During Pittsburgh’s Winter, A Hot Day of Field Research
By Michael Madaio, PhD Human Computer Interaction Institute
In celebration of Graduate and Professional Student Appreciation Week, we are highlighting the diverse lives, research, and experiences of graduate students at CMU. Check out the blog the rest of this week to see more articles from graduate students around (and off!) campus!
Some graduate students will complete all of their research in Pittsburgh on CMU’s main campus, but others have the opportunity to take their research out of the city, or even out of the country. Here Michael, a PhD student in the Human Computer Interaction Institute, tells the story of one of his research days abroad.
I’m jolted awake by our van hitting a pothole. I look down at my watch and groan. 7:30am.
We pull into Ananguié, the last village on our itinerary for this week, and I gulp down the last of my lukewarm powdered coffee and hop out of the van. As we walk through the village, we can see fields of cocoa trees on either side of the road.
Côte d’Ivoire (or, the Ivory Coast), is the world’s largest cocoa exporter, and many children in rural communities here leave school early to work in the cocoa fields, leading to low levels of childhood education and ultimately, low adult literacy.
The main cash crop of Côte d’Ivoire is cocoa, seen drying on tarps here.
Our team is here working in rural communities of rural Côte d’Ivoire to launch a research study on an early literacy system we’ve designed and deployed using low-cost mobile phones.
Over the last year and a half, our research team in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at CMU has collaborated with linguists and sociologists from a university in Côte d’Ivoire (Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny), among other collaborators, to design an educational literacy system for low-cost mobile devices to help children develop phonology skills through interactive voice response (IVR) and SMS messages.
Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast)
I look up. We’ve arrived outside the village meeting hall, where we’re meeting with the village chief, the director of schools, and the head of the parent-teacher association.
“Bonjour! Comment ça va? Bu nasein”, I say, in a mix of French and Attié, the local language that I’ve picked up a few phrases of in the last few weeks here.
We were here in Ananguié two weeks ago, for a big launch event with 100 families from two of the four schools in the village, where we announced the start of the study, and showed the adults how to use their phones to call Allo Alphabet, our IVR+SMS literacy system.
Now, we’re back in the village to meet with families to observe how they’re using Allo Alphabet at home and ask them some questions about the experience. The chief gives us some ice-cold bags of water, refreshing in the 90 degree heat, and a grilled banana and some peanuts, before giving us directions to a few families’ houses.
We arrive at the first family’s house, introduce ourselves as researchers working with Allo Alphabet, and explain our purpose for being there. I set up my camera and microphone and we begin.
Families using Allo Alphabet for at-home literacy lessons
We spend most of the hour-long session observing the children calling the system and answering the voice-recorded questions using the touchtone buttons on the phone, but, since the children are 8-11 years old, there are usually other adults nearby helping them, which we observe as well.
Even though we are recording video, I bring a field notebook, and jot down notes for later - questions that came up in the moment, ideas or interpretations about what might be happening, particularly interesting moments, etc.
Recording supplies, including GoPro cameras, Olympus audio recorders, and mini tripods
In HCI, we use mixed-methods to understand not just what our users do with technology (e.g. from system log data), but also the how and why that can only be understood through qualitative methods. In fact, this project started a year ago using interviews and “storyboards” to understand what families in this context might want (or not want!) out of a mobile literacy system.
Storyboarding session with families, to understand design guidelines for mobile literacy systems
We take a break for a big late lunch around 2pm, of fish and attieké, a cassava dish, with some alloco, or chopped, pan-fried bananas. We spend the rest of the day walking from house to house, meeting with 4 or 5 families around the village - talking to parents, older brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, and some grandparents who were helping the grandchildren while the parents were working in the fields.
Our intrepid research team, taking a break for lunch
The sun is starting to set, and families are getting ready for dinner, so we get back in the van, and head back to our hotel in a nearby village. Later that night, I type up my field notes, upload the video data, and write down any interesting themes or ideas that came out from the interviews to explore with other families tomorrow. I charge all my recording devices, and head to bed, ready to do the whole thing over again tomorrow, in a new village.