{"55191":{"#nid":"55191","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Entertainment Needs Drive Innovative Mobile Phone Uses in India","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EA new study on how people in India use mobile computing devices suggests that users can devise new and innovative uses for them, if they have sufficient motivation. Researchers also found that entertainment may be viewed as a necessity by the media-consuming public and not merely a desire. The findings, which have implications for computer program design the world over, will be presented at CHI 2010, the Association for Computing Machinery\u2019s Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, being held at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta, April 10-15.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ELast summer, Thomas Smyth, Ph.D. student in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, was working at Microsoft in Banglaore, India, when he had a thought.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cAs you might expect, Microsoft employs a lot of people to maintain the building, so one day we called a couple of them into a room and asked them, \u2018What do you do with your phones,\u2019\u201d said Smyth.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAfter a few interviews, Smyth and fellow researchers from Microsoft India and one from the University of California, Berkeley, set out to the lower-income neighborhoods and interviewed about 30 people on how they used their mobile phones. They found that most people, in addition to calling and texting, used their phones for transferring media files via Bluetooth. Obtaining media this way, via peer-to-peer transfer, is free, whereas downloading content from the Internet can be costly. On the other hand, Bluetooth sharing involves a cumbersome process that many Americans don\u2019t bother with.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cTo send a text message on your phone, for instance, it takes three or four steps. If you\u2019ve ever transferred something on your phone with Bluetooth, you know it takes 15 to 20 steps. So for people whom you might not expect to have a lot of expertise in this area, the motivation to transfer music and video files to be entertained seems to be enough to turn these complicated user-interface obstacles into mere speed bumps,\u201d said Smyth.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESome people watched films on their phone, listened to music and recorded lecture notes in school.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cOf course, there\u2019s the one where the guys would use Bluetooth to transfer data with the phone in their pockets while they were doing side-by-side work on a construction site,\u201d said Smyth. \u201cThat\u2019s my favorite, because if you really want to transfer a big file, it can take a half an hour over Bluetooth.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOthers removed their microSD chips and use them to transfer files.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cSome people would swap those around, or they would have several microSD chips in their wallet, because that\u2019s a faster way to transfer stuff. There was no end to the kinds of things people would do,\u201d said Smyth.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESome studies have claimed that usability barriers prevent people from being able to use technology to improve their lives, but Smyth and colleagues discovered that their interview subjects had constructed elaborate systems to obtain, view and share their entertainment content. Other types of content related to areas that are typically identified as \u201cneeds\u201d by researchers and aid practitioners, such as healthcare or education, did not show up in Smyth\u2019s study.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAnd the multimedia-capable phones aren\u2019t cheap in India. They often cost more than a month\u2019s salary, yet people said they save for long periods to buy one.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cMaybe we\u2019re putting too much weight on these usability barriers and it\u2019s just more a question of motivation,\u201d said Smyth. \u201cEven if you asked these folks, they might say \u2018Oh no, a good job is more important for me,\u2019 because that\u2019s what they think society wants to hear, but the proof is in the pudding here, that they\u2019ve constructed this really remarkable system around entertainment.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EA new study on how people in India use mobile computing devices suggests that users can devise new and innovative uses for them, if they have sufficient motivation. Researchers found that users often construct elaborate systems to get around technology barriers. \u003Cem\u003ESource: Office of Communications\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Users construct elaborate systems to get around technology barriers."}],"uid":"27310","created_gmt":"2010-04-01 12:13:45","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:05:49","author":"David Terraso","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2010-04-12T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2010-04-12T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"55194":{"id":"55194","type":"image","title":"Fruit Merchant in Bangalore","body":null,"created":"1449175507","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 20:45:07","changed":"1475894489","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:41:29","alt":"Fruit Merchant in Bangalore","file":{"fid":"190252","name":"DSC02777-1.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/DSC02777-1_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/DSC02777-1_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":343815,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/DSC02777-1_0.jpg?itok=iqUI16Lq"}},"55221":{"id":"55221","type":"image","title":"Thomas Smyth","body":null,"created":"1449175507","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 20:45:07","changed":"1475894489","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:41:29","alt":"Thomas Smyth","file":{"fid":"190259","name":"Smyth_09.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/Smyth_09_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/Smyth_09_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":1626710,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/Smyth_09_0.jpg?itok=-tfNBoYL"}}},"media_ids":["55194","55221"],"groups":[{"id":"1183","name":"Home"}],"categories":[{"id":"153","name":"Computer Science\/Information Technology and Security"},{"id":"143","name":"Digital Media and Entertainment"}],"keywords":[{"id":"1946","name":"GVU"},{"id":"2998","name":"India"},{"id":"341","name":"innovation"},{"id":"335","name":"Microsoft"},{"id":"1752","name":"mobile"},{"id":"1753","name":"phone"},{"id":"169281","name":"smyth"},{"id":"623","name":"Technology"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EGeorgia Tech Media Relations\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELaura Diamond\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:laura.diamond@comm.gatech.edu\u0022\u003Elaura.diamond@comm.gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E404-894-6016\u003Cbr \/\u003EJason Maderer\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:maderer@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Emaderer@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E404-660-2926\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["david.terraso@comm.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}