Full-Context Videos for First-Time, Non-Literate PC Users

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 illiteracy in interacting with the computer: lack of awareness of what the PC could deliver, fear and mistrust of the technology, and lack of comprehension about how information relevant to them was embedded in the PC.

In this paper, we address these challenges with full-context video, which includes dramatizations of how a user might use the application and how relevant information comes to be contained in the computer, in addition to a tutorial of the UI. In experiments conducted with 35 non-literate residents of Bangalore slums, the introduction of full-context video dramatically improved task completion for a job-search task.