Tapan S. Parikh

Designing an architecture for delivering mobile information services to the rural developing world

Paper plays a crucial role in many developing world information practices. However, paper-based records are inefficient, error-prone and difficult to aggregate. Therefore we need to link paper with the flexibility of online information systems. A mobile phone is the perfect bridging device. Long battery life, connectivity, solid-state memory, low price and immediate utility make it better suited to developing world conditions than a PC. However, mobile software platforms are difficult to use, difficult to develop for, and make the assumption of ubiquitous connectivity. To address these limitations we present CAM - a framework for developing mobile applications for the rural developing world. CAM applications are accessed by capturing barcodes using the phone camera, or by entering numeric strings with the keypad. Supporting minimal navigation, direct linkage to paper practices and offline multimedia interaction, CAM is uniquely adapted to rural user, application and infrastructure constraints

Mobile phones and paper documents: evaluating a new approach for capturing microfinance data in rural India

CAM is a user interface toolkit that allows a camera-equipped mobile phone to interact with paper documents. It is designed to automate inefficient, paper-intensive information processes in the developing world. In this paper we present a usability evaluation of an application built using CAM for collecting data from microfinance groups in rural India. This application serves an important and immediate need in the microfinance industry. Our quantitative results show that the user interface is efficient, accurate and can quickly be learned by rural users. The results were competitive with an equivalent PC-based UI. Qualitatively, the interface was found easy to use by almost all users. This shows that, with a properly designed user interface, mobile phones can be a preferred platform for many rural computing applications. Voice feedback and numeric data entry were particularly well-received by users. We are conducting a pilot of this application with 400 microfinance groups in India.

Design studies for a financial management system for micro-credit groups in rural india

In this paper we describe the design process, results and observations obtained in designing a user interface for managing community-based financial institutions in rural India. The primary users are semi-literate village women from local communities. We present detailed observations from our field visits and the resulting evolution in our design vision. We describe a successful design artifact that is the result of this process, and list several important features that contributed to its success. We conclude with the current state of our work and our plans for the future.

Rural Microfinance Service Delivery: Gaps, Inefficiencies and Emerging Solutions

Microfinance, the provision of financial services to poor and under-served communities, has emerged as one of the most promising avenues for stimulating rural economic development through local enterprise. In this paper we will discuss some of the major technology gaps faced by rural microfinance institutions, focusing on areas that are most important for the future growth of the industry. This work builds upon six months of field research, including field studies with eight different microfinance organizations located across Latin America and Asia, and discussions with many other organizations worldwide. Historically it has proved difficult to provide sustainable micro-financial services to remote rural clients. As formal financial institutions begin to look seriously at this market, the microfinance industry faces significant challenges in maturing and scaling to sustainability. We will look at three of the major tasks faced by rural microfinance service providers today - 1) the exchange of information with remote clients, 2) management and processing of data at the institutional level and 3) the collection and delivery of money to remote rural areas. Each of these has been a difficult problem to solve for microfinance institutions worldwide, and may offer opportunities for information technology-based solutions. For each of these gaps we will look at current best practices, examine the role information technology has (or has not) played in overcoming these obstacles, and discuss promising future directions. In this context, we will discuss the use of handheld technologies for rural data collection, experiences in the implementation of MIS systems at the institutional level and current strategies for introducing electronic banking to remote rural areas. For each of these, we will look at the results obtained thus far and the potential ramifications for the long-term growth and sustainability of the sector

Design considerations for a financial management system for rural, semi-literate users

In this paper, we describe the design process, results, and general observations obtained in designing a user interface for managing community-based micro-finance institutions in rural India. The primary users studied were semi-literate village women. We discuss our contextual study observations and conclude by presenting a grounded design approach that best leverages the existing learning patterns of the users.

Augmenting Rural Supply Chains with a Location-Enhanced Mobile Information System

In recent years, there has been increased interest in the market potential of rural communities in the developing world. In the developing world, the lack of information and communications infrastructure has left companies with manual paper-based information methods as the only means of analyzing and aggregating data. This primitive approach to rural supply chain management creates a barrier to efficiency and a barrier to entry for many companies. In this paper we discuss a field study conducted with a company involved in the marketing, sale, and distribution of products in rural India. We describe the participants in this companys rural supply chain, highlighting inefficiencies in the information and material flow. We show how a technology-based solution could help optimize distribution routes and reduce inefficiency. By knowing the location and details of transactions, the company can better direct rural marketing strategies and manage human and material resources. We present the high-level design of this system and enumerate the possible technologies that can be used to determine a users location via a mobile device, including GPS, GSM triangulation and Placelab using GSM (LaMarca et al., 1999). To assess the potential of GSM-based methods, we describe the results of an experiment we conducted to determine the extent of GSM coverage along common rural sales routes. Our results indicate that GSM-based methods are sufficient for some purposes, but can not be used to determine the exact position of all rural transactions, especially those that occur in rural villages. We discuss scanning location-specific barcodes as a possible way of localizing transactions to individual villages and customers

Establishing relationships for designing rural information systems

Designing for the developing world presents unique challenges. Establishing rapport with local partners is important to overcome contextual unfamiliarity and ensure the relevance of proposed solutions. In this paper, we discuss our experiences designing a CAM-based mobile data capture system for Asobagri, a rural coffee cooperative in Barillas, Guatemala. CAM is a camera-based mobile application framework designed based on fieldwork with rural microfinance groups in India. Our local partners in India are now using the CAM framework in a real application. We list some practices that have helped us establish and sustain both these design relationships.

Reliable data collection in highly disconnected environments using mobile phones

Over four and a half billion people live in the developing world and require access to services in the financial, agricultural, business, government and healthcare sectors. Due to constraints of the existing infrastructure (power, communications, etc), it is often difficult to deliver these services to remote areas in a timely and efficient manner.n The CAM framework has found success as a flexible platform for quickly developing and deploying high-impact applications for these environments. Many of the applications built with CAM have relied on a model where a field worker with a mobile phone regularly returns from a disconnected environment to one with connectivity. In this connected state, the phone and a centralized server can exchange information and get the collected data backed up on reliable media.n We propose extending CAMs networking model to enable continual operation in disconnected environments. Using a set of heterogeneous paths made available through social and geographic relationships naturally present among workers, we describe a system for asynchronously routing data in a best-effort manner.

Mobile phones may be the right devices for supporting developing world accessibility, but is the WWW the right service delivery model?

In this paper we detail the synergies we have observed between the features and limitations of mobile phones, and the usability and accessibility requirements of rural developing world users. This includes support for sequential interaction, multimedia input and output, asynchronous messaging and a universally familiar numeric keypad. However, we argue that the WWW as currently conceived may be an inappropriate model for delivering mobile information services in this context. We highlight a number of tensions we have observed between the traditional web model, and the design synergies that we have uncovered. To demonstrate an alternative framework, we describe CAM --- a platform for delivering mobile information services in the rural developing world. Supporting scripted execution, media-driven, tangible interaction as well as an offline usage model, CAM is uniquely adapted both to rural accessibility requirements and the inherent capabilities of mobile phones. By learning from the CAM design, we can either improve the design of existing mobile web standards and services, or implement a more appropriate framework altogether.

Designing an Architecture for Delivering Mobile Information Services to the Rural Developing World

Paper plays a crucial role in many developing world information practices. However, paper-based records are inefficient, error-prone and difficult to aggregate. Therefore we need to link paper with the flexibility of online information systems. A mobile phone is the perfect bridging device. Long battery life, connectivity, solid-state memory, low price and immediate utility make it better suited to developing world conditions than a PC. However, mobile software platforms are difficult to use, difficult to develop for, and make the assumption of ubiquitous connectivity. To address these limitations we present CAM - a framework for developing mobile applications for the rural developing world. CAM applications are accessed by capturing barcodes using the phone camera, or by entering numeric strings with the keypad. Supporting minimal navigation, direct linkage to paper practices and offline multimedia interaction, CAM is uniquely adapted to rural user, application and infrastructure constraints.