WWW 2008 / Poster Paper April 21-25, 2008 · Beijing, China VoiKiosk: Increasing Reachability of Kiosks in Developing Regions Sheetal Agarwal, Arun Kumar, Amit Anil Nanavati, Nitendra Rajput IBM India Research Laboratory 4, Block C, Vasant Kunj, Institutional Area, New Delhi - 110070, INDIA. {sheetaga, kkarun, namit, rnitendra}@in.ibm.com ABSTRACT One of the several initiatives to bridge the digital divide in developing countries has b een the deployment of information kiosks or knowledge centers in villages in rural parts of the country. These kiosks provide services ranging from email, chat and browsing to distance education programs, agricultural services and eGovernance services. A kiosk typically comprises of a computer with printer, web cam, multimedia system and Internet connectivity and is owned by a local entrepreneur. Moving away from the PC based kiosk model, we present an alternative platform to create and host such information kiosks in the telephony network. We call these as VoiKiosks and they are accessible through voice interaction over an ordinary phone call. Categories and Sub ject Descriptors: H.5.2 [User Interfaces]: Voice I/O General Terms: Design, Human Factors Keywords: Developing Regions, VoiGen, Kiosks we present an alternate model to create and host village kiosks (VoiKiosks). 2. TECHNOLOGY VoiKiosks act as information and service p ortals for a village. It can b e a central p oint of access for a community where information relevant to the community can b e p osted/accessed directly by the users themselves. VoiKiosk enables the convenience of accessing services using phones which are more p ervasive and affordable than PCs. This solution doesn't rely on Internet connectivity which is most often not available in the rural areas and most imp ortantly it allows end-users to directly interact with the services removing the dep endence on the kiosk op erator. VoiKiosk is a voice based service available on the Telecom network. There are two typ es of users for this system. First is the kiosk operator who configures the VoiKiosk for the village. Second is the end-user, who can either access or p ost information on the VoiKiosk dep ending on the services that it supp orts. VoiKiosk is created and deployed as a sp oken language interaction system using VoiGen [2]. The kiosk op erator navigates through the VoiKiosk application to configure it to offer various services for the village. Currently the VoiKiosk is configured based on a pre-created template. However, the kiosk op erator can add or remove different service categories based on his preferences. Figure 1 shows a sample op erational scenario for the VoiKiosk. VoiKiosk 1. INTRODUCTION Though kiosks have simplified access to information and services hitherto unavailable to the rural p opulation, there remain problems associated with this model. Firstly, endusers do not have direct access to the kiosk. The kiosk op erator acts as a mediator since most end-users are not computer literate. Secondly, a lot of the information that is required on a daily basis, esp ecially locally relevant information, is simply not available on the world wide web. Information such as the schedule of the daily electricity blackout, the local bus schedule, visiting hours of the doctor from the near-by village etc. Thirdly, in some villages in India, p eople may have to travel a few kilometers to the neighb oring village to access the kiosk facilities. Kiosks are also susceptible to hardware failures, and the more than 9 hour p ower cuts make their use difficult at times. And lastly, the current kiosk models enable a one way interaction where the end-users are consumers of information and services. As opp osed to PCs, the phone p enetration in rural India has b een significant and continues to grow. Also based on field studies and literature reviews semi-literate and illiterate p eople are more comfortable with sp eech based interfaces to access information services [5]. Leveraging the increased mobile p enetration and comfort with sp eech based interfaces, Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). WWW 2008, April 21­25, 2008, Beijing, China. ACM 978-1-60558-085-2/08/04. Kiosk-operator uploading information on VoiKiosk VoiGen Villagers calling the VoiKiosk for information VoiGen allows creation and configuration of VoiKiosk Figure 1: VoiKiosk Usage Scenario The VoiKiosk is envisioned to b e actively used by the local community to exchange information and services in addition to accessing standard services available through PC based kiosks. Some of the services that can b e made available through the VoiKiosk are: a) Information dissemination applications: This constitutes information that is primarily relevant to the local community. For example, the schedule of the local doctors weekly visit, the prices of crops in the nearest market. 1123 WWW 2008 / Poster Paper b) Interactive Services: Services of this typ e cater to sp ecific user requirements. For example, applying for a utility such as gas connections, consulting services. c) Service provider application: These are services where end-users b ecome content/service providers. For example, a VoiKiosk can b e used to provide or advertise micro-business services to the local community. Matchmaking technologies can b e used to match user requests for local services. This enables a two way interaction where end-users can b ecome content providers instead of just b eing consumers. April 21-25, 2008 · Beijing, China for them. Users call the VoiKiosk and record their advertisement which other users can browse by calling the VoiKiosk. The VoiKiosk is deployed in the local language of Andhra Pradesh - Telugu. The template develop ed has b een tested with two kiosk op erators in the villages of Vandram and Juvalla Palam in Andhra Pradesh for development purp oses. We are planning to deploy the VoiKiosk in two villages in the next quarter and conduct user studies with the help of volunteers from the villages. The pre-pilot demos have b een encouraging and we received useful inputs from the kiosk op erators regarding the design and the content of the kiosk. 3. PROTOTYPE AND DEPLOYMENT We have develop ed a kiosk template for a group of villages in Andhra Pradesh. Figure 2 shows a part of the call flow where the kiosk op erator configures the kiosk for his village. Edit Record welcome message Menu Edit to edit the welcome message Services to configure services 4. RELATED WORK There are several Village Kiosk based pro jects that have b een deployed in India in the past few years. ITC's eChoupal [3] enables farmers to sell their products directly to ITC bypassing the middle man and fetching them b etter prices. eChoupals also enable farmers to learn the b est farming practices. In this case, the op erator acts as the intermediary b etween the farmers and the kiosk. Drishtee [4] also optimizes the supply chain system by aggregating orders from retailers in the villages. Orders are placed through the kiosk or by calling their call center. Voice Based News Group (VOBA) [1] is an online discussion forum that enables illiterate users to access the group by accepting voice inputs and rendering voice outputs. VoiKiosk moves away from the PC based model and enables delivery of such services over the telephony channel. Kiosk Operator Select a service to add: Health, Agriculture, Weather, Transport Agriculture Record service description Back Add to add information, Edit to edit the service description, Configure to configure the service, Back to go to service menu Configure Add an agri expert Browse registered experts Back to go to service menu Add Edit 5. CONCLUSION We presented a technology to create and deploy service p ortals over the telephony network that are accessible by ordinary phones. The solution enables the end-users to directly interact with the system and b ecome active content uploaders instead of remaining information consumers. Add Browse Figure 2: VoiKiosk Configuration We have identified the following three basic services that are most useful for the initial kiosk deployment with the help of the local p eople from these villages: V-Agri: Farmers use this service to consult agriculture exp erts regarding their crop related problems. Currently a picture of the crop is taken and sent to an exp ert, who then sends a reply back to the farmer through the foundation. The turn-around time for this process is 24 hours. With VoiKiosk, the exp ert will b e able to p ost his advice for the farmer on the VoiKiosk, reducing the turn-around time to 4 hours. VoiKiosk identifies users based on their caller IDs. Ashwini Center: Ashwini Center is a distance education school in the village where students are taught by a teacher in the nearest city using a video conferencing system. Information regarding new programs, schedule of daily classes or changes in the schedule are advertised by word of mouth, local newspap ers or fliers that are stuck at various sp ots in the village. Often p eople go to the the ashwini centers to get this information in p erson. The VoiKiosk now has a Ashwini Center section where a kiosk op erator can p ost the latest news related to the distance education program. Local Advertisements: In this section users will b e able to record their p ersonal advertisements, much the same way advertisements are p osted in newspap er classifieds. In the current practice, micro-businesses such as mechanics, drivers, daily wage skilled lab orers use word of mouth advertising to reach out to clients. VoiKiosk provides an opp ortunity to increase their client base and increase business opp ortunities 6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank Byrra ju Foundation for supp orting VoiKiosk in Andhra Pradesh villages and for providing valuable insights. [1] U. Desai, N. Balachander, P. Dinakar, and V. Madhavan. VOBA- A Voice Based Newsgroup, volume 3285, pages 271­278. Springer Berlin, 2004. [2] A. Kumar, N. Ra jput, D. Chakrab orty, S. Agarwal, and A. A. Nanavati. Voiserv: Creation and delivery of converged services through voice for emerging economies. 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