A Bottom-of-the-Pyramid Epiphany

This is my workstation.

Toward the left side of the image you can see what looks like a photo frame and above that pinned onto the softboard is a phone extension list.Every morning before we troop in,the office is cleaned by hired errand boys.This morning when I walked into my room,I sat down to switch on the computer when the softboard caught my eye.I silently cursed the errand boy because here’s what i saw.

 

 

 

 

The extension list must have come off the board and the errand boy on his morning round would have carelessly pinned it back onto the board.Unfortunately,he pinned it upside down.

And then it hit me hard.

It wasn’t carelessness.What if the guy was illiterate? So starkly illiterate that he couldn’t understand not just the words or digits but more surprisingly the layout of the rows and columns of the sheet.To most educated people(like me),even if the the words and digits were printed in Zulu, I would have been instinctively guided by the how the rows and columns appeared,be it a phone extension list or a form to be filled up.But that’s also because I am also familiar with the way rows and columns intersect to form “meaning”.But this guy isn’t.

And this is the guy who is part of the ‘bottom of the pyramid’ and for whom interfaces,mobile phone or otherwise have to be designed.Frightening yet humbling.