How do people engage with PCs for the first time?

Given that most of us have encountered PCs from the time we were in school or college, it may be difficult to think of what it was like to discover the PC for the first time! But most adults in countries like India are new to PCs, and usually view it as a rather intimidating device.

 

Inspired by the premise of the Hole-in-the-Wall experiments for children, we (the Technology for Eemerging Markets Group at Microsoft Research India) have been running a project called Kelsa+ that allows unrestricted and unmediated access to a shared Internet-connected PC at the workplace for low-income office workers, (i.e. those who are housekeeping staff, drivers, security guards, maintenance crew). These workers have an average class 10 education in the local language often from a rural government school, are aged approximately 26 years, and are male. In the process of observing their usage of the PC, we have discovered that there are particular patterns of usage, content choice, and learning that accompany the adoption of the PC by novice users from this demographic.

 

 

I Usability

I.I Keywords as input

Our target users were mostly schooled in their local language at a government school. They recognize English words, but are not fluent in reading or writing entire sentences or paragraphs. For this reason, they prefer entering words or short English phrases describing the website or content within a website that they would like to view, in the address bar or the search bar, rather than memorizing and typing out an exact URL (even if they have visited the site before). Often these search queries have “.com” tag added, pointing to a perception among users that such a tag improves the quality of the search request. Applications that accept words or short phrases as input to load relevant content for users will allow for easy navigation.

 

I.II Mouse-based navigation

Users prefer minimal usage of the keyboard, and rely almost exclusively on mouse-based navigation. To load a webpage for instance, the browser’s history is used frequently. Going through the list of previously-viewed webpages in the drop-down menu of the address bar, users then make a selection and have that page loaded – all without touching the keyboard.

For the same reason, the dominant usage of email is to forward messages to one another. Rarely are fresh email messages, involving text input, created by users. Instead, those email forwards that arrive in their mailboxes (sometimes 10-15 such messages in a day) are then forwarded on to as many as 10 different friends. These usually contain images and music files as attachments.

 

I.III Double-clicking

Users most often call on various operations using the right-click menu, rather than double-clicking on a particular application or using the menu options in the toolbar.

 

I.IV Icon vs. text hyperlinks

While text-based hyperlinks are increasingly recognized as gateways to other pages, users often click on the icons associated with a text-based hyperlink to access the next page. So, having the icons that are associated with a particular text label also hyperlinked would be useful.

 

I.V Simplicity and consistency

As is obvious, having a simple interface with few core navigation options displayed prominently is necessary. Users like a linear navigation format, and are easily confused by deep pathways to discover applications or features (see Indrani Medhi’s work on this). The application should present the bare minimum options, with an option to access more complex features – should the user desire to do so.

 

II Content

II.I Engaging through entertainment

The users we have in mind perform physically strenuous jobs, and often prefer to use applications that rely on minimal active navigation. Viewing videos and listening to music constitute the bulk of time spent with the PC. Most often, the content accessed is around local language entertainment.

 

Windows’ preloaded offline games (Solitaire, Minesweeper, etc.) are very useful in the beginning in having complete PC novices practice navigation with a mouse, especially since each mouse action receives visual and audio feedback. However, given the repetitive content, they move on from those applications to more dynamic content on the web.

 

II.II Links to wider community

One of the surprising observations over the course of our study was that a few users discovered social networking sites like Orkut on their own. This led to multiple users accessing Orkut (through a single account), not to enter information or create a detailed profile for themselves, but to view other people’s profiles. Similarly, an English learning website that included a social networking option was received with great enthusiasm, with one user establishing contact with more than 50 ‘friends’ through the learning portal. Connecting to those from different classes, cultures, backgrounds through community features, is as important a need for users from this segment as it is for those with higher incomes and higher PC usage.

 

II.III Personalisation

Users seem to be very particular about personalising their PC, at least for the duration of their individual session. Changing the desktop background selection seemed to be a very important activity for each user. This is indeed a way for individuals to use other apps/tools to build images and content for display. For example, the screenshot below is of two workers using the webcam to take a picture of themselves, following the example of two other workers who had conducted a similar exercise previously and used that image for the desktop background.

 

 

Even tools like PowerPoint and Word are used to create personal pieces. For instance, workers combine entering information on themselves (name, age, photo, etc.) with images available on the web (especially pictures of local movie stars) to create interesting modified digital images. That they can represent themselves digitally in interesting ways might be a key component of how usage of a PC boosts self-esteem among such users.

 

III Learning

III.I Group usage and sharing is common

Many users actively prefer to use the PC in a group, either because they consider a peer to be the informal instructor as he demonstrates how an application is used, or because the content accessed is meant for group consumption. Some workers spend several weeks just observing others’ usage before touching the PC themselves. Music and videos constitute the most popular content accessed, and these are consumed in groups of 4 to 5 at a shared access machine. The creation of resumes and other documents is also often a group exercise.

 

The group usage preference also means that all users are aware of their peers’ usage and abilities. So applications that have a game-based interactive format, with scores per user, allow for a healthy competitive approach to learning and using that application. This is especially true for e-learning applications.

 

-- Aishwarya Ratan

Associate Researcher, Microsoft Research Technology for Emerging Markets Group