Featherweight Multimedia

While I was at Microsoft Research India I worked with Sankara Eye Hospital to improve health information dissemination to patients, who are mostly poor, illiterate, elderly women. Creating a device that reads health information aloud was only half the challenge. I discovered after four rounds of iterative tests that peer learning was most effective in getting the most people to try, use, learn, and have fun using the device.

The peer learning approach worked as follows. First, we (myself and a translator) taught a group of patients who were waiting for treatment while sitting on their beds how to use the device. We asked them to use it, then pass it on to other patients who were also sitting on their beds waiting. Patients felt more comfortable learning from their peers than from myself or a more educated Indian. Forty-five minutes later, we got the device back from a 70 year old patient (who was previously unknown to us), who reported that he had finished teaching all the other 30 patients in the room.

These patients had never pressed a button in their lives but they were using my device and having fun doing it.

The device is similar to a museum audioguide. Patients pass around a brochure with printed drawings and numbers. To hear more information about a picture, patients type in the number printed next to the picture on the numeric keypad of the smartphone. The smartphone then reads aloud the health information. I created the audioguide software for the smartphone, and also created an authoring tool that allows organizations to easily record audio, associate the audio with numbers, and copy the audio onto the smartphone. Patent pending.

Patients learning from peers

Brochure with drawings and numbers

Smartphone with touchscreen numeric keypad