Review for Full-Context Videos for First-Time, Non-Literate PC Users

Although the work described in this paper probably does not represent this year’s most novel or ‘exciting’ advances, it does document a systematic approach to preliminary exploration of a problem domain as yet unaddressed by the CHI community (as far as I am aware). Previously unexposed cultures and environments are undoubtedly going to be introduced to new technology over the coming years and so such work is both timely and insightful.

The paper is well structured, although the paragraph formatting goes somewhat askew on page 14. I feel that the alien example is unneeded and detracts from the flow of the paper.

The work’s strengths are its ethnographic approach and collaboration with a locally situated NGO, but I would agree with Louise Barkhuus’ concerns regarding the instructions and counter-balancing during the evaluation. This should be clarified in the paper. Also, when discussing the enduring effect of the video, it is unclear whether there was any correlation between individuals who were successful the first time and those who were successful hours. Could it not just be learning from experience rather than the enduring effect of the video? Even if that is the case, I do not think needing to watch the video more than once detracts from its usefulness.

The job-search application is obviously useful to the user group and I agree that the full-context video is well suited to this application. I would be very interested to see how this approach is adapted to less task-based, more exploratory domains such as those discussed in the future work section (health and services). Especially in the health domain where issues of trust heightened and as yet unresolved within the tech-savvy ‘west’.

The full-context video is essentially an application of common sense: don’t just instruct, instruct and explain. At the moment, and rightly so within the context of this study, the content of the full-context video is essentially biased to promote trust and interest. A challenge for the authors in future work will be to balance the information delivered by the videos to facilitate informed decisions: to address the risks as well as benefits of adopting the intended technology.