Literacy Bridge
Here is a post from Trina Gorman:
Last month, Cliff and I went to Ghana to develop partnerships with local organizations and to conduct a usability study on the device. Our goal through usability was to answer the question: How can we improve the Talking Book to make it easier for illiterate people to use?
We spent time in two villages – one slightly more urban than the other. Andy would teach a group of new users about the device and how to use it. He would then ask them to perform a task, for example to find a message in the health category.
We found that many variables influence how quickly a user learned – everything from their age and education level to their familiarity with other technologies (like a radio, mobile phone) and how close they lived to an urban city. Comfort and repetition were also key – we often saw significant improvement after letting users take the devices home for the evening. The accent of the system language was also important for some – the closer the accent was to their immediate village, the better.
There were many interesting similarities to life here in the states. For example, children learned with impressive speed. But have you ever tried to teach your grandmother how to send an email? Teaching an illiterate elderly woman how to use the Talking Book is precisely the same. She needed to believe the device was valuable and she needed to have the determination to keep trying.
Below are two videos to give you a glimpse into our work. The first shows a user performing a task after Andy’s teaching – you’ll notice at the end she successfully finds the message. In the second, Andy debriefs his thoughts after our weeklong effort. I think we all left pretty satisfied with what we found – it was encouraging to see users learn from eachother and we made some nice improvements that will make the device even more effective.