Agha Ali Raza
ABSTRACT
Speech is more natural than text for a large part of the world including hard-to-reach populations (low-literate, poor, tech-novice, visually-impaired, marginalized) and oral cultures. Voice-based services over simple mobile phones are effective means to provide orality-driven social connectivity to such populations. We present Baang, a versatile and inclusive voice-based social platform that allows audio content creation and sharing among its open community of users. Within 8 months, Baang spread virally to 10,721 users (69% of them blind) who participated in 269,468 calls and shared their thoughts via 44,178 audio-posts, 343,542 votes, 124,389 audio-comments and 94,864 shares. We show that the ability to vote, comment and share leads to viral spread, deeper engagement, longer retention and emergence of true dialog among participants. Beyond connectivity, Baang provides its users with a voice and a social identity as well as means to share information and get community support.
Supplemental Material
Available for Download
- 2014. WHO | Visual Impairement and Blindness. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs282/en/. (2014).Google Scholar
- 2015. World Bank - Literacy rates. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.ADT.LITR.ZS. (2015).Google Scholar
- 2016. Pakistan economic survey 2015--16. Technical Report. Economic Adviser's Wing, Finance Division, Government of Pakistan, Islamabad.Google Scholar
- 2016. PTA annual report 2016. Technical Report. Pakistan Telecommunication Authority.Google Scholar
- 2017. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. (2017). https://www.ethnologue.com/country/US.Google Scholar
- 2017. FreeSWITCH. https://freeswitch.org/. (2017).Google Scholar
- 2017. Gram Vaani. http://www.gramvaani.org/. (2017).Google Scholar
- 2017. GSMA Mobile Economy 2017. https://www.gsma.com/mobileeconomy/. (2017).Google Scholar
- 2017. Tropo - Cloud API for Voice and Messaging. https://www.tropo.com/. (2017).Google Scholar
- 2017. The World Factbook - Central Intelligence Agency. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/ the-world-factbook/fields/2103.html#136. (2017).Google Scholar
- Sheetal K Agarwal, Arun Kumar, Amit Anil Nanavati, and Nitendra Rajput. 2009. Content creation and dissemination by-and-for users in rural areas. In Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD), 2009 International Conference on. IEEE, 56--65. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Abhishek Behl and Maneesha Vashishtha. 2014. Innovative IVR system for farmers: enhancing ICT adoption. International Journal of Information Technology & Computer Sciences Perspectives 3, 2 (2014), 970.Google Scholar
- Jacob Cohen. 1960. A coefficient of agreement for nominal scales. Educational and psychological measurement 20, 1 (1960), 37--46.Google Scholar
- Brian DeRenzi, Jeremy Wacksman, Nicola Dell, Scott Lee, Neal Lesh, Gaetano Borriello, and Andrew Ellner. 2016. Closing the Feedback Loop: A 12-month Evaluation of ASTA, a Self-Tracking Application for ASHAs. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development. ACM, 22. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Mohamed Gulaid and Aditya Vashistha. 2013. Ila Dhageyso: an interactive voice forum to foster transparent governance in Somaliland. In Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Information and Communications Technologies and Development: Notes-Volume 2. ACM, 41--44. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Zahir Koradia, Piyush Aggarwal, Aaditeshwar Seth, and Gaurav Luthra. 2013. Gurgaon idol: a singing competition over community radio and IVRS. In Proceedings of the 3rd ACM Symposium on Computing for Development. ACM, 6. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Klaus Krippendorff. 2012. Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology. Sage.Google Scholar
- Alexander Lex, Nils Gehlenborg, Hendrik Strobelt, Romain Vuillemot, and Hanspeter Pfister. 2014. UpSet: Visualization of Intersecting Sets. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (InfoVis '14) 20, 12 (2014), 1983--1992.Google Scholar
- Henry B Mann and Donald R Whitney. 1947. On a test of whether one of two random variables is stochastically larger than the other. The annals of mathematical statistics (1947), 50--60.Google Scholar
- Aparna Moitra, Vishnupriya Das, Gram Vaani, Archna Kumar, and Aaditeshwar Seth. 2016. Design Lessons from Creating a Mobile-based Community Media Platform in Rural India. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development. ACM, 14. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Preeti Mudliar, Jonathan Donner, and William Thies. 2012. Emergent practices around CGNet Swara, voice forum for citizen journalism in rural India. In Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development. ACM, 159--168. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Walter J Ong. 2013. Orality and literacy. Routledge.Google Scholar
- N. Patel, D. Chittamuru, A. Jain, P. Dave, and T.S. Parikh. 2010. Avaaj Otalo: a field study of an interactive voice forum for small farmers in rural India. In Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Human factors in computing systems. ACM, 733--742. Google ScholarDigital Library
- A.A. Raza, C. Milo, G. Alster, J. Sherwani, M. Pervaiz, S. Razaq, U. Saif, and R. Rosenfeld. 2012. Viral Entertainment as a vehicle for disseminating speech-based services to low-literate users. In International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD), Vol. 2. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Agha Ali Raza, Farhan Ul Haq, Zain Tariq, Mansoor Pervaiz, Samia Razaq, Umar Saif, and Roni Rosenfeld. 2013. Job opportunities through entertainment: Virally spread speech-based services for low-literate users. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 2803--2812. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Robert Roche, Eric Hladilek, and Scott Reid. 2006. Disaster recovery virtual roll call and recovery management system. (April 11 2006). US Patent 7,026,925.Google Scholar
- Bruce Rocheleau and Liangfu Wu. 2005. E-Government and financial transactions: Potential versus reality. The Electronic Journal of e-Government 3, 4 (2005), 219--230.Google Scholar
- J. Sherwani, N. Ali, S. Mirza, A. Fatma, Y. Memon, M. Karim, R. Tongia, and R. Rosenfeld. 2007. Healthline: Speech-based access to health information by low-literate users. In International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development, ICTD. IEEE, 1--9.Google Scholar
- Aditya Vashistha, Edward Cutrell, Gaetano Borriello, and William Thies. 2015a. Sangeet swara: A community-moderated voice forum in rural india. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 417--426. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Aditya Vashistha, Edward Cutrell, Nicola Dell, and Richard Anderson. 2015b. Social media platforms for low-income blind people in india. In Proceedings of the 17th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility. ACM, 259--272. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Jerome White, Mayuri Duggirala, Krishna Kummamuru, and Saurabh Srivastava. 2012. Designing a voice-based employment exchange for rural India. In Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development. ACM, 367--373. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Nikolas Wolfe, Juneki Hong, Agha Ali Raza, Bhiksha Raj, and Roni Rosenfeld. 2015. Rapid development of public health education systems in low-literacy multilingual environments: Combating ebola through voice messaging. In ISCA Special Interest Group on Speech and Language Technology in Education (SLaTE). INTERSPEECH.Google Scholar
- Ayesha Zainudeen, Rohan Samarajiva, and Nirmali Sivapragasam. 2010. Cellbazaar, a mobile-based e-marketplace: Success factors and potential for expansion. (2010).Google Scholar
Index Terms
- Baang: A Viral Speech-based Social Platform for Under-Connected Populations
Recommendations
Threats, Abuses, Flirting, and Blackmail: Gender Inequity in Social Media Voice Forums
CHI '19: Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsHCI4D researchers and practitioners have leveraged voice forums to enable people with literacy, socioeconomic, and connectivity barriers to access, report, and share information. Although voice forums have received impassioned usage from low-income, low-...
Voice-Based Quizzes for Measuring Knowledge Retention in Under-Connected Populations
CHI '19: Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsInformation dissemination using automated phone calls allows reaching low-literate and tech-naive populations. Open challenges include rapid verification of expected knowledge gaps in the community, dissemination of specific information to address these ...
Sangeet Swara: A Community-Moderated Voice Forum in Rural India
CHI '15: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsInteractive voice forums have emerged as a promising platform for people in developing regions to record and share audio messages using low-end mobile phones. However, one of the barriers to the scalability of voice forums is the process of screening ...
Comments