Jaideep Godara

File-Explorer for Computer Users in Rural India (2004)

Organization: Media Lab Asia, IIT-Bombay
Duration: 5 months

The current generation of computer interfaces are designed for users, who predominantly t to be urban, office-going, English-speaking, and literate. Though only a fraction of the Indian population fits this description. No wonder only a fraction of Indian users get the benefits of the IT revolution and rural India is far from tapping the potential of the computer revolution.

Project objective:
Design and demonstrate the file explorer design that fulfills the needs of illiterate and/or semi-literate computer users.

A mid-fidelity interface prototype

Interface features

Design process:
This was consisted of ethnographic study of a village "Pabal" to get an understanding of daily activities as well information needs of rural people. It was followed by personal and group interviews, and two focus groups. A Contextual design approach was used to analyze field study and focus group results, and for the design of prototypes.

Design features:

• High use of cultural and regional graphics to reduce text dependency.
• Confusing and unfamiliar mental models such as Desktop, Files, Folders were removed, and replaced with an activity based file structure.
• Navigation was expanded horizontally, and less deep to avoid getting lost.
• Tangible physical interface for mouse control and browsing.

Entity relationship chart

Info relationship chart