Fresh from the archive - Question Box on BBC Digital Planet!
First time available - listen to Open Mind adviser Sugata Mitra talk about the very first Question Boxes in this "vintage" BBC interview!
What the World Wants to Know
Question Box is Open Mind’s initiative to bring information to people around the world, the way they want to receive it.
Right now, Open Mind - Question Box is at work in Pune, India and rural Uganda.
To partner with us or learn more, please visit:
www.questionbox.org
Live Questions:
http://worldwantstoknow.com
News:
http://www.questionbox.org/news.php
In Uganda, Open Mind - Question Box and Grameen Foundation have partnered to bring AppLab Question Box (AQB) to rural Uganda. AQB is a unique live, local language telephone hotline service that brings the Internet to the fields and market stalls of individuals in Uganda who have no access to computers. The program was developed by Grameen Foundation and Open Mind as part of Grameen Foundation’s Community Knowledge Worker initiative which is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
In India, Open Mind has a presence in Pune, Maharashtra. We install physical Question Boxes in public places, allowing users to get answers with the push of a button. We work in close coordination with the Europe Asia Business School, a one-year MBA program, as well as Ecotech Solutions, our project and hardware partner.
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View QB Data in Real-Time
An app we've been using internally for a long time goes public!
Recently, I began thinking about the data we were collecting and of ways to make it more accessible. Because there was a real time-input (people calling the service), I decided I would try to offer a real-time feed of the questions coming in from people who have no computers, sometimes even no phones. How can they not have phones you ask? Well, in our current pilot with Grameen-Uganda, Question Box works by sending people called Community Knowledge Workers into the field to aggregate questions from rural communities. The CKW then dials a call center (located at Appfrica Labs) with operators on standby waiting to look up the answers. As the operators enter a search (complete with the demographic info of the question asker) the application is populated with those queries, as they occur in real-time. If you’ve ever been to Google’s Mountain View campus, they have a monitor displaying search terms as they are being entered by billions of people around the world, this is the same general concept applied to people who normally live their lives far beyond reach of the web.
The application is called World Wants to Know or WW2K. It’s an exercise in data visualization and offers insight as to the types of information these populations are interested in. Before you ask what the answers are, we do give them to the callers but to protect their identities as well as the interests of our pilot partners, that information (unfortunately) cannot be shared. Over the next few weeks I hope to add many new visualizations to the site based on the data we’re collecting in India and Uganda.
via appfrica.net
Posted by Questionbox.org
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Grameen hosts focus group for Question Box
Here's a few shots from the extensive focus group this week. The CEO of Grameen Foundation Alex Counts was there, as were Whitney Gantt, Eric Cantor (Applab), David Edelstein and Kiki Noviandi (Applab Indonesia). The format worked well with two focus groups held throughout the day.
There were two presentations on “What is it like to be a CKW?” and one presentation from our operators on “What is it like to be an AQB Operator?”.
For the focus groups, essentially we all sat around in a circle, Nat, Barbara and I being in separate groups with between 15 and 20 CKWs. Each operator I think was also assigned to a separate group which allowed them to take notes and defend themselves on occasion. The operator in my group, Lydia, did a great job of not being defensive while pointing out specifics about the service and how we are working to improve. Then the CKWs all introduced themselves, where they work, and answered a random question that they had on cards that were handed out earlier. The questions were:
“What excites you most about AQB?’
“What is the most interesting question you received?”
“What service would you like to see next from Applab/Grameen?” (or how can we improve the ones you already have)
“What challenges do you face as a CKW?”
“What Applab service is most popular?”
FINDINGS
The good news for us is that the most popular services were AQB and 6001 (Google SMS Search). The common gripe about 6001 is that information wasn’t thorough enough and lacked the ‘human’ interaction of AQB. The most common gripe about AQB was about the time it took to get a response back where 6001 usually takes only a minute to respond. Overall the feedback was positive as was the general response following Google, Grameen and MTN revealing that they were partnering to deliver the SMS applications (SMS Search, Google Trader, and Google Tips) the day prior.
These are really exciting times for Question Box!
Posted by Jon Gosier
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