Re: [IxDA Discuss] Conducting remote session in Africa

That's very interesting! We've run many international remote research
studies, but never in Africa. Bearing that in mind, if the legal and ethical
issues can be resolved, there are many options for recording any audio
output from your computer. We use Morae's Camtasia Studio, but free
solutions also exist (like http://camstudio.org/). We made a post to our
website (http://remoteusability.com/?p=233#content) about the issue of
testing internationally with Skype / UserVue, and plan on posting about more
international solutions in the future. (Also bear in mind that there are
other screensharing solutions as well.)

Hope this helps -- leave a comment on RemoteUsability.com if you have any
more questions!

Tony Tulathimutte 
UX Writer
Bolt|Peters User Experience
(415) 796-3112
http://boltpeters.com

-----Original Message-----
From: James Page [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 12:48 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Conducting remote session in Africa

Mary,

At Feralabs using our Webnographer Remote usability software we have carried
out a number of Remote Usability tests in Africa. I also used to work for
one of the largest Sub Saharan African owned software companies.

Your idea of using Skype with Africa runs into a number of challenges, both
legal and ethical :-

1) Legal and Ethical. By using Skype you could be making your Participant
break the law in their country. Using software like Skype that uses Voice
Over IP(VOIP) is still mainly illegal in most African countries. See:
http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/telecoms/2008/0805231036.asp?S=All%20Africa%
20News&A=AFN&O=FRGN(Russell
Southwood
is a consultant to the organisations such as the World Bank and runs the
main news letter on African Telephony - ballancingact.)

2) Legal. Recording the telephone conversation call in some African
countries is illegal, even with the participants permission.

3) Ethical. The last issue is that Voice over IP uses allot of bandwidth.It
costs African ISP's over $8.00 usd per kb of bandwidth per year (that is
about 40 times it costs in the States).
http://ethanzuckerman.com/ericatberkman.pdf
It is the African ISP that pays for the connection from Europe or America,
not your ISP, so by using VOIP you are increasing the cost to the African
ISP and therefore making Internet Access more expensive in Africa. Also
Africa still has limited Bandwidth to the rest of the world, so you are
slowing everybodies connection. My connection at the office is more than
some ISP's in Africa have!

Solutions. Either use Webnograpther, or another Asynchronous system. Or use
Critical Incident Reporting over Email, or we can also help with finding
people that can conduct tests on the ground. There may not be many usability
people there, but there are many trained ethnographers in Africa, with very
high standards.

All the best

James
http://blog.feralabs.com



2008/12/10 Gustavo Gawry <[email protected]>

> Mary,
>
> If using skype you can try one of those skype recording plugins. You 
> can find some in the link below.
>
> http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/06/how-to-record-skype-conversations.h
> tml
>
>
> --
> Gustavo Gawry
> Interaction Designer
> Mobile: +55 21 9498-7923
> Email: gustavogawry at gmail.com
> Blog: http://gawry.com (in portuguese)
> Twitter: gawry
>
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 2:28 PM, Mary Deaton <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> > Does anyone have experience conducting remote usability sessions 
> > from the US via the Web with participants in Africa? I am using 
> > UserVue, which cannot handle telephone connections outside the US and
Canada.
> > However, none of the web conferencing vendors we have researched 
> > offer toll-free call-in numbers in Africa, very few in South 
> > America, and India is spotty.
> >
> > I tried to use Skype as a means for me to call out to the 
> > participants with the notion I could then record the conversation on 
> > my end, but I do not have a phone that can accept a recording device 
> > and so I have not found a really good way to record the Skype call off
my computer.
> >
> > I would appreciate any suggestions people have, and as soon as 
> > possible. Please email me directly and then I will summarize and 
> > post back to these lists what I learn.
> >
> > And perhaps the user experience community should begin some sort of 
> > movement to make the availability of toll-free numbers in the 
> > developing world something not so dependent on whether someone can 
> > make a profit by offering them. End of rant.
> >
> > Mary Deaton
> > Deaton Interactive Design,
> > Manager, STC Usability and User Experience Community 
> > ________________________________________________________________
> > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)!
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