OUR PROJECT

'Voices in Your Hand' is an humanitarian project to create a simple, voice-email handset and cheap audio services to help urban shantytowns and isolated rural areas in the developing world, overcoming illiteracy or minority languages.

This Stanford Reuters Digital Vision project aims to develop a cheap handset that would extend the reach of public tele-centers and bring the benefits of a simple, cheap information and communication channel to the rural and urban poor in the developing
world.

The project is sponsored by Philips Electronics.

Our recent field trip to the favelas (the urban slums) in Brazil, where about 25 million people live in desperate poverty, confirmed the demand for our concept and established relations with local NGOs, influential national players and content providers who are keen to collaborate.

Adaptations of the concept to suit isolated people in rural areas of India, Thailand and elsewhere are also being considered. This is not 'university research' but a real venture mission to try to give millions of people an appropriate channel for digital information and communication, so they can start to help themselves.

two images from the Recife area in Brazil

• More details

• A brief overview of the project in PDF format (160 K)

• The full description of the project in PDF format (2.3 MB)

• Paul's personal statement of interest in the project (32 K)

• Storyboards illustrating potential uses of the product in HTML or PDF (1.4 MB)

• A slideshow about our recent fieldtrip to Brazil in HTML or PDF (709 K)

• NEW! (April 27, 2003). A subset of the 'Voices' concept, using a barcode reader accessory to trigger health information is described in a document (PDF, 151 K) and powerpoint (PDF, 366 K). These were produced as a part of the Spring 2003 COMM 169 scenario-based design course on technology ideas for developing countries.