MILLEE experiences from a former undergrad

Hi everyone, my name is Maksim and I am a former undergraduate member of Matt Kam's MILLEE project. I was in the group from January to December 2006, and I'll share in this entry an account of a few of my experiences in the group as well as a few general ideas that I learned through my involvement. Not only is MILLEE moving forward in addressing a very relevant social problem, but it also gives undergraduate students many opportunities to contribute and learn in an ambitious Human-Computer Interaction research group. I hope to highlight this great attention to undergraduate students.

I originally joined the group at the beginning of the Spring 2006 semester by answering a bulletin that called for undergraduate participants in the group. I had begun looking for a research group right before the start of the semester, and decided that the MILLEE group was a great opportunity.

Like many multidisciplinary research projects, MILLEE has an interesting and practical technological side (working with Windows Mobile smartphones). However, what I felt differentiated MILLEE from many other groups is that it has a very strong social aspect to the project as well - designing a framework for English learning among low-income students in India.

As it turned out eventually, the social aspect was the side that I was exposed to more than the technological side. The biggest concept that I immediately realized about performing HCI research in the MILLEE group is that it involves a lot of work and preparation! In fact, the technological knowledge/programming side is critical but makes up less than half of the research process.

Consider my first semester's work in the group, characterized as only a warm-up exercise - the undergraduate participants were split into pairs and were challenged to think of a computer game that teaches some subset of the English language. One additional constraint was that this game had to be relevant and interesting to low-income learners in India. This was harder than it seemed and not just about fun and games - I learned, for example, that supermarkets are rare in some developing regions.

In addition, I had some catching up to do because most people in the group had some connection to India, whether from their parents or through their visits to the country, while I had no knowledge aside from what you would find in an encyclopedia article about India. It may appear fun and trivial to create a computer game storyline - my partner and I were very excited to mold our game as a cross between Super Mario and Prince of Persia for example - but it was also pointed out to us that the game not only had to be fun and relevant to children, but that it also had to apply some pedagogical techniques to help in learning the material.

Matt Kam did an analysis of many existing educational computer games and commercial language learning packages, and summarized the main teaching techniques of these software in the form of "design patterns" and asked the subgroups to integrate some of these patterns in their game design. The whole semester's work was really just a warm-up exercise for the next semester, but already shows that the work done in MILLEE is not only about fun and games and not just about doing something "cool."

Not only is the MILLEE project something different and new, it also has to work for the chosen user group. This requires lots of preparation in studying the way of life of urban slums/rural Indian children through field research as well as studying good approaches for teaching and motivating students from the current research literature. Finally, it has to make sense financially in terms of having a viable business model or adoption plan - the cost of smartphones is still prohibitive to many families in India, especially those of urban slums and rural areas.

Despite these three barriers and restrictions - effective teaching strategies, fun and relevance to users, and financial sense - MILLEE has started to make some positive progress and is moving forward in its goal to make the learning of English as a Second Language via computer games more accessible for underserved Indian children.

During my time in the group, the graduate student researchers have been very supportive in helping the undergraduate researchers grow as researchers. I have gotten lots of great advice about the research process, graduate student life, and the HCI field. Matthew Kam also offered to hold reading group sessions to develop critical reading skills in reading research papers that are relevant to the group's work. Finally, he was available for meeting anytime to discuss progress and offer advice. Matt even went as far as offering to help me better understand the weekly readings in CS260, which was the graduate level HCI class at Berkeley when I signed up for it in my last semester (unfortunately I felt overwhelmed in the class and decided to drop it in the second week of the semester).

The great thing about MILLEE is that if an undergraduate researcher shows that he or she can handle the work and produce good results, then their role in the group will increase to challenge and grow them as HCI researchers. Although for several reasons (mostly due to class work load, a part-time job, and no goals to get a Ph.D.) I could not take on as much of a role in the software development or social aspects of the research project as I would have wanted, I very much appreciate and thank all the attention that the Matt and the other graduate students in the group and the Berkeley Institute of Design had given me. Matt has mentored many talented undergraduate researchers who have gone on to be successful in their chosen endeavors.

My time in MILLEE has been very interesting and valuable, even if it wasn't what I had initially expected when I sent Matt an email and asked if I could join the group. As an Electrical Engineering and Computer Science major, I was primarily excited to write code for educational computer games on smartphones. It turned out that I didn't write even one line of code over my two semesters, but that did not mean I didn't enjoy my time in the group or thought that it was a waste of time. I got to see some of the research process up close in a unique HCI research group. I also learned that writing software is but one portion of the actual work required to achieve the goals of a research group.

In conclusion, I saw the huge demand for English as a Second Language in India and was intrigued by Matt's vision of the cellphone eventually becoming a vehicle for making English learning more accessible anytime, anywhere in India and other developing countries. Overall, I think this group gives a great opportunity for undergraduates to participate in a very socially-relevant HCI project. This project has the potential to bring lots of positive impact to the lives of urban slums and rural Indian children through the power of educational computer games. I would like to thank the group for giving me the opportunity to get a "front-seat" view of HCI research as well as for allowing me to assist in some of the group tasks. I wish the group luck this summer during their field work in Mysore, India!