skip to main content
10.1145/1242572.1242690acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesthewebconfConference Proceedingsconference-collections
Article

Optimal audio-visual representations for illiterate users of computers

Published: 08 May 2007 Publication History

Abstract

We present research leading toward an understanding of the optimal audio-visual representation for illustrating concepts for illiterate and semi-literate users of computers. In our user study, which to our knowledge is the first of its kind, we presented to 200 illiterate subjects each of 13 different health symptoms in one representation randomly selected among the following ten: text, static drawings, staticphotographs, hand-drawn animations, and video, each with and without voice annotation. The goal was to see how comprehensible these representation types were for an illiterate audience. We used a methodology for generating each of the representations tested in a way that fairly stacks one representational type against the others.
Our main results are that (1) voice annotation generally helps in speed of comprehension, but bimodal audio-visual information can be confusing for the target population; (2) richer information is not necessarily better understood overall; (3) the relative value of dynamic imagery versus static imagery depends on various factors. Analysis of these statistically significant results and additional detailed results are also provided.

References

[1]
Bery, S. National Council of Applied Economic Research, 2006. http://www.rediff.com/money/2004/mar/09shining.htm
[2]
Blattner, M. M., Sumikawa, D. A. and Greenberg, R. M. Earcons and icons: Their structure and common design principles. Human-Computer Interaction, 1989. 4, 11--44.
[3]
Bolek, J. and Cowgill, J. Development of a symbol system for use in the health care industry. Proceedings of the 2005 Conference on Designing for User eXperience, November 2005.
[4]
Byrne, M. D., Catrambone, R. and Stasko, J. T. Evaluating animations as student aids in learning computer algorithms. Computers & Education, 33, 253--278. (1999).
[5]
Chand, A. Designing for the Indian rural population: Interaction design challenges. Proc. Development by Design Conference, (2002).
[6]
ChanLin, L. -J. Animation to teach students of different knowledge levels. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 25, 166--175. (1998).
[7]
Cooper, A. and Reimann, R. About Face 2.0, The Essentials of Interaction Design. Wiley Publishing Inc. USA, (2003).
[8]
DelGaldo, M. and Nielsen, J. International users interface, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY, 1996
[9]
Dowhal, D. A seven-dimensional approach to graphics, Proceedings of the 14th annual international conference on Systems documentation, October 1996.
[10]
Dreyfuss, H. Symbol Sourcebook: An Authoritative Guide to International Graphic Symbols. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1984.
[11]
Frost, J., and Smith, B. K. Focusing on user-to-product relationships: Visualizing health: imagery in diabetes education, Proceedings of the 2003 conference on Designing for User Experiences. June 2003
[12]
Gaver, W. W. Auditory icons: Using sound in computer interfaces. Human-Computer Interaction, 2, 167--177. (1989).
[13]
Gaver, W. W. The sonicfinder: An interface that uses auditory icons. Human-Computer Interaction, 4:67--94, (1989).
[14]
Goetze, M., and Strothotte, T. An approach to help functionally illiterate people with graphical reading aids. In Smart Graphics Symposium UK 2001.
[15]
Grisedale, S., Graves, M and Grünsteidl, A. Designing a graphical user interface for healthcare workers in rural India, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p. 471--478, March 22-27, 1997, Atlanta, Georgia, United States
[16]
Horton, W. The Icon Book: Visual Symbols for Computer Systems and Documentation. New York: John Wiley, 1994.
[17]
Horton, W. Designing icons and visual symbols, Conference Companion on Human Factors in Computing Systems: Common Ground, April 1996
[18]
Huenerfauth, M. Developing design recommendations for computer interfaces accessible to illiterate users. Master's thesis, University College Dublin, (2002).
[19]
Khai, N. Truong, Gillian R. Hayes, Gregory D. Abowd Interaction design methods 1: Storyboarding: an empirical determination of best practices and effective guidelines June 2006 Proceedings of the 6th ACM conference on Designing Interactive systems DIS '06
[20]
Kieras, D. E. Diagrammatic displays for engineered systems: effects on human performance in interacting with malfunctioning systems. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 36, 861--895. (1992).
[21]
Kress, G. and Van Leeuwen, T. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge. 1996
[22]
Large, A., Beheshti, J., Breuleux, A. & Renaud, A. The effect of animation in enhancing descriptive and procedural texts in a multimedia learning environment. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 47, 437--448. 1996
[23]
Lourie S. World literacy: where we stand today - One Billion Illiterates - editorial, UNESCO Courier. (July 1990)
[24]
Marcus, A. Icon and Symbol Design Issues for Graphical User Interfaces, International Users Interface, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY, 1996
[25]
Marcus, A. Icons, Symbols, and Signs: Visible Languages to Facilitate Communication, Interactions, v.10 n.3, May + June 2003
[26]
Marcus, A. Smilonich, N. and Thompson, L. The cross-GUI handbook for multiplatform user interface design, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1994
[27]
Mitra. S. Self organizing systems for mass computer literacy: Findings from the hole in the wall experiments. International Journal of Development Issues, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2005) 71-81.
[28]
Medhi, I. Pitti B. and Toyama K. Text-Free UI for Employment Search. Proc. Asian Applied Computing Conference. Nepal, December 2005.
[29]
Medhi, I., Sagar A., and Toyama K. Text-Free User Interfaces for Illiterate and Semi-Literate Users. International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (Berkeley, USA), May 2006.
[30]
Modley, R., Myers, W. R., and Comer, D. G. Handbook of Pictorial Symbols (Dover Pictorial Archive Series) (Paperback- Jun 1, 1976).
[31]
Morrison, J. B. and Tversky, B. The (in) effectiveness of animation in instruction. In J. Jacko & A. Sears, Eds. Extended Abstracts of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 377--378. Seattle: ACM. (2001).
[32]
Nathan, M. J., Kintsch, W. & Young, E. A theory of algebra-word-problem comprehension and its implications for the design of learning environments. Cognition and Instruction, 9, 329--389. (1992).
[33]
Palmiter, S. L., Elkerton, J. & Baggett, P. Animated demonstrations vs. written instructions for learning procedural tasks: a preliminary investigation. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 34, 687--701. (1991).
[34]
Palmiter, S. & Elkerton, J. Animated demonstrations for learning procedural computer-based tasks. Human-Computer Interaction, 8, 193--216. (1993).
[35]
Parikh, T. Ghosh K. and Chavan, A. Design Considerations for a Financial Management System for Rural, Semi-literate Users. ACM Conference on Computer-Human Interaction, (2003).
[36]
Parikh, T. Ghosh K. and Chavan, A. Design Studies for a Financial Management System for Micro-credit Groups in Rural India. ACM Conference on Universal Usability, (2003).
[37]
Parikh, T. HISAAB: An Experiment in Numerical Interfaces, Media Lab Asia Panel Discussion, Baramati Initiative on ICT and Development, (2002).
[38]
Park, O. -C. & Gittelman, S. S. Selective use of animation and feedback in computerbased instruction. Educational Technology, Research, and Development, 40, 27--38. (1992).
[39]
Pane, J. F., Corbett, A. T. & John, B. E. Assessing dynamics in computer-based instruction. In M. J. Tauber, Ed. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 797--804. Vancouver: ACM. (1996).
[40]
Payne, S. J., Chesworth, L. & Hill, E. Animated demonstrations for exploratory learners. Interacting with Computers, 4, 3--22. (1992).
[41]
Ratnam, B. V., Reddy P. K., and Reddy, G. S. eSagu: An IT based personalized agricultural extension system prototype - analysis of 51 Farmers' case studies International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology (IJEDICT), 2005, Vol. 2, Issue 1, pp. 79--94.
[42]
Rieber, L. P. & Hannafin, M. J. Effects of textual and animated orienting activities and practice on learning from computer-based instruction. Computers in the Schools, 5, 77--89. (1988).
[43]
Rieber, L. P. The effects of computer animated elaboration strategies and practice on factual and application learning in an elementary science lesson. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 5, 431--444. (1989).
[44]
Rieber, L. P., Boyce, M. J. & Assad, C. The effects of computer animation on adult learning and retrieval tasks. Journal of Computer-Based Instruction, 17, 46--52. (1990).
[45]
Schnotz, W. & Grzondziel, H. Individual and co-operative learning with interactive animated pictures. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 14, 245--265. (1999).
[46]
Tversky, B., Morrison, J. B. & Betrancourt, M. Animation: Can it facilitate? International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. 57(4). 2002. pp. 247--262
[47]
The DIL team, Innovative ICT Tools for Information Provision in Agricultural Extension International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (Berkeley, USA), May 2006.
[48]
Thompson, S. V. & Riding, R. J. The effect of animated diagrams on the understanding of a mathematical demonstration in 11- to 14-year-old pupils. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 60, 93--98. (1990).
[49]
Werner, D, Thuman, C and Maxwell, J. Where There Is No Doctor: A Village Health Care Handbook (Paper back May 1992)

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)A Set of Professional Tools to Support the Design and Evaluation of Real-Time Payment Systems and Emergent UsersJournal on Interactive Systems10.5753/jis.2024.420715:1(790-809)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2024
  • (2024)EvolveUI: User Interfaces that Evolve with User ProficiencyProceedings of the 7th ACM SIGCAS/SIGCHI Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies10.1145/3674829.3675078(230-237)Online publication date: 8-Jul-2024
  • (2024)A Model Driven Framework Enabling the Development of Standardized Text-Free User Interface for Smartphones2024 21st International Bhurban Conference on Applied Sciences and Technology (IBCAST)10.1109/IBCAST61650.2024.10876991(321-326)Online publication date: 20-Aug-2024
  • Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
WWW '07: Proceedings of the 16th international conference on World Wide Web
May 2007
1382 pages
ISBN:9781595936547
DOI:10.1145/1242572
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 08 May 2007

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. audio-visual icons
  2. illiterate users
  3. text-free user interfaces

Qualifiers

  • Article

Conference

WWW'07
Sponsor:
WWW'07: 16th International World Wide Web Conference
May 8 - 12, 2007
Alberta, Banff, Canada

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,899 of 8,196 submissions, 23%

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)20
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)2
Reflects downloads up to 20 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)A Set of Professional Tools to Support the Design and Evaluation of Real-Time Payment Systems and Emergent UsersJournal on Interactive Systems10.5753/jis.2024.420715:1(790-809)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2024
  • (2024)EvolveUI: User Interfaces that Evolve with User ProficiencyProceedings of the 7th ACM SIGCAS/SIGCHI Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies10.1145/3674829.3675078(230-237)Online publication date: 8-Jul-2024
  • (2024)A Model Driven Framework Enabling the Development of Standardized Text-Free User Interface for Smartphones2024 21st International Bhurban Conference on Applied Sciences and Technology (IBCAST)10.1109/IBCAST61650.2024.10876991(321-326)Online publication date: 20-Aug-2024
  • (2024)Challenges and Opportunities Designing Voice User Interfaces for Emergent UsersHuman-Computer Interaction10.1007/978-3-031-60449-2_1(3-16)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2024
  • (2023)Designing User Interfaces for Illiterate and Semi-Literate Users: A Systematic Review and Future Research AgendaSage Open10.1177/2158244023117274113:2Online publication date: 16-May-2023
  • (2023)Design Considerations for Real-Time Payment Systems and Emerging UsersProceedings of the XXII Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3638067.3638107(1-11)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2023
  • (2023)A Case For Supporting Translanguaging in TechnologyCompanion Publication of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3563703.3596627(228-231)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2023
  • (2023)MFS Design in Appstore-enabled Smart Featurephones for Low-literate, Marginalized CommunitiesProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3580661(1-19)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
  • (2023)Investigating Technology Concepts to Support Rohingya Refugees in MalaysiaInteracting with Computers10.1093/iwc/iwad02635:3(481-509)Online publication date: 9-Mar-2023
  • (2023)Utilizing Artificial Intelligence to Successfully Communicate and Equip Real Estate Construction Workers with Ergonomic Footwear for Their HealthRenewable Energy Optimization, Planning and Control10.1007/978-981-19-8963-6_36(399-409)Online publication date: 8-Mar-2023
  • Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media