Kentaro Toyama

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at University of Michigan

Many people believe that the widespread dissemination of digital technologies automatically causes positive outcomes in political democratisation and socio-economic development. In this article, this claim is briefly examined for the supposed ‘Facebook Revolutions’ of the Arab Spring, as well as for the economic benefits of the mobile phone. Close...

HCI for development is well suited to answering questions such as what is universal and what is culture-specific, and what are the implications for design. HCI designers believe that an essential way to gain information about technology users is to observe, interact, and live with them in their actual environment. Anyone who lacks direct experience...

Previous research has shown that low-literate users have difficulty using hierarchical information architectures and that a list design showing all items at once on a PC screen works best for search tasks. However, the limited screen space on phones makes it impossible to show more than a few items at once on a single screen. Does a hierarchical UI...

One of the greatest challenges in designing applications for economically poor communities is that potential users may have little or no education. We investigated how limited education appears to impact the ability to navigate a hierarchical UI, even when it has no text. We scored 60 participants from low-income communities in India using tests of...

Grameen Telecom's famous Village Phone program in Bangladesh has been hailed as an innovative model of ICT-based international development, and promoted by international aid agencies in a wide range of developing countries. Despite implementation at scale, and success both as a business model and in its impact on the poor, the Village Phone program...

One of the greatest challenges in designing applications for developing communities is that potential users may have little or no education. We investigate how limited education correlates with cognitive skills for conceptual abstraction, as required for transfer of learning in video-based skills training. Through a controlled experiment we compare...

Applying a well-known proverb to socio-technical transformation.

Single Display Groupware (SDG) allows multiple people in the same physical space to interact simultaneously over a single communal display through individual input devices that work on the same machine. The aim of this paper is to show how SDG can be used to improve the way resources are used in schools, allowing students to work simultaneously on...

Our work explores how handheld technology can help mediators perform at a higher level when facilitating video material, using two novel interaction mechanisms. We describe work with Digital Green, an NGO using facilitated video for agricultural extension in rural India. During an investigation into the information needs of Digital Green facilitato...

While mobile phones have found broad application in bringing health, financial, and other services to the developing world, usability remains a major hurdle for novice and low-literacy populations. In this article, we take two steps to evaluate and improve the usability of mobile interfaces for such users. First, we offer an ethnographic study of t...

Amplification theories of information technology argue that technology is primarily a magnifier of existing institutional forces. In this paper, these ideas are synthesized and augmented for an amplification theory of "information and communication technology for development" (ICT4D), the study of electronic technology in international development....

Tactile graphics allow the visually impaired to perceive two-dimensional imagery, which is an essential part of experiencing the world and learning several subjects such as science and geography. In the developed world, such graphics are available to blind students from an early age, and students grow up familiar with tactile representations of ima...

India's extensive Self-Help Group (SHG) microfinance network brings formal savings and credit services to 86 million poor households. Yet, the inability to maintain high-quality records remains a persistent weakness in SHG functioning. We study this problem and present a financial record management application built on a low-cost digital slate prot...

We present Collage, a software application designed for classroom presentations for school teachers in the developing world. An in-depth investigation of teaching practices in several schools in India led us to believe that a simple tool that enabled the display of images and textbook materials while facilitating blackboard-like interactions would...

One of the greatest challenges in designing applications for developing communities is that potential users may have limited literacy. Past work in UI design for low-literate users has focused on illiteracy as the inability to read per se, with little recognition to other cognitive differences between literate and non-literate users. In this paper,...

A recent trend in interface design for classrooms in developing regions has many students interacting on the same display using mice. Text entry has emerged as an important problem preventing such mouse-based single- display groupware systems from offering compelling interactive activities. We explore the design space of mouse-based text entry and...

International development is concerned with making life better for the least privileged people of the world. Since the 1990s, HCI has engaged increasingly with development through an interdisciplinary field known as "information and communication technologies for development," or ICT4D. This article overviews the historical relationship between HCI...

This position paper describes how the nascent area of Al for development can learn from the challenges and successes of its parents: artificial intelligence and information and communication technologies for development (1CT4D). AI suffered from overly ambitious beginnings and years of stumbling before finding its footing, and achieving impactful I...

We present the results of a qualitative study of the sharing and consumption of entertainment media on low-cost mobile phones in urban India, a practice which has evolved into a vibrant, informal socio-technical ecosystem. This wide-ranging phenomenon includes end users, mobile phone shops, and content distributors, and exhibits remarkable ingenuit...

Building on the successes of prior workshops at CHI and other HCI conferences on computing in international development, we propose a panel to engage with the broader CHI community. Topics to be discussed include why international development is important to HCI as a discipline, and how CHI researchers and practitioners who are not already involved...

We describe a prevalent mode of information access in low- income communities of the developing world—intermediated interactions. They enable persons for whom technology is inaccessible due to non-literacy, lack of technology-operation skills, or financial constraints, to benefit from technologies through digitally skilled users—thus, expanding the...

We describe ViralVCD: a low cost method for tracing paths of information diffusion in developing communities using physical media. We instituted a participatory video framework for creation and dissemination of developmental videos in seven urban slums and peri-urban communities of Bangalore, India. By combining a call-in contest with Video CDs, we...

There is increasing interest in using computing applications towards the socio-economic development of the poor. However, because poverty commonly correlates with illiteracy, researchers have identified various usability challenges that low-literate users may encounter in interacting with traditional text-based UIs. To counter such problems, resear...

I am going to start with a photograph of a project that was actually mentioned several times already (Fig. 1). As you can see, this is a village inthe middle of India. No paved walls. There is thatched roofing. And on the roof you can see a VSAT satellite dish that is providing Internet connectivity to that village. The reason why I want to show yo...

HCI for Development (HCI4D) lies at the intersection of Information Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) and Human-computer Interaction (HCI). The mainstream HCI community creates user experiences for the developed-world consumer, while ICT4D is concerned about creating relevant technologies for developing nations. Their fusion—HCI4D—...

CatePoverty and the associated su erings remain a global challenge, with over a billion people surviving on less than a dollar a day. Technology, applied appropriately, can help improve their lives. Despite some clear examples of technical research playing a key role in global development, there is a question that repeatedly arises in this area: ca...

Due to the increasing penetration of mobile phones even in poor communities, mobile-phone-enabled banking (m-banking) services are being increasingly targeted at the "unbanked" to bring formal financial services to the poor. Research in understanding actual usage and adoption by this target population, though, is sparse. There appear to be a number...

It is estimated that there are 100 million ¿street children¿ in the world. Street children typically live independent of families in makeshift living arrangements, and survive on little but their wits and the camaraderie of small gangs. To better understand the lives of street children, we conducted 150 days of ethnographic investigations in and...

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in disadvantaged communities have a variety of data-collection and analysis needs, for example, for performing surveys or monitoring programs. Because much of this data collection occurs in environments with insufficient IT support and infrastructure, and among populations not always comfortable with te...

Featherweight multimedia devices combine audio with non-electronic visual displays (e.g., paper). Because of their low cost, customizability, durability, storage capacity, and energy efficiency, they are well-suited for education and information dissemination among illiterate and semi-literate people. We present a taxonomy of featherweight multimed...

Multimodal interfaces with little or no text have been shown to be useful for users with low literacy. However, this research has not differentiated between the needs of the fully illiterate and semiliterate - those who have basic literacy but cannot read and write fluently. Text offers a fast and unambiguous mode of interaction for literate users...

Due to the increasing penetration of mobile phones even into poor communities, mobile payment schemes could bring formal financial services to the "unbanked". However, because poverty for the most part also correlates with low levels of formal education, there are questions as to whether electronic access to complex financial services is enough to...

Public spending on computer centers in rural Indian public schools raise questions about the value of expensive modern technology in extremely resource-strapped environments. Arguments for or against providing computers in low-income schools have appeared in policy circles, academia, teacher conferences, and philanthropic discussions, with passiona...

Almost all formal organizations employ service staff for tasks such as housekeeping, security, maintenance, and transport at their office facility. Many of these workers earn wages in line with menial-labor salaries in their respective countries. They have few on-the-job opportunities to upgrade their skills or learn new ones. Kelsa+ is an initiati...

In resource-constrained classrooms in the developing world, it is common for several students to share each computer. Unfortunately, dominance behavior often naturally emerges in these situations, when one child monopolizes the mouse and keyboard. One way to mitigate this phenomenon is by providing each child with a mouse and a corresponding on- sc...

This workshop continues the dialog on exploring the challenges in applying, extending, and inventing appropriate methods and contributions of Humancentered Computing (HCC) to International economic and community development, borne out of tremendously successful HCI4D workshops at CHI 2007 and 2008. The workshop aims at 1) providing a platform to di...

Web search and browsing have been streamlined for a comfortable experience when the network connection is fast. Existing tools, however, are not optimized for scenarios where connectivity is poor, as is the case for many users in developing regions where fast connections are expensive, rare, or unavailable. This study examined how users' web search...

The battle against poverty is a continual engagement with humility-especially for technologists. In the area of research known as information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D), engineers work with social scientists to develop novel solutions to the challenges faced by the world's poorest communities. In most cases, these challe...

ICTD has become a truly global undertaking, bringing together north and south, rich and poor, rural and urban, researcher and practitioner, technologist and social scientist—all striving to work toward a better life for the least privileged.

The paper attempts to analyse rapidly changing rural Indian socio-economic landscapes from a recent empirical study of rural PC kiosks. Rural contexts in India are essentially composite and digitally immature communication ecologies. Some of the questions we wanted to answer were as follows: How do computing technologies find their way into a rural...

The currently influential model for information and communi- cation technologies for development (ICT4D) is based on increasing the well-being of the poor through market-based solutions, by us- ing low-cost but advanced technologies. Using ethnographic meth- ods, we chart out the contradictions that could arise when such ad evelopment-through-entre...

Digital green is a research project that seeks to disseminate targeted agricultural information to small and marginal farmers in India using digital video. The unique components of digital green are (1) a participatory process for content production, (2) a locally generated digital video database, (3) human-mediated instruction for dissemination an...

This paper presents the use of full-context video to motivate and aid non-literate, first-time users of PCs to successfully navigate a computer application with minimal assistance. Following previous work focused on non-literate users, we observed that in spite of our subjects' understanding of the UI mechanics, they experienced barriers beyond ill...

Computer centers in rural Indian public schools raise questions about the value of expensive modern technology in starkly poor environments. Arguments for or against spending on computers in low-income schools have appeared in policy circles, academia, teacher conferences, and philanthropic discussions, with passionate rhetoric from all sides. One...

We present work that explores whether the asynchronous peer-to- peer communication capabilities of email can be made accessible to illiterate populations in the developing world. Building on metaphors from traditional communication systems such as postal mail, and relevant design principles established by previous research into text-free interfaces...

Interactive TV is a new, exciting entry into the drawing rooms of Indian families. By examining current and nascent interactive TV services we trace ways in which they are deployed, received and consumed in the Indian home. From ethnographic probes we offer observations from Indian domestic contexts in the threshold of adopting interactivity as par...

We examine the broad challenges facing a computer-based system to help match low-income domestic workers from an urban slum with potential middle-class employers in Bangalore, India. Due to the near impossibility of implementing such a system in one shot, we first implemented a paper-based system that provides the intended functionality but without...

This paper presents a tool which allows easy generation of semi-abstracted cartoon-like images from photographs, for the purposes of generating user interfaces that can be used by non-literate users. Non-literate users of computers have difficulty navigating text-based user interfaces. Thus, in previous research, we developed design principles for...

New wireless communications technologies are integrated into mobile devices such as smartphones every year. These technologies each have unique performance and cost characteristics. This begs the question: What is the minimum cost of transferring data using any combination of connections while meeting deadlines as defined by applications? The probl...

This paper revisits presentations at the MobileActive08 conference in Johannesburg to critically examine the current diversity of projects and approaches in mobiles for development (M4D). We identify four common choices facing individual M4D projects (intended users, technical accessibility, informational links, and market links) which collectively...

This research explores the deployment of model lessons through digital video as part of an in-service effort to engage teachers in government and private rural Indian schools and non-formal educational settings. Our mixed method design combined tests of skills in English and math with participant observation and videotaping of English and math inst...

In this paper, we present what we believe to be the first documented experiment to replace an existing PC-based system that had goals of "bridging the digital divide" for an agricultural district with a mobile-phone-based system in which a small, but relevant amount of data is transferred to farmers via SMS text messaging. Implemented in rural Maha...

We describe work toward the goal of a user interface (UI) designed such that even novice, illiterate users require absolutely no intervention from anyone at all to use. Our text-free UI is based on many hours of ethnographic design conducted in collaboration with a community of illiterate domestic laborers in three Bangalore slums. An ethnographic...

Kelesa Konnection is a text-free application consisting of user-interface components which, together, can lower the barriers to computer use for those who are functionally unable to read, and who, for the most part are also computer illiterate (1). It allows two user groups - with different levels of literacy and computer skills - to communicate on...

Geographic maps have existed from early stages of human civilization. Various styles of visualizing the geographic information have evolved depending on the nature of information and the technology available for visualization. This has led to innumer- able map styles. In this work we develop a technique to create maps by combining two-dimensional a...

This study evaluates single-mouse and multiple-mice configurations for computer-aided learning in schools where access to computers is limited due to resource constraints. Multimouse, a single display groupware solution, developed to allow multiple mice to be used simultaneously on a single PC, is compared with single- user-single-mouse and multipl...

There is considerable speculation about the correlation between investments in telecommunications and economic development. Yet, there has been very little research on whether there is a connection between information and communication technologies (ICTs) ...

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 each of 13 different health symptoms to 200 illiterate subjects in one representation randomly...

In this paper we describe the experimental set-up and execution of a public art project. The aim was to explore the use of SMSBlogging for the purpose of community building and creative self-expression. We also discuss the results from this experiment and show our findings from six blog-on-the-street art acts in Bangalore, India, that introduce SMS...

Robust, global, address geocoding is challenging because there is no single address format that applies to all geographies, and in any case, users may not restrict themselves to well-formed addresses. Particularly in online mapping systems, users frequently enter queries with missing or conflicting information, misspellings, address transpositions,...

India has the second largest number of agricultural extension workers in the world - 100,000. Consider the efforts of the GREEN Foundation, a grassroots-level NGO that has been promoting sustainable agricultural practices to farmers for the last 12 years. GREEN Foundation has concentrated its extension activities in 20 villages of southeastern Karn...

Internet browsing is highly dependent on the real-time network availability and speed. This becomes a significant constraint when browsing over slow and intermittent networks. In this paper, we describe a readily deployable system designed for Web browsing over slow, intermittent networks - OWeB, that is minimally dependent on the real-time network...

This article presents a series of preliminary, quantitative results on rural PC kiosks in India. An analysis of the data confirms many expected trends and correlations and shows that kiosks still face the challenge of sustainability as a business. This study is based on questionnaires presented to kiosk operators and customers of kiosks operated or...

We describe work toward the goal of a user interface designed such that even novice, illiterate users require absolutely no intervention from anyone at all to use. Our text-free user interface is based on many hours of ethnographic design conducted in collaboration with a community of illiterate domestic labourers in three Bangalore slums. An ethno...

Rural PC kiosks have become prominent recently as a way to impact socio-economic development through computing technology. Despite the significant backing these projects receive from governments and other large organizations, there are very few rigorous studies which measure their actual impact and utility. We have developed and deployed a software...

This paper examines the social and political challenges related to the implementation of information and communication technology (ICT) kiosk projects for rural development in India. Specifically, the paper focuses on the Akshaya project, a franchise of rural computer-service kiosks, which was implemented in Kerala as a public-private sector collab...

A distinct feature observed in computer use in schools or rural kiosks in developing countries is the high student-to-computer ratio. It is not unusual to see more than five children crowding around a single display, as schools are rarely funded to afford one PC per child in a classroom. One child controls the mouse, while others are passive onlook...

Understanding technology adoption in emerging regions is challenging given the complex interrelations among socioeconomic factors that affect it directly and indirectly. The issue of impact assessment of technology adoption projects, especially the kind implemented in areas where prior technology has been very limited, is highly problematic and ope...

Computer-aided learning is fast gaining traction in developing regions as a means to augment classroom instruction. Reasons for using computer-aided learning range from supplementing teacher shortages to starting underprivileged children off in technology, and funding for such initiatives range from state education funds to international agencies a...

We present a technique for simulating variations in appearance of aerial images at different sun angles. The input to the algorithm is a single aerial image with information on the orientation of surfaces in the image. The location, date, and time at which the photograph was taken are also needed by the algorithm. The appearance of the aerial image...

CAM is a user interface toolkit that allows a camera- equipped mobile phone to interact with paper documents. It is designed to automate inefficient, paper-intensive informa- tion processes in the developing world. In this paper we pre- sent a usability evaluation of an application built using CAM for collecting data from microfinance groups in rur...

A technique for resurrecting the making of panoramic maps is proposed. The art of making these maps disappeared due to the difficulty to depict current cluttered urban areas, and the enormous artistic effort required for drawing an area in panoramic view. We present techniques to reduce clutter by enabling user customization of content to be depict...

Navigation in the context of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) is associated with a sequence of pan and zoom operations that lead to a specific destination. Navigation, in this context, leads a user to an a priori desired destination. There are cases, however, when users may not have a clear idea of a single destination. In this work, we propose...

Classifying pictures into one of several semantic categories is a classical image understanding problem. In this paper, we present a stratified approach to both binary (outdoor-indoor) and multiple category of scene classification. We first learn mixture models for 20 basic classes of local image content based on color and texture information. Once...

An abstract is not available.

Rural PC kiosks are increasingly seen as a tool for socio-economic development in developing countries. In order to make kiosks successful, it helps to understand patterns of usage in existing kiosks. Often, questionnaires or interviews are conducted to determine usage patterns, but self-reporting by subjects is notoriously inaccurate. In this pape...

We present a technique for taking a vector representation of geographical features as input and rendering a map in the style of antique woodcut maps. The patterns are created with procedural approaches that depend on the semantic labeling of each vector element, with, for example, mountain ranges drawn differently from coastlines. The technique can...

A datatype with increasing importance in GIS is what we call the location history–a record of an entity’s location in geographical space over an interval of time. This paper proposes a number of rigorously defined data structures and algorithms for analyzing and generating location histories. Stays are instances where a subject has spent some time...

A new algorithm is proposed for removing large objects from digital images. The challenge is to fill in the hole that is left behind in a visually plausible way. In the past, this problem has been addressed by two classes of algorithms: 1) "texture synthesis" algorithms for generating large image regions from sample textures and 2) "inpainting" tec...

Digital photography has made it possible to quickly and easily take a pair of images of low-light environments: one with flash to capture detail and one without flash to capture ambient illumination. We present a variety of applications that analyze and combine the strengths of such flash/no-flash image pairs. Our applications include denoising and...

A new, exemplar-based, probabilistic paradigm for visual tracking is presented. Probabilistic mechanisms are attractive because they handle fusion of information, especially temporal fusion, in a principled manner. Exemplars are selected representatives of raw training data, used here to represent probabilistic mixture distributions of object confi...

Researchers have noted conflicting trends in collaboration technologies between delivering more information on larger displays and exploiting mobility on smaller devices. Large, shared displays provide greater choice in the presentation of information, but mobile devices offer greater flexibility in the access of information. We describe a platform...

Interactive Images are a natural extension of three recent devel-opments: digital photography, interactive web pages, and brows-able video. An interactive image is a multi-dimensional image, displayed two dimensions at a time (like a standard digital image), but with which a user can interact to browse through the other di-mensions. One might consi...

This document provides an overview of rural kiosks in India, drawing from information we have gathered from the media, Internet web sites, academic studies, interviews with NGOs, and a number of personal visits to project headquarters and actual kiosks in rural villages. Most of the information presented in this document was not collected through f...

To take a picture of scene, we acquire multiple images under different levels of flash intensity (possibly just "flash on" and "flash off"), and let the user subsequently adjust the flash level continuously by interpolating among the stored images. Camera motion is corrected using image registration techniques robust to intensity differences. Flash...

We describe an end-to-end system that capitalizes on geographic location tags for digital photographs. The World Wide Media eXchange (WWMX) database indexes large collections of image media by several pieces of metadata including timestamp, owner, and critically, location stamp. The location where a photo was shot is important because it says much...

A new algorithm is proposed for removing large objects from digital images. The challenge is to fill in the hole that is left behind in a visually plausible way. In the past, this problem has been addressed by two classes of algorithms: (i) "texture synthesis" algorithms for generating large image regions from sample textures, and (ii) "inpainting"...

We present a technique for facial feature localization using a two-level hierarchical wavelet network. The first level wavelet network is used for face matching, and yields an affine transformation used for a rough approximation of feature locations. Second level wavelet networks for each feature are then used to fine-tune the feature locations. Co...

A new, exemplar-based, probabilistic paradigm for visual tracking is presented. Probabilistic mechanisms are attractive because they handle fusion of information, especially temporal fusion, in a principled manner. Exemplars are selected representatives of raw training data, used here to represent probabilistic mixture distributions of object confi...

WaveBase is a system for detecting features in a face image. It has a database of faces, each with a two-level hierarchical wavelet network. When a new face image is presented to the system for face detection, WaveBase searches its database for the "best face" -- the face whose first level wavelet network most closely matches the new face. It also...

WaveBase is a system for detecting features in a face image. It has a database of faces, each with a two-level hierarchical wavelet network. When a new face image is presented to the system for face detection, WaveBase searches its database for the “best face ” – the face whose first level wavelet network most closely matches the new face. It also...