Design Research Mongolia

Mongols. Everywhere.

About a week back, I was walking from BART in downtown Oakland to our apartment and listening to my voicemail. As I passed the Kaiser Building, I listened Sunmin's message about an article we're putting together with Andrei on fieldwork in Mongolia. And then as I reached the Lake, while Sunmin was still talking, I heard somebody calling my name, and then yelling at me in Mongolian. When I turned around and located the voice, I saw it was my friend Altgui, who was also walking home from work. "What's wrong? Couldn't you hear me?" he asked. That was a Mongolian language pop quiz if I ever had one. I didn't do so well. Though he lives within a couple miles at Little Mongolia, I've never run into him on the street ...

Yesterday, I was getting lunch to go at one of the sandwich shops on Euclid on Berkeley's northside. The two women working behind the counter looked Mongolian, so I asked. Yes on both counts, and one is originally from Zavhan, one of my research sites. As the crow flies, this spot was only 150m from my lab in Etch...

Today Mahad and I grabbed food at one of the cafes on Lakeshore, across the street from Colonial Donuts. Our waitress was a Mongolian new on the job...

A couple months back, when Roger was in town from the other City with a capital "C", we went to get late afternoon pizza and beer in Rockridge. Two of the women working behind the counter were Mongolians. After I explained what I did, the older of the two told me that she used to work as a laborant, a medical technician, in Ulaanbaatar. The story of brain drain, from the health sector to "slinging pizzas" in Roger's words...

After Seoul, Denver, DC, and Praha, the Bay is probably the best place outside Mongolia for people doing research in Mongolia. Which brings up a question similar to ones I've asked before - how can being near Mongolians who have (e)migrated support research in rural Mongolia?

CHI 2008 report

Just got back from CHI 2008 (Conference on Human Factors in Computing) in Florence where I participated in the HCI for Community and International Development workshop, a followup on a similar workshop from CHI 2007 in San José, California and a more recent one from DIS 2008 in Cape Town. For me the workshop was about meeting good people working in this area and exchanging ideas about design. There was also some planning for community building. Most notably, due to Andy Dearden's efforts, there will be an IFIP TC 13 working group dedicated to design and international development. I'm also expecting a formal report of the workshop outcomes as happened with CHI 2007.

At the conference itself, the key session for me was on Healthcare in the Developing World, though I must confess I was disappointed with the low attendance of the CHI community, especially considering one of the papers won Best Note. And it probably should have been called "Healthcare in Sub-Saharan Africa" since the three papers were about work in Tanzania, Ghana, and Angola.

The two papers that really struck me as important works at CHI were "Designs on dignity: perceptions of technology among the homeless" (Le Dantec CA, Edwards WK) and "Participant and interviewer attitudes toward handheld computers in the context of HIV/AIDS programs in sub-Saharan Africa" (Cheng KG, Ernesto F, Truong KN). The Cheng article, presented at the "Healthcare in the Developing World" session, described an experiment in urban Angola that found that the use of PDAs vs. paper forms by interviewers resulted in more socially desirable responses to questions about sexual behaviors in the context of HIV/AIDS knowledge-attitude-practice (KAP) interviews. It's a critical contribution because we have very little understanding of the cultural perceptions of such technology. We must consider not only how handheld computers will improve the quality of data from input to surveillance/analysis, but also how the value and meaning that people place on the technology can affect the quality of data that we're getting in the first place.

And here was all the stuff Mongolian from CHI... Irene McAra-McWilliam in her opening plenary mentioned Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Ballad of Kubla Khan" (Khublai Khan). Colleagues from Uruguay and Argentina said initial OLPC experiments in Mongolia revealed issues with insufficient Mongolian language content and with a high density of OLPCs causing mesh networking failures ("cannot update routing tables fast enough"). I heard a rumor that Ben Bederson from U of Maryland was taking the International Children's Digital Library to Mongolia (confirmed here).

Two addenda [27-Apr-2008]:

Jono writes about Peter Wright's paper on empathy and design in HCI.

Nate Bolt posted his notes from Bill Buxton's closing plenary "Being Human in a Digital Age" (and Bill himself commented on the post).

Dry cleaning babel

Over the past few weeks, I've continued to go to Little Mongolia for language exchange. Mostly it's me teaching English in Monglish. A couple sessions back, one of the women D told me she found a work gig via a Mongolian acquaintance. She's had other leads in the 6 months she's been here, but nothing ever worked out, usually because of language issues, e.g. awkwardness in elderly care when the seniors kept talking and she kept smiling. This time it was a dry cleaner in Lafayette, a place that they didn't know much about except that it was 5 stops away on BART. D's friend N asked "There's a lot of white people in Lafayette, right?". Compared to Oakland, the answer was an emphatic yes.

D started her job on Monday, so I felt obligated to make our Tuesday session more relevant to her work. I looked online for ESL resources that might have a practical lesson "at the dry cleaner". With some help from Google Book Search, I found the book pictured left, targeted at Spanish-speaking ESL learners: 3 pages out of 264 about dry cleaning and laundry. I was working in Berkeley on Tuesday, so I went to the central branch of the Berkeley Public Library and xeroxed their copy of the book. That evening we had our language exchange. In two days D had already learned the words for starch, button, complaint, ticket, suit, and press. Her co-workers are 2 Koreans who speak English and Korean and 3 Mexicans, 2 who speak English and Spanish, and one who only speaks Spanish. She said communication is difficult.

Meanwhile her husband A asked me for the English names for the different cuts of beef. At the grocery store, he can tell the difference between chuck and flank and round, but doesn't know the English words. Me, I have no idea, so I had to get this image (right) from wikipedia for a future lesson.

[image credits: amazon and Ysangkok via wikipedia, with thanks to fileformat.info for SVG>raster conversion]

Residual culture shock

It's been almost 6 weeks since I've been back in the US now.  The most common question I'm asked by people when I first see them is "Are you experiencing culture shock?"  The short answer - and those that know me know I don't usually give short answers - is "Yes, but not as much as I imagined I would."  From my perspective there haven't been any Encino Man or Trading Places scenes.

I thought I had adjusted completely, but in the past week I've noticed a couple lingering differences between me and those around me:

1. It is not acceptable for me to put my hand on the upper thigh of a heterosexual male friend while seated, even if non-sexual in nature.
2. An emptied bottle of alcohol does not need to be thrown underneath the table.
3. Kicking someone's foot on accident does not require a follow-up handshake.  In fact it's probably a bad idea.

Oh, and we brought a coconut home on Tuesday night.  I didn't know how to open it.  Even though that had nothing to do with Mongolia, it made me feel like I was not from here.  I looked up opening instructions on the Internet.  The online advice didn't help much.  Eventually, and I do mean eventually, the power drill and auto body hammer with radiator-as-anvil did the trick.

Leave the Brady jerseys at home

Please excuse this deviation from the usual topics.

This is a cautionary note.  Generally for anyone traveling out this way from candlepin country.  Specifically for my pals coming in from Somerville this weekend.

Don't be fooled by the high density of ex-pat (pun intended) hipsters in the neighborhood.  Children's Fairyland is still very much a part of Raider Nation, where old memories die hard.  Photo below taken today of the front window of Golden Bear.  There will be no sympathy on the street.

Little Mongolia

This evening I'll return to Little Mongolia for the second time in three days.  The photo above is the view from my apartment.  A twenty minute walk around the lake, or less than a mile as the shuvuu flies.

Knowing that I need to maintain - and improve if possible - my Mongolian language for followup fieldwork in summer 2008, I've arranged to begin language exchange with some recent immigrants.  One day a week I'll teach English and one day a week we'll speak Mongolian.  Today's the English session.  Since they hardly speak English, we'll be starting with the basics.  Anyone with teaching ESL (or *SL) experience?  I'm taking suggestions.

When I arrived at Hill Castle Apartment Hotel on Tuesday, I saw that more than half the names in the electronic directory (like this one to the left) were Mongolian.  And there are lots of units in that building.  Hence the name Little Mongolia.  (I'm not sure if anyone besides me calls this place "Little Mongolia".)

This reminds me of the idea of using immigrant populations for remote design/user research, that is to work with immigrants as a part of designing for their home countries.  I've heard arguments for this before, but I'm still not convinced.  There was a fellow at HCI International in 2007 who talked about working with Mexicans in Chicago to understand new business opportunities in the mobile phone sector in Michoacan.  When I asked afterwards how useful the Chicago portion of the work was, he basically said it didn't help much.  Still, it's an intriguing idea since I pass through Little {Ethiopia, Vietnam, China, Mexico, Korea} on my regular commutes.

Chilly Willy

Apologies for not posting the last couple of weeks.  Writing on the blog was deprioritized as I realized how much work I had to do before leaving Mongolia.  I arrived in Beijing yesterday for a 24 hour layover.  It was -3C here when we arrived and, well, it felt balmy.  Even some of the Chinese folks on the plane said the same.  Temperatures took a dive in Ulaanbaatar the day before I left.  -35C early Friday morning at the airport, which is a bit cooler than the city center, and -36C early this morning.  With all my layers, I feel like a penguin visiting New York in the summertime.  I'm shedding the scarf, knit cap, Under Armour, and down parka for the last leg to San Francisco.  Even though I'm not in Mongolia for the next few months, I expect to keep posting, especially as it relates to work.

Goyol 2008

A bit overdue the photos below and clip above (YouTube, 00:35) are from Goyol 2008, a fashion show held at the Central Palace of Culture in Ulaanbaatar from 13-15 December 2007.  These are from the second day.  At the end (see last photo) there were even special appearances by Kiwi and Kamerton, including a solo by Bold.

Count the cranes!

Between my first departure from Mongolia in August 2006 and my return in January of this year, I noticed major changes in the Ulaanbaatar skyline.  But the pace of building last year was nothing compared to 2007.  Especially for commercial building in the city center.  Above is the 360 view from Suhbaatar Square, standing just south of the (orange) statue of Suhbaatar.  Taken on Monday while I was waiting to meet a bagiin emch who is visiting from the countryside.

Here's the game: find as many many tower cranes as you can in the photo.  Extra points if you can guess the intended use of the building.  Hints: (1) Shangri-La is one of them, (2) a taxi driver told me one of them has a lift for cars (not confirmed).  Click the photo to make it bigger.

McLellan never told me there'll be days like this

My core fieldwork with bagiin emch, between May and October of this year, yielded 45 hours and 6 minutes of recorded interviews.  These interviews form a major part of my field data, complementing field notes, annotated photographs, and structured baseline data.  Originally I had planned for selective transcriptions based on my field notes, primarily because of the transcription time involved: I estimated 225 hours of work for native Mongolian speakers to transcribe the entire corpus.  Not to mention working with the data.  In November, however, I decided for full transcription with the expectation that I'll reanalyze the data later for other purposes.  Just over 4 weeks ago I began hiring students from the National University of Mongolia (MUIS) to do this work, through the American Center for Mongolian Studies (ACMS).

Most of what I have to say about managing the transcription process, I'll say in a separate post - or maybe posts.  Today I want to share a couple episodes I've had with my transcribers in the past two weeks, mostly centered around text message (SMS) exchanges.  The text messages that I've transcribed below are original, including abbreviations and misspellings, except that I've anonymized them.  The translations of the Mongolian messages aren't academic standard.

EPISODE ONE

This one started on 4-Dec-2007 with a female transcriber that we'll call H (not her real initial).  That evening, just 20 minutes after arriving home from meeting all my transcribers at MUIS, I received this message from her phone:

Sent 19:36:24: Ta uduur msg bichsen bna le dongoj sai awla uulzax yamai ajiltai bsan

(I just got the message you sent today. What work did you have to meet for?)

Misunderstanding the message, and assuming it was H, I responded:

Sent approx. 19:37: Zugeer, zugeer.  Uulzsan tegeed hamagui.

(It's all good. We met so it doesn't matter.)

At 7:40pm my phone rang.  It was H's phone number and I still thought it was H.  I had previously told all my transcribers to dohih, or "missed call", me if they ever wanted to talk so I waited.  After the 3rd ring I picked up.  There was a young man on the other end.  He didn't introduce himself, but he demanded to know what I was doing with H, so I figured he was a boyfriend or brother.  I explained that I worked with MUIS and she was working with me through MUIS, but he wasn’t hearing it.  He was talking loud and fast, and he said za yu after every 5-10 words, so I could tell he was angry.  The only intelligible message I got was that he was going to beat me tomorrow.  He kept on this for a while, so I eventually hung up on him.  I then received this message:

Sent 19:47:09: Chi axij ine tere ged [H-]d msg bichex yum bol chamaig sain zodon shvv bi nz zaluun bna

(You try to come up on H again like this and I'll beat your ass good. This is H's boyfriend.)

Irritated, I quickly typed up this response, which would require 2 messages to send because of its length:

Sent 21:04:33: Chi sain sonsooch.  Bi muis-tai erdemteneer ajilaj bga.  Bi [H]-tei bas 3 uur oyutantai jinhene ajil hj bga. Bi g-iin bagsh. Tegeed chi nadtai ingeej yarich yostoi bolohgui. Chi [H]-tei oroi uulzaad nadruu zalgach. Meduu?

(Now you listen up good.  I'm working as a scholar at MUIS.  I've got work with H and 3 other students.  I'm her teacher, so you got no place talking to me like this.  When you meet H tonight, call me.  Got it, son?)

Due to continuing problems with Mobicom SMS at night – this had been going on in the evenings for about a week – it took about 20 tries and more than an hour to actually send.  I think the delay took some of the oomph out of my message.

I texted H the following day about our next meeting but didn't get any response.  I didn't try to call until two days later.  When I did her phone was turned off.  For the next 9 days I didn't see her, didn't hear from her, and couldn't reach her on her phone.  I heard she was ok and generally around, so I put the word out with a couple of her friends to have her call me.  She finally called on the afternoon 13-Dec-2007 from a white phone - recognizable by the "55" prefix - when I was at the Health Sciences University.  She explained that she lost her mobile phone and we agreed to meet on Friday afternoon at ACMS.

When we met, the first order of business I had with her was to talk about this exchange with her purported boyfriend.  I showed her the last SMS that I received from her phone.  She said it couldn't have been her boyfriend because he lives in Bayan-Ulgii and that it might have been someone else playing a joke.  But after explaining when this happened, she said that was the day she lost her phone.  I suspect somebody she knows took her phone because he spelled her very uncommon name correctly after only hearing me say it on the phone.  But I also think there's more to the story than I've got right now.

EPISODE TWO

On Saturday one of my transcribers quit three days after being hired:

Sent 13:09:30: hi. jaspal my doctor told me that you need to stay in hospital. well I can’t work for you i am sorry. i wanted to work but i have heartache. on tuesday [H] will give your mp3 and ear…!

The McLellan in the title refers to an article that is a must-read for anybody managing transcription of field data in anything other than small projects:

McLellan E, MacQueen KM, Neidig JL. "Beyond the Qualitative Interview: Data Preparation and Transcription", Field Methods 15(1): 63-84.