Avaaj Otalo – A Field Study of an Interactive Voice Forum for Small Farmers in Rural India
Authors:
Anupam Jain, Dave Paresh, Deepti Chittamuru, Neil Patel, Tapan Parikh
Tags:
agriculture, forum, ICTD, India, literacy, rural development, social media, voice user interface
Journal:
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Year Published:
2010
Policy Summary
This paper presents the results of a field study of Avaaj Otalo (“voice stoop”), an interactive voice application for small-scale farmers in India. The most popular feature was a voice forum to ask and respond to questions, and to browse other questions and responses to a range of agricultural topics. Not only did the forum provide access to timely and relevant agricultural advice, but it became a lively social space with the emergence of norms, persistent, moderation, and a desire for structured interaction with accredited experts and open discussion with peers. This work shows that online communities can be a suitable medium in the rural developing world, and has indirect policy implications for how to support and expand this type of technology and infrastructure.
