The Indian Way

Conducting observations in India was a pleasant surprise for our Western minds. People were friendly and had a positive attitude toward our study; they had no problems inviting us to their homes and offices. During the study, all family members were present and actively participating. The families seemed to have a joint experience of mobile phone usage rather than strong individual opinions. It became obvious that experiences with mobile communication tools are shared between friends and family members.

Some informants found it difficult to express negative experiences with the devices they knew to be designed by the company we represented; we had to make it very clear repeatedly that we want to improve our designs, and in order to do so must know what could be done better.

Typical users in the Indian mobile phone environment are upper-middle-class and wealthy males. There is still excitement about mobile phones; mostly businessmen and executives use them, although nonbusiness usage is increasing. Possession of a mobile phone is significantly related to higher education, English speaking, and the use of high technology. Thus the current mobile phone users are the ones who are already comfortable with technology. (This won’t be true in the future.) Status attaches to the mobile phone model the user carries. However, just owning a mobile phone is a status symbol, and is related to a high standard of living.

Apart from these obvious phenomena often found in the early penetration phases on new technologies, there are several more interesting and more native phenomena in Indian mobile communication culture that clearly distinguish Indian mobile phone use from Western mobile phone use. The results below explain the context in which mobile communication transpires in Mombai and New Delhi. They also illustrate the scope of issues that cultural end-user research can cover.

Noise

Indian cities are very noisy. Traffic, chatter, yelling, hawking, and car horns make the environment difficult for phone usage. People shout into the phone, cover their other ear with their free hand to block out noise, and cover the space between mouth and phone to protect the microphone from background noise. Ringing tones successfully tested on the main street of Tampere, a Finnish town with 200,000 inhabitants, would not be noticed in India. Effective background noise reduction and alerts for noisy environments are needed.

Environment of Extremes

Hot weather, monsoons, humid conditions, dust, and bright sunlight followed rapidly by dark and unlit spaces—all of it affects phone usage. The phone should be moisture- and dust-resistant, and the screen should be viewable in both very bright light and near-darkness. This makes a designer think twice about the usability of, say, a touch screen in India. The practice of eating with one’s hands doesn’t make it any easier.

In India amulets are commonly used. This amulet is made of lemon and chilies, and it is used for expelling bad spirits.

Long-Term Investment

In India a mobile phone is a big investment, even for upper-middle-class people. Consumers carefully consider which mobile phone to buy. Materials are reused as much as possible, repairing things is preferred to buying new, and technical purchases are regarded as long-term investments. Phone lifecycle is expected to be long. One criterion an Indian mobile phone buyer might consider is whether today’s phone purchase will be able to surf tomorrow’s mobile Internet services and sites. Thus, spare parts and aftersale services are important, as are feature updates to keep the phone modern throughout its lifetime.

Guessing the Caller

Indians do not introduce themselves when answering an incoming call. Well, not all Westerners do, either. But Indians don’t just begin with “Hello!” or “Pronto!” They immediately start asking “Who is it?” or guessing “It must be my uncle who is calling.” One should be able to recognize a caller by his or her voice. This applies mainly for friends and relatives, but also for regular business partners. To guess incorrectly is considered rude. Calling-line identification (CLI), which is already a standard mobile phone feature, indicates the origin of the call by displaying the number or saved name on the handset screen. It becomes much easier to avoid being rude with CLI—unless someone other than the phone’s owner happens to call. But, we have to wonder, does CLI eliminate more pleasure than it creates? Recognizing someone by voice is an indication of intimacy, devotion, and skill. The caller probably perceives an essential difference between being recognized by his or her voice and being recognized by his or her subscription ID. Has our adaptation to communication technologies suppressed our sensitivity to these kinds of issues?

Social Event

In India a phone call is a social event. When one family phones another family, such as relatives or friends, each family member is expected to talk to each member of the other family. Conference calling is not accepted for this purpose because it is not considered personal enough. It is used only for saving money, such as when calling overseas. In Western countries, conference calls are fully acceptable even when communicating with family members. So how could UI design make the conference call feel personal enough for an Indian phone user? For instance, could there be a readout identifying who of the conference call participants is speaking at the moment?

Village Connectivity

Housewives in some parts of India and Bangladesh keep village mobile phones, and rent airtime to other community members. This so-called village connectivity is a fair start for introducing the mobile phone culture into the smallest villages as well. A big issue when moving from landline to mobile phones has been the shift from the mindset of calling a place to calling a person. Much mobile phone design philosophy has been related to this change. We have been pushing the personality and individuality of such communication as far as possible. And this direction has been accepted by Western markets with enthusiasm. However, “village connectivity” places very different demands on phone design. To whom is an incoming call or message addressed? How will costs be shared? Which entries in the contact directory are mine? Are these questions formulated so much from a Western individual’s viewpoint that they are completely irrelevant? Will mobile phones start to change social behavior towards more individualism in India also?

Sharing

The sharing of products and information is very common in India; phone calls can be shared with family members, friends, and colleagues. Emails can be printed out and circulated for comment, and they are usually sent to groups of people rather than to one person. It is actually considered unfriendly to omit someone among friends or colleagues from the distribution. On the home front, it is popular to have a common telephone directory or to share a mobile phone with family members and friends; for example, sons and daughters ask to borrow dad’s mobile when going out.

Even more interesting is the practice of group Internet surfing. The opinions and experiences of friends and family members are very important when selecting a device to purchase. Discovering something in common, such as smoking or having the same model of mobile phone, even connects people who don’t know each other. Group communication, trust, and emotional bonding are highly valued. What are the design implications of sharing? Should we provide personal profiles for users sharing a phone? Would Indians use a group SMS and chat for group communication? Would they benefit from an option to share the same view on several screens when browsing the Internet?

This is a gift to Lord Ganesha. Lord Ganesha, perhaps the most loved deity in Hinduism, is a symbol of knowledge and "auspicious beginnings.” He is prayed to before the beginning of venture to ask for his blessings.

Time

A calendar application on a personal digital assistant (PDA) must function as a time management tool supporting the models for planning, scheduling, and making appointments that the users know and like. In India, time management is usually based on daily, weekly, and monthly routines. Calendars are used mainly for checking the dates, not as reminders, as is the case in Western business time management. Appointments are often memorized, and post-it notes are used instead of calendars as reminders. Appointments in the far future are tentative by nature until an exact time and place are set closer to the event. Thus, a functional calendar application for the Indian PDA markets is optimized for routine-based time management, and calendars present entries in the form of notes and to-do lists rather than reminders. Perhaps calendars should be optimized for presenting dates and weekdays, and there should be a separate reminder application utilizing a post-it note metaphor. Should there be a specific UI solution for tentative appointments? Maybe the act of creating a note or reminder about an appointment already verifies it in such a way that the previous model of tentative meetings would be destroyed. It is not always possible to transfer existing patterns of behavior to information technology applications without changing the nature of the task.

Orientation

In India, people rely on asking directions and spotting landmarks to find places instead of using maps. Such restaurants, hospitals, railway stations, movie halls, government buildings, religious monuments, and other sites or buildings are popular landmarks. People consider them to be more stable than streets. For instance, a meeting place is not defined by address, but by giving directions and describing landmarks. UI design can support this by allowing fields for entering places in contact applications, which aren’t restricted to address, and adding a space to explain directions. By the same token, a travel guidance application for the Indian user should not rely on street names, but give the coordinates for direction and distance, and include landmarks. Navigation applications based on landmarks and directions instead of streets will need a completely new interface. How might that influence the design of location-based services?

Mixed Language

Our research project had a secondary objective to collect opinions about Nokia 3210, which contains the world’s first Hindi UI. We found that the technical terminology in our first Hindi release was rendered in literary and somewhat old-fashioned language. The results revealed that many technical terms would have been more understandable in English written with the Hindi (Devanagari) script. For instance, the terms call divert, data, fax, call register, prepaid credit, incoming call alert, and infrared don’t have good Hindi analogs. In spoken language Hindi and English are mixed, and sometimes Roman script is used to write Hindi. An example of a “hinglish” sentence is “tu tension mat le” meaning “don’t get tense.” English terms are used extensively, especially in technical speech. We have done our best to make the UI as localized as possible, but haven’t paid enough attention to the fact that much of the language is in fact localized as English. We still don’t know, however, if what we did is right or wrong. Localization is not that straightforward because understandability is not the only criterion. Native language can be important as such, and using local languages shows respect for the local culture. Applying expressions in Hindi, even though they might be a bit strange and awkward in the beginning, encourages languages to develop in the area of communication technology.

When new technologies emerge, technology-specific language finds its expressions at the same time. Some terms translate into native correspondences easily; some remain in English. Sometimes the localization needs to invent new expressions. For example, General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) will be localized by Hindi script having the speech sound similar to the acronym pronounced in English. While I was writing this chapter, my colleagues began work on the next version of the Hindi UI. The language will be modernized this time around, aiming at a better combination of understandability and respect for the appropriate Hindi expressions.