I imagine a really good synergy between the OLPC (or similar device for kids) and the Epos Digital Pen. This pen can work on ANY paper, unlike other devices that require the use of micro dots paper. Kids would keep on learning and practicing their hand writing, and they could easily handle homework and school work to the teacher or other classmates.

This could also be of great use for an email client device. You could eliminate the keyboard and the screen (that is the most expensive component), and have interaction with the TV for reading the incoming emails. Cheap, practical and easy to use for all ages

It would be nice if this digital pen incorporates a pressure sensor and the possibility to change ink colors in a future release.

Product Page Via: OCRegister

This is indeed an interesting project. The Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, developed an email client based on the classic Lettera 22 typewriter.With a different point of view, old mechanical technology was used to make new technology more accessible. Modern technologies are sometimes challenging for some people, and this new interface will allow a large segment of “boomers” to adopt email in a more natural way.

The email is typed in a special form, and when the letter is finished and you take the paper out of the carriage, the email is sent via telephone.

As stated in the product page: “This project directly responds to the monopoly of electronic interfaces for email access. While the sudden proliferation of the Internet enables dynamic, remote and instant electronic communication for a technocratic society, it ignores or even dismisses the needs and sentiments of a generation of people caught in the rift between redundant technologies and ungraspable modern interfaces. For them emailing means reaching across all that is familiar, into a befuddling way of engaging with the originally simple, intuitive task of writing or receiving a letter. Its interface, the computer then becomes a discriminating device, which creates new social cleavages, between the ‘have’ and ‘have-nots’ of the digital realm.”

It would be also nice to incorporate in a seamless way, the possibility to embed hand writing, pictures or drawings (maybe gluing the picture on the form), voice and video recording. I know there are other products for similar use, but I bet your grandma will not be able to send you the traditional cake recipe with her own instructions with audio or video via fax or telephone. Off course you could receive that info via snail mail, but it would take longer and probably she will not be able to include multimedia. A camera phone could be also used, but they are still expensive and complicated for grandma, not to mention that she will need a more expensive service plan.

I still see the need of a new product that combines the natural interaction of a personal conversation and hand writing with the benefits of modern technology. It love the idea of changing the keyboard for a more intuitive input device, like a block of paper. And change the computer for a cheap and small device maybe connected to the TV, and that way be able to receive multimedia letters (emails) from your children or grandchildren.

Product page.

I was reading the newspaper today, and I found an article about Afghanistan. I will reproduce some interesting facts here.

The taliban are hitting the education system, because they think that hitting education is hitting the government. Since last August, more than 400 attacks have been committed. Remember that during the 6 years of Taliban rule, women were not allowed to receive education. Today, 1/3 of students are women.

Last June 12th, six female students attacked outside the school. Two of them died and the school suspended all the activities until last week, when only 1/4 of the 1600 students dared to return.

After 30 years of war, it is difficult to find schools in decent conditions. More than 1/2 of the schools don’t have a building and classes take place in tents, under the trees or under the sun. Only 20% of teachers are well instructed and text books are mostly dated.

Today, only 6.2 million children go to school being just 1/2 of the children in school age. Under these circumstances, parents are being forced to decide between having illiterate children or running the risk of an attack.

In this chaotic scenario, only 5% of the budget that the US assigns to development in Afghanistan is destined to Education. (30% is spent in roads and 14% in energy production).

What does this have to do with design? Well, I see that similar conditions seem to be a common pattern in the developing world, and it will take a lot of hard work and creativity to find viable solutions. My guess is that if the international community wants to see some real changes and find a sustainable situation, education should be a top priority.

The base of the pyramid (BOP) has many opportunities to develop new products and services. It is by the use of design thinking that we will be able to sort out all the constrains to find affordable and effective solutions.

I can imagine this as a perfect scenario to take advantage of the OLPC (or similar), trying to give these children a good education and thus a better future.

Source: Lanacion.com

I have been doing some research and I found out that there have been already some attempts to bridge the email with the traditional “snail” mail service. Before going any further, it would be helpful to review what the digital divide is, and why it is important to pay attention to this issue.

What is the Digital Divide? (Source: digitaldivide.org)

“Digital Divide” refers to the gap between those who benefit from digital technology and those who do not. It took digital-divide researchers a whole decade to figure out that the real issue is not so much about access to digital technology but about the benefits derived from it.

Examining the situation more closely, it turns out that upper-to-middle classes have high-quality access to digital technology because the profit motive pushes technologists to work hard at creating “solutions” designed specifically for them. In this equation, however, the poor are ignored because the assumption is that designing solutions for them will not be profitable. The result is that even where the poor are provided access to digital technology, it is low-quality. Furthermore, the digital technology they do have access to is often of a design that ends up being harmful rather than beneficial. This, in turn, widens the digital divide.

The new view is that closing the digital divide will be most effectively achieved through a two-pronged approach, one direct and the other indirect: The direct approach will be for governments and businesses to work together to change the incentives that shape digital markets. The indirect approach will be for them to team up on e-government digital technology initiatives that extend rural health care and quality education to the poor. Through these two approaches, the poor will be able to reap many of the same benefits from digital technology now derived by the wealthy.

Why closing the Digital Divide matters? (Source: digitaldivide.org)

1) Closing the Digital Divide is a precondition for reducing poverty.

2) Closing the Digital Divide is a precondition for resolving terrorism.

3) Closing the Digital Divide is a precondition for achieving sustainable world markets.

Let’s take a look now at some statistical information; this will be helpful to try to understand the market.

Market segments can be defined by interest, income (purchase power) and access. The causes for the digital divide can be grouped in those 3 categories.

1. Interest: we can’t argue about the need to communicate and have access to information. We are social beings (or at least most of us :P). It is more useful to define interest by desires (instead of needs); that would give us a better insight on when and how people choose to communicate. Using “Symbolic segmentation” we can find the real behavioral drivers. (Wilensky, 1986)

2. Income: People on the base of the pyramid (BOP) are living with less than 5 dollars a day (Source: The World Bank). Pay-as-you-go and Pay-per-use experiences have proved successful in these scenarios, allowing people to have unprecedented access to new technologies. Microsoft’s FlexGo experience in Brazil and mobile phone penetration are good examples of technology adoption.

3. Access: There are several aspects:

3.1 Geographical: Geography poses sometimes a real challenge for distribution of products and services trough conventional channels. Superdistribution and viral marketing could be beneficial and help eliminate or reduce costs and difficulties. Urban centers have better infrastructure and therefore can benefit from lower costs and easier access to services. From the point of view of service providers, urban centers result more attractive than rural areas, because the population has a higher level of income and is concentrated in a smaller area.

3.2 Economical: Low income makes it difficult or impossible to have access to products that are currently thought for developed markets. Internet access price is dropping but still very high for the base of the pyramid. As the networks speed keep on getting faster, and market grows reaching a critical mass, prices will tend to drop more and more.

3.3 Financial: The lack of good financial support such as banks and credit cards makes it difficult to have credit access for acquisition of products and subscription to services. In addition, 89% of the secure servers are in English (Source: OECD), creating another barrier for the 71% of non English speakers that actually use the internet. (Source: internetworldstats.com)

3.4 Cultural: There have been a lot of improvements on user interface (UI) design that have shortened the learning curve and improved user experiences; nevertheless, it is estimated that 1/6 of humanity is illiterate (855 million people) (Source: UNICEF). Trying to include them will be a new challenge on product and interface design. We can see some attempts that have taken place in India, where in some Cyber Cafes, though the use of audio commands and manipulation of symbols, illiterate people can have effective interaction with the computer.

Other cultural barriers are:

3.4.1 Language: Different methodologies have been used to measure the language distribution of web pages. FUNREDES states that by 2000, 45% of total internet contents were in English; while other reports from OCCL state that in 2003, 72% of web pages were in English. OCCL in my opinion has used a more accurate methodology in the survey. (Source: UNESCO)

We should now consider that the actual 327 million English speaking internet users only represent 29% of the total internet population. (Source: internetworldstats.com)

Another interesting fact is that 91% of Fortune 500 and Forbes 800 companies could not respond correctly to an email in a foreign language. (Source: The WorldLingo Quarterly Email Survey - April 2001)

3.4.2 Age, gender and race: These are believed to be temporary and sometimes require government intervention. Most of them are also a result of social and economical differences Anyway, special consideration can be taken in account for the product and UI design.

3.5 Structural: Having reduced, discontinuous or no access to basic services and infrastructure is a hard barrier to overcome. There have been attempts to solve some problems but the necessary technology is expensive in most cases and not very efficient yet.

3.5.1 Energy: The lack, interrupted access and/or bad quality of electricity pose a new challenge for service and products to be successfully implemented. Standard products and business models are not appropriate under these special circumstances. Harvesting, generation and storage of energy is improving, but promising solutions such as micro fuel cells and new solar panels are not yet mature.

3.5.2 Networking: The latest distance record for WiFi using WiMax technology is 382 Km at a speed of 3 megabits per second in each direction (Source: Escuela Latinoamericana de Redes). This looks to be a good solution for transporting a broadband signal to remote areas, but it could still be difficult to implement in some regions. As an example, there are places that don’t even have phone lines because people steal the wires to sell the copper. This is a clear example that even with a cheap, available and mature technology; the service cannot be implemented without maintenance and other special considerations. I honestly don’t see technicians repairing a broken node in a very remote and hard to access location in a short time. OLPC includes a new mesh networking technology that allows interaction within the community even if a connection to the internet is not available. I still would like to find out more about battery performance when mesh networking is being used. Distances on rural areas are big, and mesh networking may not be sufficient to have network access. The latest reports show that internet penetration in Africa is 4%, Middle East 10%, Asia 11%, Latin America 14% (Source: internetworldstats.com). A good solution should be cheap, easy to operate and to maintain.

3.5.3 Financial: As I have previously mentioned, the lack of secure servers in local language; a stable economy and a strong bank system that gives access to credit, makes it difficult to implement subscription based services.

Dr. Ashok Ganguly and Microsoft’s Will Poole discuss innovative ways of creating and delivering products that are relevant, accessible, and affordable for everyone.

CDI–Committee for Democracy in Information Technology–was chosen by CNN, Time, Fortune, and Shell as one of the world’s top three Principal Voices in the field of Economic Development along with 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus and Jeffrey Sachs, head of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.

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