David Lehr's, "Dialing for Development" discusses how mobile phones are improving the world in 5 distinct ways: spreading access, opening markets, delivering information, collecting data and facilitating finance. Lehr goes on to state, "To capitalize on each of the new mobile phone applications, however, organizations must make sure they are meeting the unique needs of poor users." Jan Chipchase traveled the globe working for Nokia as a human-behavior researcher or “user anthropologist" researching those needs.
In the New York Times article, "Can the Cellphone Help End Poverty?," Chipchase described what being a user anthropologist entailed and how human centered design could improve not just profit margins and sales for an international company like Nokia, but how it could help people not only as a business tool, but as a localized point of communication for displaced people amid war, plagues, economic strife and natural disasters. His job at Nokia was to study people and how they used cell phones to tap into resources to improve their quality of life. He studied everyone, from fishermen who used their phones to check market prices, to prostitutes who used their phones to increase their turnover. He photographed everything and everyone, capturing dreams and hardships alike with one purpose in mind – how to improve the technological capacity of cell phones to meet the user needs all over the world at an affordable price. Chipchase’s job at Nokia was to relay the stories of the people he interacted with to the designers at Nokia, how a cell phone could save a wasteful 3 hour trek to an absent doctor with a child afflicted with malaria or how SMS could spread news quickly in war-stricken Kenya. The idea that cell phones might be a frivolous expense to people living without electricity, adequate shelter or clean water has come to question, but considering what information cell phones can impart, and how quickly, might clarify those questions when dealing with catastrophes and circumstances when time is critical. As Chipchase pointed out, "People once believed that people in other cultures wouldn't benefit from having books either." Human centered design is the foundation for technology and the user anthropologists of the world know that before they design a product, they better know their customers.
The article quotes a 2005 London Business School study, “that for every additional 10 mobile phones per 100 people, a country’s G.D.P. rises 0.5 percent.” And looking at a small business owner who uses a cell phone to increase their income, thereby increasing access to resources to improve their quality of life makes the cell phone use seem more of a necessity then a luxury. Whether it is a fishermen in India who uses his phone to check in on the best market price or the “phone ladies” in Bangladesh, "...accurate timely information can save a day's travel time, a month's wages, or a year's vegetable crop" (Lehr). Grameen Phones, LTD has become the largest telecom provider in Bangladesh, boasting over $1 billion dollars in revenue a year on a simple premise – extend microloans to women in poor countries so that they are able to purchase cell phone kits and become a local operator for the rest of their community. Charging a small commission, these phone ladies are able to give telecommunications access to everyone in their village, regardless of their income, as well as construct a sustainable business for themselves.
Mobile phones have become invaluable for banking in developing countries, allowing people who have never had the resources to suddenly have access to cash and capital. Lehr discusses Wizzit, a South African mobile banking company who trains independent agents to educate people about mobile banking. According to Lehr's article, "About 80% of Wizzit's customers previously had no bank account."
One of the most interesting projects that Chipchase described is the Future Urban project, an open forum for people to come and sketch their dream mobile phone. One thing was the same no matter where the project was conducted - the phones capabilities always reflected their priorities and challenges. "One Liberian refugee wanted to outfit a phone with a land-mine detector so that he could more safely return to his home village. In the Dharavi slum of Mumbai, people sketched phones that could forecast the weather since they had no access to TV or radio. Muslims wanted G.P.S. devices to orient their prayers toward Mecca. Someone else drew a phone shaped like a water bottle, explaining that it could store precious drinking water and also float on the monsoon waters. In Jacarèzinho, a bustling favela in Rio, one designer drew a phone with an air-quality monitor. Several women sketched phones that would monitor cheating boyfriends and husbands. Another designed a “peace button” that would halt gunfire in the neighborhood with a single touch."
In our world, our phones are a combination of organization, work, communication and entertainment. We are dependent on them because of their convenience and the instant access that they give us to the outside world. Why would we believe that people in developing countries would not need or desire those desired results? As Lehr points out, "The poor are not looking for hand-me-down technology from the developed world. They are demanding - and paying for - services that their more affluent counterparts have long enjoyed and also requesting services that are especially tailored to their needs." User anthropologists like Jan Chipchase are investigating these needs while mobile phone companies all over the world are scrambling to design phones with the information that people like Chipchase gather. The question is how do we make the technology and connectivity that we are so dependent on in work for developing countries? Will it be forced by entrepreneurship, like Nicholas Negroponte and affordable laptops or will mobile phone companies listen to user anthropologists that they send into the world? And what do we place more value on in the way of technological advancement - an iphone application that tracks our dinner cooking in the kitchen so we don't have to walk into the next room to check ourselves or the mobile phone that can detect a land mine from 20 feet away?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/magazine/13anthropology-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Doing more with less…how increasing technological capacity of a mobile phone can change the world…
David Lehr's, "Dialing for Development" discusses how mobile phones are improving the world in 5 distinct ways: spreading access, opening markets, delivering information, collecting data and facilitating finance. Lehr goes on to state, "To capitalize on each of the new mobile phone applications, however, organizations must make sure they are meeting the unique needs of poor users." Jan Chipchase traveled the globe working for Nokia as a human-behavior researcher or “user anthropologist" researching those needs.
In the New York Times article, "Can the Cellphone Help End Poverty?," Chipchase described what being a user anthropologist entailed and how human centered design could improve not just profit margins and sales for an international company like Nokia, but how it could help people not only as a business tool, but as a localized point of communication for displaced people amid war, plagues, economic strife and natural disasters. His job at Nokia was to study people and how they used cell phones to tap into resources to improve their quality of life. He studied everyone, from fishermen who used their phones to check market prices, to prostitutes who used their phones to increase their turnover. He photographed everything and everyone, capturing dreams and hardships alike with one purpose in mind – how to improve the technological capacity of cell phones to meet the user needs all over the world at an affordable price. Chipchase’s job at Nokia was to relay the stories of the people he interacted with to the designers at Nokia, how a cell phone could save a wasteful 3 hour trek to an absent doctor with a child afflicted with malaria or how SMS could spread news quickly in war-stricken Kenya. The idea that cell phones might be a frivolous expense to people living without electricity, adequate shelter or clean water has come to question, but considering what information cell phones can impart, and how quickly, might clarify those questions when dealing with catastrophes and circumstances when time is critical. As Chipchase pointed out, "People once believed that people in other cultures wouldn't benefit from having books either." Human centered design is the foundation for technology and the user anthropologists of the world know that before they design a product, they better know their customers.
The article quotes a 2005 London Business School study, “that for every additional 10 mobile phones per 100 people, a country’s G.D.P. rises 0.5 percent.” And looking at a small business owner who uses a cell phone to increase their income, thereby increasing access to resources to improve their quality of life makes the cell phone use seem more of a necessity then a luxury. Whether it is a fishermen in India who uses his phone to check in on the best market price or the “phone ladies” in Bangladesh, "...accurate timely information can save a day's travel time, a month's wages, or a year's vegetable crop" (Lehr). Grameen Phones, LTD has become the largest telecom provider in Bangladesh, boasting over $1 billion dollars in revenue a year on a simple premise – extend microloans to women in poor countries so that they are able to purchase cell phone kits and become a local operator for the rest of their community. Charging a small commission, these phone ladies are able to give telecommunications access to everyone in their village, regardless of their income, as well as construct a sustainable business for themselves.
Mobile phones have become invaluable for banking in developing countries, allowing people who have never had the resources to suddenly have access to cash and capital. Lehr discusses Wizzit, a South African mobile banking company who trains independent agents to educate people about mobile banking. According to Lehr's article, "About 80% of Wizzit's customers previously had no bank account."
One of the most interesting projects that Chipchase described is the Future Urban project, an open forum for people to come and sketch their dream mobile phone. One thing was the same no matter where the project was conducted - the phones capabilities always reflected their priorities and challenges. "One Liberian refugee wanted to outfit a phone with a land-mine detector so that he could more safely return to his home village. In the Dharavi slum of Mumbai, people sketched phones that could forecast the weather since they had no access to TV or radio. Muslims wanted G.P.S. devices to orient their prayers toward Mecca. Someone else drew a phone shaped like a water bottle, explaining that it could store precious drinking water and also float on the monsoon waters. In Jacarèzinho, a bustling favela in Rio, one designer drew a phone with an air-quality monitor. Several women sketched phones that would monitor cheating boyfriends and husbands. Another designed a “peace button” that would halt gunfire in the neighborhood with a single touch."
In our world, our phones are a combination of organization, work, communication and entertainment. We are dependent on them because of their convenience and the instant access that they give us to the outside world. Why would we believe that people in developing countries would not need or desire those desired results? As Lehr points out, "The poor are not looking for hand-me-down technology from the developed world. They are demanding - and paying for - services that their more affluent counterparts have long enjoyed and also requesting services that are especially tailored to their needs." User anthropologists like Jan Chipchase are investigating these needs while mobile phone companies all over the world are scrambling to design phones with the information that people like Chipchase gather. The question is how do we make the technology and connectivity that we are so dependent on in work for developing countries? Will it be forced by entrepreneurship, like Nicholas Negroponte and affordable laptops or will mobile phone companies listen to user anthropologists that they send into the world? And what do we place more value on in the way of technological advancement - an iphone application that tracks our dinner cooking in the kitchen so we don't have to walk into the next room to check ourselves or the mobile phone that can detect a land mine from 20 feet away?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/magazine/13anthropology-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
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