parked in semi-perminant locations around the city and attracting flocks of fans). The woman who spoke to the reporter talked about how the money they made from the business went both to investing in more trucks and saving up to open a permanent/traditional restaurant, but much of it was sent to family back home.

Remittances are highly significant in a diasporic context both for the individuals on both sides of the transations and at a larger scale of the economies that these remittances power.

From this article:

The World Bank estimates that such remittances totaled $257 million in 2005, with informal channel transfers being nearly equal.

Yesterday Mastercard announced a pilot program to help people send money, via a mobile phone to others back home. Mobile phones as a delivery method for remittances is not new, it's been going on in the Phillipines for some time. What is significant about this announcement is it's scale involving a mobile phone conglomerate which can help match local mobile providers with cooperating banks.

Read more here: Banking on Mobile.

To use a US analogy, remittance transfer fees are the pay day loans of bank transactions, sometimes charging as much as 24-50% of the remittnace as a transaction fee. Here's hoping that the focus on mobile technologies will bring some relief to that practice.

List of Social Networking Software/Services

2007-02-11T18:02:00.000-08:00

This list might be helpful for our kindred material, it's got an exhaustive list of current social software, including MoSoSo apps: Social Networking Services Meta List.

Skype and the era of VOIP

2007-02-01T11:19:00.000-08:00

There are a limited number of technologies that have made a fundamentally positive impact in my life and Skype is certainly one of the chosen few.

Let me give you an example. In the past, phoning my family in Turkey was an expensive ordeal. The options were limited and expensive:

Dialing direct

positives: good sound quality and limited numbers to dial

negatives: very expensive with connection fees (unless you have a monthly international calling plan) and exorbitant per minute rates

from a mobile phone it’s so expensive I shouldn’t even mention this as an “option,” but here goes:

2.29/minute to landline

2.38/minute to cellular and as a bonus the cell phone receiving the call get’s charged double for some unfathomable reason. I should also mention that in the early days, you had to ACTIVATE your phone to dial international numbers. So, in an emergency for instance, reassuring loved ones that you’re OK was a romantic notion at best

if you sign up for the save-you-a-bundle-not monthly plan at 3.99/month, your rates would be .36/minute for landline and .45/minute for mobile

Calling Cards

the numerous numbers dialed seem to take as long as the calls

terrible sound quality with unpleasant echoing and other noise as well as frequently dropped calls

calling card companies seem to be like last seasons shoes, you use them, get used to them and when you want another pair they're no longer available. They seem to go out of business like there's no tomorrow. So, in the long term you can’t expect to stick with one company and it’s lengthy access code you painstakingly memorized

As I grappled with these non-options in the early 2000’s, the clouds broke and we were all introduced to the wonderful world of Skype. All in all, it’s not a surprise that this model worked, Skype’s success is based on the fact that it’s founders could easily answer these three fundamental questions with a resounding “YES,” in it’s early days:

1. Is my product something that will satisfy a need for a large enough user base (or target market)?
2. Are these users meeting these needs in any other way right now?
3. Will my product provide better and more immediate relief to their need/s than what they are currently using?

Their call options were introduced in this order:

Computer to Computer
Computer to Phone (and vice versa)
Mobile Skpye to Computer
Mobile Skype to Landline or Mobile

When Skype was first made available the only option was the first one I mentioned, Computer to Computer. We may not think twice about it today but it certainly took us a while to wrap our minds around the concept. We all kept thinking there was a catch and that it was too good to be true and that surely, we would be charged insane sums through our ISPs. None of this turned out to be true, this WAS the real deal.

After the first option was adopted, slowly the second option was introduced. Purchasing SkypeOut minutes allowed users to call landlines from their Computers. This was the moment I had been waiting for, I heartily kissed my international phone plan goodbye and sent it packing forever.

With the third and fourth options, my life has changed. I am no longer tethered to my home timing the appropriate 10 hour difference in order to phone my parents in Turkey. I could be having brunch on a Sunday at Le Pichet in downtown Seattle and still call my parents via iSkoot (an intermediary application that connects my mobile device with Skype) on their computer, if they’ve logged onto Skype or on their landline in Ankara using SkypeOut at .14/minute, if they’re not online. I can do this with a peace of mind, that I will not receive an insanely high phone bill from my cellular carrier. The clear and crisp sound quality is as good as - if not better than landline connections.

I should explain how iSkoot works. Since I own a Treo 680 with no wi-fi access, I’m not using VOIP. iSkoot is using my air minutes (but still ONLY my air minutes not 2.29/minute) to connect me with Skype. If I'm using SkypeOut, then again, iSkoot uses my air minutes included in my carrier package to connect with iSkoot and then Skype is charging me the per minute fee per my country code. Considering the alternatives, I can live with that.

For true VOIP, those of us who own a PocketPC or Mobile PC, using Skype via your data line is a possibility. Drum roll- you can use your mobile to speak with others and only be charged the monthly fee for your data package. I’ve noticed in message board and blog posts there are those already out there looking for carriers that offer ONLY data packages.

Of course, I cannot imagine carriers realistically wanting to embrace such a technology that would take billions of dollars out of their pockets but it is conceivable that in the future with blanket wi-fi in major cities, phones like the NetGear Skype WiFi phone will be adopted more widely. The Seattle Wireless Project is working to achieve a blanket wi-fi for the City as I write these words.

The era of true VOIP has arrived and there’s no stopping it, so “take a deep breath” and relax.

The papers we're working on

2007-01-31T16:10:00.000-08:00

List of papers we're working on

The WWW ACM paper - proofread
The HCII paper - think about fleshing out, abstract has been accepted
The Mobile HCI paper - other ideas are welcome, we have a couple to start with
Design ethnography paper for CHI workshop - Emma and Beth will work on

Cell Phones Vital in Developing World - MSN Money

2007-01-28T15:43:00.000-08:00

From the AP: Cell Phones Vital in Developing World

Today, mobile phones are the primary form of telecommunication in most emerging economies, fulfilling much the same role as fixed-line phone networks did in facilitating growth in the United States and Europe after World War II.
Some developing nations have even jumped out in front as mobile pioneers. In the Philippines, more than 4 million people use their cell phones as virtual wallets to buy things or transfer cash -- services still rare in many wealthy countries, with few exceptions like Japan.

Change in Mobile Phone Use

2007-01-26T10:54:00.000-08:00

Check out this graph (i got it from IBM's new social/collaborative data visualization tool called Many Eyes) It shows how mobile phone use has changed from 99 to 05. Interesting stuff. Check out Central Asia.

Emma

Brief review of learner-centered and person-centered design in education

2007-01-23T07:36:00.000-08:00

So here is a brief overview of "centered-ness" type plans in education. While this is not an exhaustive list of the "person-centered tools" - see below - it is apparent that the approach is based in methods used for case studies and ethnography. Beware...this area is full of acronyms.

Learner-centered design
Articles about learner-centered design began to appear in the early nineties. It promotes active learning, (vs. passive learning in lectures and books) through problem-based projects. The students, often working in groups, focus on problem situated in a context aligned to the curriculum. This approach changes the curriculum focus from content to the needs, skills and interests of the student (Norman & Spohrer, 1996).

Practitioners using learning-centered design argue that people learn best when engrossed in a topic in an authentic context. Students learn through a collaborative experience which is more like many real work environments. Proponents feel this approach produces individuals who are more prepared to address problems outside of the school environment. Where learner-centered design addresses curriculum for the general classroom, person-centered plans focus largely on individuals with disabilities.

Person-centered plans
The goal of person-centered plans is to create an individualized vision of a person’s future developed primarily for people with disabilities. These plans are often used to aid creation of an Individualized Education Plan (IEP). IEP’s are considered best practice to inform both the adaptation of the standard curriculum and the tools used for assessment for children and young adults mainstreamed in the general classroom. This has become a very important issue with the additional requirements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) where in 2003 individuals with disabilities were expected to meet state standards, or alternate standards as set by their IEP. Several tools have been developed to aid in writing the person-centered plans.

Making action plans (MAPs, originally called McGill Action Planning) is one tool practitioners use to develop a person-centered plan that can inform the IEP. Proponents of the MAPs approach strongly believe that all children should be included in the general classroom. Furthermore, they argue that access to the general curriculum can only occur in the general classroom (Vandercook and Forest 1989).

The MAP’s process involves a facilitated meeting involving the important contributors to the child’s life, for example, parents, teachers, siblings, and peers. Through the meeting the group attempts to create a profile and a vision of the individual’s future through seven key questions. The profile includes the meeting participant’s dreams and nightmares for the individual, the individual’s history, strengths and weaknesses, and their perceived needs. The meeting participants also describe what an ideal day would be like in the life of the individual.

Choosing outcomes and accommodations for children (COACH) is another often used person-centered planning tool meant to inform the creation of an IEP (Giangreco, Cioninger & Iverson, 1998). COACH is a slightly different approach where a student planning team is formed which includes teachers and practitioners. The family is then interviewed, sometimes with the planning team observing, where life and educational outcomes and goals are discussed. Often older children will also be involved in their own COACH session. The family-centered approach assures that the priorities of the family are considered in the child’s educational plan.

After the interview, required supports are identified in order to achieve the IEP goals and objectives. Strategies for planning and adapting lesson plans to facilitate learning and adherence to the IEP are identified. Adapted assessment tools, where needed, are also identified.

Other person-centered planning tools have also been developed outside of the goal to develop an IEP. “Personal futures planning” is more often used for adults to help identify required network supports for individuals to live in the least restricted environment possible (Mount & Zwerick, 1988). Planning alternative tomorrow’s with hope (PATH) is a facilitated process where the disabled individual discusses their own dreams, often in a supported group environment (Pearpoint, Forest & O’Brian, 1989). A PATH facilitator guides the individual through a process laying out steps to realize their dream, beginning with the first step they need to take.

While there are more person-centered plans out there....they all follow the same kind of pattern of focusing on the individual and identifying environmental adaptations that need to occur in order to achieve the individual's goals and address their needs.

Works Cited
Ford, A., Davern, L., & Schnorr, R. (2001). Learners with significant disabilities. Curricular relevance in an era of standards based reform. Remedial and Special Education, 22(4), 214-222.

Giangreco, M.F., Whiteford, T., Whiteford, L. & Doyle, M.B. (1997). Planning for Andrew:A case study of COACH and VISTA use in an inclusive early childhood program. Burlington, VT: University of Vermont, University Affiliated Program of Vermont.

Mount, B. & Zwerick, K. (1988). It’s never too early, it’s never too late: An overview ofpersonal futures planning. St. Paul, MN: Governors Planning Council on Developmental Disabilities.

Norman, D.A., & Spohrer,J.C. (1996). Learner-centered education, Communications
of the ACM, v.39 n.4, 24-27.

Vandercook, T., York, J., & Forest, M. (1989). The McGill action planning system (MAPS): A strategy for building the vision. Journal of the Association for Persons with Severe Disabilities, 14(3), 205-215.

Pearpoint, J., Forest, M., & O’Brien, J. (1996). MAPS, Circles of Friends, and PATH. In S. Stainback, & W. Stainback (Eds.), Inclusion A guide for educators (pp. 67-86). Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.

The IA for the Website

2007-01-22T10:01:00.000-08:00

Thought I'd share this with you.

An interesting mobile service

2007-01-21T20:02:00.000-08:00

I noticed a sign for this mobile service downtown.

http://www.verrus.com/corporate/services/paybyphone.htm

This is such a convenient service that I would use it. I've highlighted some elements I found compelling:

"Verrus’ Pay by Cell Phone enables customers to use their credit cards to pay for parking – without using a meter.[...] Customers are able to purchase parking at any time without the need to worry about broken meters or not having enough change. Capital expenditures are reduced through the elimination of investing in meters and the costs associated with them, such as cash retrieval and maintenance.

Features

Extend Parking Remotely
74% of motorists carry cell phones. Offering them the opportunity to park and pay by phone makes carrying change unnecessary.
Parking expenses can be accessed and printed out online. Clients are also able to logon and see their lot revenues in real time.
Ability to have parking receipts directly emailed to the client."

Vizster

2007-01-21T13:12:00.000-08:00

We should read this paper and discuss this project. It's a tool call Vizster and it's a tool for visualizing online social networks built by Jeffrey Heer and Danah Boyd.

Article to read for next week

2007-01-17T15:30:00.000-08:00

For the 24th..
check out this page
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jpd/publications.shtml
and read "Implications for Design," which is #48 on the conf pubs list.

Notes from Jan 10 meeting

2007-01-10T15:56:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

For the comps:
- No Death Star - but Vegas looks OK, unified tabs, and the color scheme of blue/green or try out some earth tones like brown, mustard, etc
- Look for a background image that's more horizontal
- Gulay could help by collecting kindred materials

For the upcoming conference proposals
- Beth and Emma will work on the CHI proposal for the UCD and International Development workshop (Beth and Emma)
- Emma and Cynthia will work on the CHI proposal for the new methods workshop (the 3 of us)
- We'll all work on the IPCC proposal

We'll have a guest speaker on the 24th.

Thanks all, see you next week!
Emma

Social Networking (web sites) and Teens

2007-01-09T12:34:00.000-08:00

A new report is out from PEW about Social Networking and Teens

Some findings of note:
- Over half (55%) of all online teens (12-17) use social networking web sites
- Private vs. Public: 66% set their profiles to private
- Most likely to use social networking sites and create online profiles: Older girls ages 15-17
- MySpace is the top choice for social networking: 85%, Facebook is only 7% and everything else is 1% or lower
- In terms of race, they report that out of teens who create profiles online: White, non-Hispanic 53% vs. Non-white 58%

No mention of MoSoSo in this report.

Winter quarter, first meeting, Jan 3: Minutes

2007-01-03T15:19:00.000-08:00

Plan for the first two weeks of winter quarter:
- Cynthia will work on the website.
- We will all finalize the information architecture.
- Beth and Cynthia will work on writing content for the website.
- Emma will work on revisting the design work we started next summer: tackle it and bring an artifact next week, a draft, that we can start to work on to send out to get feedback on.
- A graphic representation of a timeline of this work.

Blogs to read before we meet next
- Terra Nova as an example of a multi-author, collective blog
- janchipchase.com, a resaercher from Nokia researching developing countries, mobile phones with ethnographic methods
- Smart Mobs
- Small surfaces.com, a blog about designing for small and mobile screens

Goals for the quarter:
- One paper out: the design comparison paper, HCI Mobile confernce,
- Get data coded
- Get a kick ass website
-

Emergent themes

2006-12-06T17:13:00.000-08:00

Hi DDI'rs,

I'm live blogging our meeting today and promise to keep all snark to myself (or add it in later).

We talked about the PS SIGCHI meeting that discussed mobile design.
So tonight we added some new themes. I captured them in an excel file that I'll email around.
Coding is an iterative process, we will probably identify new themes as we go. If we identify new methods, we should talk to Beth about adding those to the code sheet.
Gülay volunteered to come up with a scheme about personalization/phone habits.
Update on the website:

Cy's mock up
We need to have discussion on color schemes until December 15. Beth will be the tie breaker and she assures us that we don't want her to divide.
Emma will work on the information architecture and content sections. Select pictures to post.
Beth will work on content.
We should have a flikr feed. So we need to create a new account that we can link to. Who will do that?

Next quarter:

We will have data crunched from the interviews
We will have photos thought about
We will have designers come in (probably in the first two weeks) to talk about getting from data to design. Beth has class on T-Th 1:30-3:20 which may also be where the guest speakers may be.
We will try and prototype something that quarter
We may have access to developers in the Spring

Have a great break everyone!

Emma

themes

2006-11-09T14:16:00.000-08:00

Here are some of my notes about themes from yesterday's class.

I'd like us to try and aggregate and prioritize several themes to code for in the transcripts.

This list is long. See what you can do to combine and/or eliminate. I'd like to try and settle on a list of themes by end of the day Friday, okay?

Best,
Beth

Themes identified by the group:

Concern about money affecting purchasing decisions
Genrealized concern over money
Trust issues and reliance on friends
Trust in authority or distrust in authority
Loss of control (separated out from money issues)
Sense of etiquette in using phone
Anxiety about change:
Due to current event
Due to generational gaps
Due to technology
Transportation (going places)
Group social activities (vacation, social events, social aspects of shopping, having friend come over to look at computer)
Phone use for weak social ties
Phone use for strong social ties
Phone for sense of security
Phone for official/work/business use
Phone as tool for surveillance
Phone as maintaining family bonds and sense of security (separate out?)
Phone as facilitator of social bonds with friends
Phone as way to get services
Mobile phone as replacement for public phone
Phone as tool for planning
Phones and quality of life
Augmenting or extending closeness (physically or socially).
Gettings things done in a place where it is difficult to get things done
Phones as gifts
How people expressed emotion
Feeling lost or frustrated. Stress (maybe ties into anxiety?)
Geographical and spatial distance
Financial constraints that direct phone use
Other values that constrain usage

Here's an interesting app for mobile phones

2006-11-01T13:58:00.000-08:00

Ring! Ring! It's time to make love

A NEW mobile phone available through Japan's NTT DoCoMo can ring to let would-be mothers know when they reach the most fertile part of their monthly reproductive cycles.

Motorola and user dissatisfaction

2006-11-01T13:47:00.000-08:00

Ease-of-use dogs Moto

In the survey of 55 Motorola customers, 78% said they wouldn't buy a Motorola handset again, with the majority citing problems with usability. The figure was slightly higher among first-time Motorola users. As many as 85% of the 48 first-time Motorola users in the poll want to switch to another manufacturer.

Do you think this has further implications for other mobile phone manufacturers or companies that provide mobile services?

Simon Penny lecture this Wednesday

2006-10-29T12:13:00.000-08:00

This Wednesday, 4PM, CMU 120: Simon Penny on Digital Arts and Human Computer Interaction. "HCI and Digital Media Arts are approximately the same age, share a common concern with interaction between people and technology and depend on similar technologies. Yet the intellectual, philosophical and theoretical traditions from which they arise are starkly different and belie radically different motivations, commitments, approaches and solutions."

More information at DXARTS News page.

Texting over voice

2006-10-26T17:16:00.000-07:00

An article in the Guardian today talks about the Phillipines having the unique distinction of being "the first country in the world where mobile users spend more on data services than on voice."

Why, you may ask?

The main reason for the Philippines figures is that texting is very cheap compared to voice calls, so subscribers use texts as their main means of communication and their spending on voice calls is very low.

So the article makes a good case about why this is resulting in more revenue: more texts than calls.

What do you think this tells up about adoption rates (not specifically mentioned in the article). It seems to me that there might be more people texting more often. So making the technology economical, accessible, and giving users the control to choose when to use and how much to spend on each act of communication may yield a higher rate of technology adoption.

Read the full article here: A country with text appeal.

Bringing the Internet to the village

2006-10-20T13:21:00.000-07:00

From AsiaMedia comes an article about an initiative by Grameen Phone to create community information centers in Bangladesh.

Several themes from this article seem relevant to our recent discussions:

Microfinance
Reaching out to rural areas
The promise of the Internet to make economic change

What do you think about this story? I thought it was interesting that their ideas for growth was mobile broadband instead of considering the phone as a platform in and of itself.

Hands free mobile phone

2006-10-17T16:42:00.000-07:00

From the Street Use blog:

Rubber Band Hands Free Cell Phone

The social networking backlash

2006-10-09T08:36:00.000-07:00

There is an AP article in this morning's Seattle Times calledBreaking up with social-networking sites. It talks about how people, especially young people in the US are eschewing social-networking sites for a variety of reasons.

As the novelty of their wired lives wears off, they're also are getting more sophisticated about the way they use such tools as social networking and text and instant messaging — not just constantly using them because they're there.

Welcome

2006-10-09T08:09:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Emma for putting this together for the group, and thanks to you all for participating.

I'dl ike to use this blog as an aggregate for some of the information we find that we think might be useful to an outside audience. We can also in the interim use this in conjunction with the listserv until we get the wiki up and running.

Feel free to post ideas from the readings, from discussion, from the data, from outside readings or news items you find, links to interesting stuff, pics of your own you think are relevant, etc.

test

2006-10-08T18:37:00.000-07:00

here's our new blog.