Paper Week: Designing for Micro-credit Groups in India
This is the third post on papers that I got to read during my HCI class last semester. Each post is accompanied by a new comic strip at the bottom. I chose today’s paper because the style was very different from most of the other papers we read in class. Enjoy!
Paper: Design Studies for a Financial Management System for Micro-credit Groups in Rural India (reference at the bottom of this post)
What in the world did they do?
These guys wanted to create a system to help micro-credit groups in rural India manage their financial aspects. They did a lot of user interviews, prototyping, and user tests to get their design right.
What’s so cool about that?
There are two cool things about this paper. First, they had one big challenge. Many of the potential users for this system were uneducated, hadn’t used or seen a computer before, and some were even illiterate. So their system had to be easy to use for these people.
Second, the way the paper is written is almost like a story. They went through all the steps of their design process. It reminded me of a User Interface Design class I took, where we had to go through user interviews, paper prototypes and usability testing. It was cool to be able to follow these steps in their paper.
Did anything worthwhile come out of it?
Well, they came up with an interesting design that seemed usable. The only problem was that most of these organizations couldn’t afford the computers anyway. I believe the authors went on to try using mobile devices in future research.
Why should I care?
Okay, there are probably not many reasons why you should care about this paper. I’ll give it a try anyway. Even if the resources are not always there yet, I think it is a noble effort to try and bring technology to where it is needed most. Also, I think this paper is probably an interesting read for those of you who wonder what the design process is like for a user interface.
That’s it for today’s paper. On to the comic strip!
Reference: Tapan Parikh , Kaushik Ghosh , Apala Chavan, Design studies for a financial management system for micro-credit groups in rural india, Proceedings of the 2003 conference on Universal usability, November 10-11, 2003, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Comments
Nostalgic ... :)
My 2 cents: I thought the paper looks at a new way of processing tasks while minimizing much actual Human and Computer Interaction, which i felt is groundbreaking in terms of the transparency people could achieve while using technology.
Never under estimate your audience buddy ... i still believe lot of people do care ;) ... nice post !!
Posted by: priyesh | July 9, 2008 9:26 AM
Nice posts so far Fernando, you are actually getting me to enjoy reading about papers. And I am getting a kick out of your new comic strips! Keep up the good work!
Posted by: Lidia Noemí | July 9, 2008 9:58 PM