<i>Suhrid</i>

The design of accessible mobile phone interfaces for low literate people usually assumes an individual model of use, and are often limited by the low technical expertise and/or cognitive ability of users in marginal communities of developing countries. Drawing on previous ICTD scholarship around shared and intermediated use of technology and our own ethnographic field study, we introduce a collaborative model of use in the design of Suhrid, a mobile phone interface that helps low literate users perform common phone tasks by receiving remote help from higher-literacy members of their community. The results of our six week long deployment of Suhrid among 10 low literate rickshaw pullers in Dhaka, Bangladesh, indicate the potential of collaborative use models to help low-literate…