Online communities enable people to easily connect and share knowledge across geographies. Mobile phones can enable billions of new users in emerging countries to participate in these online communities. In India, where social hierarchy is important, users may over-value institutionally-recognized authorities relative to peer-sourced content. We tested this hypothesis through a controlled experiment of source authority effects on a voice-based agricultural information service for farmers in Gujarat, India. 305 farmers were sent seven agricultural tips via automated phone calls over a two-week period. The same seven tips were each voice-recorded by two university scientists and two peer farmers. Participants received a preview of the tip from a randomly assigned source via the automated call, and played the remainder of the tip by calling a dedicated phone number. Participants called the follow-up number significantly more often when the tip preview was recorded by a peer than a scientist. On the other hand, in interviews conducted both before and after the experiment, a majority of farmers maintained that they preferred receiving information from scientists. This stated preference may have been expressing the more socially acceptable response. We interpret our experimental results as a demonstration of the demand for peer-based agricultural information dissemination. We conclude with design implications for peer-to-peer information services for rural communities in India.

In this paper we present the results of a field study of Avaaj Otalo (literally, "voice stoop"), an interactive voice application for small-scale farmers in Gujarat, India. Through usage data and interviews, we describe how 51 farmers used the system over a seven month pilot deployment. The most popular feature of Avaaj Otalo was a forum for asking questions and browsing others' questions and responses on a range of agricultural topics. The forum developed into a lively social space with the emergence of norms, persistent moderation, and a desire for both structured interaction with institutionally sanctioned authorities and open discussion with peers. For all 51 users this was the first experience participating in an online community of any sort. In terms of usability, simple menu-based navigation was readily learned, with users preferring numeric input over speech. We conclude by discussing implications of our findings for designing voice-based social media serving rural communities in India and elsewhere.

In this paper we present a study comparing speech and dialed input voice user interfaces for farmers in Gujarat, India. We ran a controlled, between-subjects experiment with 45 participants. We found that the task completion rates were significantly higher with dialed input, particularly for subjects under age 30 and those with less than an eighth grade education. Additionally, participants using dialed input demonstrated a significantly greater performance improvement from the first to final task, and reported less difficulty providing input to the system.

In this paper we describe our experiences designing a voice interface in rural India. We outline our design process from initial contextual inquiry to a formal user evaluation, and use this discussion to motivate research guidelines for others designing voice interfaces in developing regions. Our three guidelines are to build around existing information systems, to iterate on the design through user testing, and to explore design alternatives through empirical analysis. We also share some practical lessons learned in designing, implementing, and evaluating information systems for developing regions in general.

Smallholder farmers face many challenges competing in the global marketplace. One major constraint is the lack of access to information and communications, which could be used to make decisions and reach new markets. In this paper, drawing from our experiences designing agricultural information systems in India and Central America, we provide a framework for understanding inter-stakeholder communications within agricultural value chains, focusing on the needs of small producers. First, we outline the major types of stakeholders - including farmers, consumers, intermediaries and various supporting organizations. Then, we survey the major categories of information systems supporting communication between stakeholders, focusing on those reaching small farmers. Based on this survey, we provide the following categorization of information flows within agricultural value chains: 1) link-to-link (L2L): those information flows required to coordinate the sale, movement, and distribution of produce along the value chain, 2) peer-to-peer (P2P): communications required to share knowledge and experiences between members of the same stakeholder group, and the expert community serving that stakeholder group and 3) end-to-end (E2E): communications between producers and consumers, for example, to facilitate exchange of non-economic values to be used as external inputs to market pricing (e.g, certification). We outline some reasons why current information systems have had difficulty in reaching small producers, and highlight a few technology trends that could contribute to increasing the fidelity and accessibility of communications, both between producers and consumers, as well as within their respective stakeholder communities.