Designing new technologies for illiterate populations: A study in mobile phone interface design

Designing for illiterate populations involves particular challenges: for a start, the life experiences, needs and expectations of non-elite and illiterate populations in developing nations are likely to be markedly different from those of a designer. To avoid any bias, the creation of new technologies for such groups must develop in continuous partnership with primary users, and include a thorough investigation into their worlds, lives, relationships and concerns. Involving the user throughout the design process can also help in progressively testing and fine-tuning the prototypes by exposing the shortcomings and strengths in the design.In this paper, we report on a study that investigated the design of a mobile phone for illiterate persons. While the study takes a user-centred, incremental design approach, the users’ context of use forms the basis for the phone design. Through a discussion which compares key insights from our study with related HCI studies, we have endeavoured to illustrate how findings from our study could be useful in the area of design for non-traditional users.