User Interface Design of E-Learning System for Functionally Illiterate People

Among different type of illiterate people, the print illiterates suffer most from getting crucial information passed around the society. Many print illiterate people are found in the developing countries and in many cases they live in the remote areas working as farmers. These people are deprived of the knowledge generated from the latest scientific researches. This research makes some recommendations related to developing user interface especially suitable for the print illiterate people. In this regard, a user interface is developed based on the recommendations from the previous researchers. The authors find the recommendations insufficient and develop another user interface based on the improvements proposed by the authors. Later both the user interfaces are tested by two different groups of print illiterate people in a remote village in Bangladesh. The test data shows that the proposed improvement contributes significantly to make the user interface more usable to the target population. 13 out of 15 users could complete the assigned task successfully using improved user interface. Whereas only 8 out of 14 users could do the same with the other user interface. Among the successful users, the improved user interface took 26% less time than that of the other user interface. Finally some recommendations to develop user interface for the functionally illiterate people are made based on the results and observations of this research.

[1]  Indrani Medhi-Thies,et al.  A Hindi speech recognizer for an agricultural video search application , 2013, ACM DEV '13.

[2]  Gajendra Sharma,et al.  Public Participation and Ethical Issues on E-governance : A Study Perspective in Nepal , 2014 .

[3]  Bharathi Pitti,et al.  A TEXT-FREE USER INTERFACE FOR EMPLOYMENT SEARCH , 2007 .

[4]  George Buchanan,et al.  Children as Design Partners and Testers for a Children's Digital Library , 2000, ECDL.

[5]  Kentaro Toyama,et al.  Optimal audio-visual representations for illiterate users of computers , 2007, WWW '07.

[6]  Richard Heeks,et al.  Information Systems and Developing Countries: Failure, Success, and Local Improvisations , 2002, Inf. Soc..

[7]  Apala Lahiri Chavan,et al.  Design considerations for a financial management system for rural, semi-literate users , 2003, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[8]  Apala Lahiri Chavan,et al.  Design studies for a financial management system for micro-credit groups in rural india , 2002 .

[9]  L. Slobodkin,et al.  The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution , 1996 .

[10]  Kentaro Toyama,et al.  Some evidence for the impact of limited education on hierarchical user interface navigation , 2013, CHI.

[11]  Adam Lerer,et al.  Evaluation of IVR data collection UIs for untrained rural users , 2010, ACM DEV '10.

[12]  Edward Cutrell,et al.  VideoKheti: making video content accessible to low-literate and novice users , 2013, CHI.

[13]  Athulang Mutshewa.  Disseminating Environmental Information in Rural Botswana: the case of Nata village , 1999 .

[14]  Madelaine Plauché,et al.  Tamil market: a spoken dialog system for rural India , 2006, CHI EA '06.

[15]  Akira Fukuda,et al.  Delay tolerant network for developing countries , 2013, 2013 International Conference on Informatics, Electronics and Vision (ICIEV).

[16]  Nicholas P. Sullivan.  You Can Hear Me Now: How Microloans and Cell Phones are Connecting the World's Poor To the Global Economy , 2007 .

[17]  Paul D. Lopes,et al.  Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India. , 1993 .

[18]  Kentaro Toyama,et al.  Designing mobile interfaces for novice and low-literacy users , 2011, TCHI.

[19]  David Bawden,et al.  Information and digital literacies: a review of concepts , 2001, J. Documentation.

[20]  Renee Kuriyan,et al.  Text-Free UI: Prospects for Social Inclusion , 2007 .

[21]  Kentaro Toyama,et al.  Full-context videos for first-time, non-literate PC users , 2007, 2007 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development.

[22]  Joyojeet Pal,et al.  Speech Recognition for Illiterate Access to Information and Technology , 2006, 2006 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development.

[23]  Judith Good,et al.  Designing new technologies for illiterate populations: A study in mobile phone interface design , 2008, Interact. Comput..

[24]  Gary Marsden,et al.  'Visual literacy' as challenge to the internationalisation of interfaces: a study of South African student web users , 2002, CHI Extended Abstracts.