Institute For The Future

Mobility Daily Transitions, India, Mumbai, Liliyawala, 12/19/2008

Hakim at his workstation at the Bandra video studio

Family context

Hakim is 23 and works at a video studio in Bandra (a Mumbai suburb) as a transcriber. He is working on transcribing, translating and annotating documentary footage, mostly of Mumbai, as part of an open video repository. He often works with a friend, Kevin (22), who he knows through college.  Hakim graduated with a degree in Media / Advertising. His parents live in Virar (about 25km from his place); he goes there about three times a week, does his laundry, gets pocket money etc.

Domain context

Hakim commutes two hours every day for work, from Mira Road to Bandra by train, taking autorickshaws to get to and from the train stations. He describes himself as “not a very calm person”, and the ride is often stressful (especially if he has to stand for an hour or more).  Yet, he also says that he has gotten used to this commute (he used to have a shorter one when he was in college), and since getting a mobile phone he has developed ways to distract himself from the stresses of the commute.

After graduating, he tried to get into film school – he’s very interested in creating and watching videos and shorts – but couldn’t get admission and was referred by Kevin to this current job. His hours are flexible, which is “majorly important” because he can show up at odd times. He uses a train timetable to precisely evaluate which train to go for in order to get the least crowded transport for a given time of day; over the course of his commute there are multiple transport hubs (train terminals), more and less crowded legs of the journey, and so on.

When living with his parents, he was unhappy with their choice to move to Virar because power cuts are very frequent, often ten hours long. He’s a big computer and video gamer, so a lack of power tends to frustrate him enormously.  Hakim is a friendly guy though, but maybe a little bit more inclined to keep to himself and not socialize directly with other people co-present during his commute.

He used to have a phone which he fondly calls “the best anyone had in my class”, a nokia n73. He spent a lot of money on it (18k), and he could access the internet on it, check his mail, get on facebook and orkut, play music, and take lots of pictures (it had a 3.2 megapx camera). When he was unemployed, he felt himself getting depressed and decided to sell the phone and buy a PS2 to keep himself entertained. He told us an anecdote about how he broke his PS2 and DVD player in a fit of anger triggered by a power cut (!) and now he has a simpler sony phone, one he uses for music and games but he doesn’t like the inferior memory capacity and camera on it.

General Insights

Local trains in Mumbai are rich sites of socialization and media use.  Hakim has seen “groups” form – people who travel together often and cluster together in an ad-hoc fashion when they are on the train. They will often bring snacks for each other, save seats, and generally socialize within the group.  Hakim used to belong to such a train group in junior college, and remembers some of the nicknames of the group members. The discussion in trains tends to be topical, for instance about politics, or a train worker’s strike, or the economic recession. On late night trains, sometimes people will smoke in the train, play cards, or drink alcohol out of plastic bags (all illegal).

“Chinese phones”, cheap (5-7k) models of mobile phone, have become popular with some of the train commuters. Some of these phones have 6-9 built-in speakers, making them a music broadcast device. Hakim often sees older folks (30-50y) from the Gujarati / Jain community holding up their phones in the train, playing 70s and 80s music. He and other members of his age range tend to use earphones to listen to their mp3s privately. He doesn’t think he’d be very popular in the train if he starting broadcasting his particular brand of rock music.

Street musicians sometimes play religions “bhajjans” on the train and pass “Prasad” to the travelers hand-to-hand. Movement on the trains is very restricted because of crowding.

People sometimes exchange music, funny videos and other media while commuting with random other folks. Hakim mentions an instance he witnessed where a phone went off, playing a distinctive ringtone of devotional music, which in turn set off an exchange of ringtones and phone numbers between two people on the train.

Hakim sees much more media use on trains in recent times. MBA students especially, make up a large chuck of the commuters that have laptops – overall nearly 20% commuters in office hours have laptops now. Data cards (e.g reliance ) are becoming very popular for mobile internet access. MP3 music has superseded FM radio on mobile phones.

Hakim tends not to socialize too much with others during his commute, but does use his mobile phone to carve out a personal media space. He can play ten different games on his phone during an hour of commute. Music helps him escape the “pain, sweat, and noise” of travel and escape into a different headspace. When he had his N73, he avidly checked facebook / orkut  and email on it. He also took lots of pictures and some video using his phone which he’d upload to his SNS profiles.  Depending on whether he is sitting or standing, and how crowded it is, he’ll choose between music, games, and reading a tabloid (he likes the tabloid because its easier to read on a train than a broadsheet). Running out of power is a big problem – he’ll switch off his network to conserve power and check missed calls later. He mentions a Chinese phone with a solar panel that he saw once as a possible solution.

Negotiating space can also be a physical problem – sometimes a phone will go off and the owner will be physically unable to retrieve it and answer. Hakim recalls that sometimes a distracting or amusing ringtone can serve as a social signal causing people to shift positions slightly and make room for the callee to answer. For instance, the “uncle phone aa raha hai utha lo” ringtone – a kid’s voice saying “uncle your phone is ringing, pick it up”.

In general, Hakim is very interested in video creation; he uses both phone and handycam for this. Perhaps owing to this background, he entertains himself during his commute by observing people, occasionally taking video etc. Some of his short film work (including interesting claymation work) goes on his facebook profile. He makes a lot of facebook friends at college festivals.

Hakim’s phone is often used as a way to access media and distract himself from the physically present location.  In addition to the commute, he mentions instances when he was living in “paying guest accommodation with some random people” and used to click through college photos on his phone and get nostalgic.

Other uses of phone – calls, participating in SMS contents sometimes on the commute, with N73 playing fantasy sports online, not much use of applications on phone. Uses a “music DJ” app sometimes to mix drums tracks on the phone.

Recently started playing games on his phone. Since he doesn’t have a PC currently, he goes to a friend who downloads mobile games and transfers them onto his phone using Bluetooth. Likes the games, but likes the high-quality graphical experience of the PS2 better. Media sharing is a big part of his life – he downloads international cinema w/ subs and shares this with his more Hollywood-inclined friends by passing around USB drives that can be plugged into DVD players.

Despite all the phone use, he still thinks the PC is the last tech he would part with, because you can do anything on it – games, movies, even phone calls using skype.

Thinks that technology has given him more options than five years ago. Earlier, he didn’t have a phone, and airtime was much more expensive. All you could do on a commute was smoke, play cards, read newspapers. Now “you have options”.  Hakim says the future will probably see much better GPS navigation on phones (currently not useful in places like Bombay), wider 3G availability [ I spoke with him a couple days after the interview and 3G had been activated on his sony phone], and video calling.

As soon as Hakim gets to work, he continues using the media channels he was accessing on his commute. He immediately logs onto his email and facebook “its never enough facebook”.

Trends

More mobile internet access – both phone and laptops using data cards.

Increasing peer-to-peer media sharing; devices are sometimes hacked to cooperate (his PS2 is chip-modded at Lamington road to accommodate pirated games).

Phone media output has become sufficiently high-fidelity to serve as a public music player, showing off videos to your friends etc. The owner of a high-capability phone has new means for socialization around producing, displaying  and sharing such media.

[This mentioned by many interviewees] Orkut steadily losing ground to facebook – facebook seen as more classy

Personal, portable technologies maybe reducing socialization (games / music vs calls/ SMSes). Increased access to things like facebook status is not really seen as affirming friendship or social relations, more of an informational thing.

Tips and tricks

-    if you have free missed call alerts on your phone, switch off network during commute to conserve power

-    use phone’s picture taking combined with windows move maker to create stop-motion animation.