Drew Cogbill | Thesis Blog

The main brick column here is about 6 feet tall.  I assumed that the top of it was closed off, so I set my wallet and two sets of keys on it, which promptly fell into a crevice.  It took the hotel staff about 30 minutes to help me fish out my belongings with wire hangers.  The builder of the building happened to be eating dinner at a table about 10 feet from the column during the event.

–

The San Ignacio market has about 10 vendors on weekdays, but on Saturdays the market area is flooded with a huge number of merchants.  In the last year, a new, large structure was built for the market to house the everyday vendors and a new concrete slab was laid for the weekend merchants to set up temporary tents on.

I think it’s great that there is investment being put into infrastructure for something so obviously important to the local economy, but I think there are a few major oversights in the design of the site.  The most major one is that the majority of the vendors are on a north-south axis and the east to west brightly shining sun blasts in on the vendors and their products essentially all day every day.  To deal with this, all of the vendors have strung up tarps or sheets to block out the sun.

Additionally, the design of the stalls just doesn’t seem to consider what will happen in them.  Every stall has added a system of ropes and pipes to hang bananas and other good off for selling.  They are making the most of their space, but the design of the stall could have anticipated and assisted in this and other produce selling needs.

Also:

The standard way to serve silverware, either metal or plastic, at a restaurant or take away is wrapped in a paper napkin:

Beers and sodas in glass bottles are always served with a napkin on top of the bottle:

BarCamp Nairobi was a “unconference” held 21 June 2008, where bloggers, programmers, and other techy folk in and around Nairobi met up to “share and learn in an open environment”.

White African has a few videos from the event.

O’reilly had a survey carried out at BarCamp with the following results:

Anthropology’s Technology-driven Renaissance, a article for PC World by Ken Banks of kiwanja.net, emphasizes the importance of observation and understanding of human behavior within a particular context (anthropology) in development design.  This importance certainly extends to design in general.

This is the method I’m trying to employ in my process at the moment.  In talking to Colleen, she recommended that I think of mapping and observation, esentially anthropological research and analysis, as prototypes and to not be so concerned with my end product.  I’m going to try and actively pursue such activities in my remaining time in Belize.

“In order for the mobile phone to reach its full potential, we’re going to need to understand what people in developing countries need from their mobile devices and how they can be applied in a way that positively impacts their lives. Sounds like the perfect job for an anthropologist to me.”

I stumbled on a paper by R.J. Honicky, et al., called “A message oriented phone system for low cost connectivity” when I was on Nathan Eagle’s publication page.  Nathan Eagle is the PI for EPROM.

This paper excited me because it’s about an idea for a voice message based system for people living in developing countries.  The system it proposes is much more concerned with hardware and infrastructure than my Pigeon idea, but it a great point for helping me to continue generating questions about communication in developing countires and to begin more academic research.

I had been thinking about Pigeon more in terms of international calling, but domestic use could be useful also.  As I’ve been talking to people about mobile phone use in Belize, there are still hoops people will jump through to save their credit.  Something that could help them save money and communicate more easily would have a good chance of being adopted.

The paper mentions how a voice message system would effectively put people on the grid who live in areas where there is no mobile coverage but travel often to areas with coverage.  In this case, asynchronous communication may be beneficial since when a person will be avaliable is unknown.  Honicky’s proposed system would allow people to record when they are unconnected and then to upload when they are in a connected area.

I’m beginning to do a few informal interviews with people I’ve got to know in San Ignacio.  I’m focusing on international (/***edit 15 June) technologically facilitated communication.  I’m interested in what people are doing now to communicate with those abroad, what specific problems they see, and how they could see things being easier and better for them.  I’d appreciate any suggestions on questions you think could provoke interesting discussion or insights.

Rough questions to get me going in conversation (in no particular order):

• Do you own a cell phone?
• Do you have a land line?
• What phone do you use to call abroad?
• How often do you call the US or abroad?
• How often to you text (SMS) the US or abroad?
• Do you own a computer?
• Do you often us a computer?
• Do you use email?
• Do you use Hi5 or another social network?
• Do you contact people abroad with Hi5 or another network?
• How else do you contact people abroad?
• How long have you owned a cell phone?
• If you could either pay your cable bill or put credit on your cell phone, which would you choose?
• If you could either pay your land line bill or put credit on your cell phone which would you choose?
• How old are kids when they get their first mobile phone?
• When kids have a parent abroad, how do you think they communicate with them?
• Do you trust the phone company?

/***edit 15 June

• How do you generally communicate with people in Belize?
• Do you do anything to conserve your mobile credit?

/***edit 16 June

• Follow up “Why?” questions to all questions

• White African
• Google Africa
• Google.org
• Do Good Well
• Open Source Africa
• Poverty and Social Development: a Caribbean Perspective

From a NYTimes article, 28 May 2008:

“Africa, where 29 percent of the population owns a cellphone, according to Gartner, is just one of several promising markets. In India, market penetration is 34 percent, well below the United States, at about 70 percent, and Western Europe, at more than 90 percent.”

Essentially, the room for mobile phone growth in emerging markets is huge, not to mention the fact that these markets are huge in comparison to existing markets (the US, Western Europe).  This is discussed and understood, but specific statistics are essential in making the argument of how creating an affordable communication system for those living in these markets can, beyond being extremely helpful to individual lives, be economically possible.

“Highly Qualified Small Print”

via Jan Chipchase

Google Design in Practice: the Challenge of Simplicity on iTunesU.

Adam Baker works for Gmail and specifically worked on Gchat.  He talks about things design (rapid prototyping, scoping, etc.) and how that work in a corporate, engineering environment (Google).