Tamil market: a spoken dialog system for rural India

In this paper, we describe the design process, results, and observations from a pilot user study for Tamil Market, a speech-driven agricultural query system, conducted in community centers in rural India. The primary users were rural villagers of varying degrees of literacy from three districts of Tamil Nadu. Preliminary findings from a Wizard-of-Oz field study show that rural villagers are able to navigate through a dialog system using their voice, regardless of literacy level and previous experience with technology. Traditional user study techniques, however, favor literate users and are ill-suited to research in developing regions.