MAS.965 | Fall 2008 | Undergraduate

NextLab I: Designing Mobile Technologies for the Next Billion Users

Syllabus

This is NextLab

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Course Meeting Times

Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session

Course Goals

  • To understand the social impact that mobile technologies are having in the life of low-income people in developing countries, and to chart their possibilities for the future.
  • To design and launch mobile technologies that are technically appropriate and socially informed in the context of developing countries, so as to enable true and sustainable adoption for the next billion users.
  • To learn to overcome the non-technical barriers (social, educational, industrial, financial) that prevent social mobile technologies from large-scale deployment in commercial networks.
  • To help shape the vision of how pervasive connectivity can create unprecedented opportunities for empowering low-income people in developing countries.

Course Details

Units: 3-1-5  
[MIT credit units, which indicate a subject’s time distribution, are represented by three numbers. Each unit represents approximately 14 hours of work. First is the number of units assigned for recitation and lecture; second, the number of units for laboratory, design, or fieldwork; and third, for preparation. Add the units together to obtain the total credit hours for a subject.]

Maximum class size: 30 students

Prerequisites: Permission of instructor for undergraduates.

Teaching Team

Course Sponsors

Telmex, Latin America’s largest telecoms operator  
América Móvil, fifth largest mobile network in the world  
Nokia, Largest handset manufacturer in the developing world  
Next Billion Network @ MIT Media Lab

Potential Project Partners and Projects

Economic Empowerment

  • Macosa: Multilevel marketing for microfinance, Ecuador
  • PlaNet Finance: Mobile pre-screening for microfinance, Argentina
  • ITESM (Monterrey Tec): Agriculture pricing for market efficiency and disintermediation, Mexico/Nicaragua
  • United Villages: M-commerce interface, India

Education

  • Telmex: Mobile social network for students in low-income communities, Mexico
  • ITESM (Monterrey Tec): M-learning for rural literacy instructors, Mexico

Health

  • CIDRZ: Mobile diagnostics for cervical cancer, Zambia
  • GE Healthcare: Tele-radiology with Ultrasound on Mobiles, Belize

Environment and Community

  • Flow, Inc: Mobile/GIS InnovGreen Technology, Vietnam
  • Catholic Relief Services: Mobile Early Warning System for Disaster Management, India

The Next Billion in Our Neighborhood (partnership with the City of Boston)

  • “Thrive in Five”: Mobile services for parents of 0-5 year olds
  • “Eat or Heat”: Can we help people manage their money better?

Course Structure

This course has two main components: In-class Discussion (generally on Mondays), and Guided Design Process (generally on Wednesdays). Special guest lectures and other class activities will also occur throughout the term.

  • In-class Discussions: Individual students will be assigned one research paper to read and facilitate discussion during class. We expect to designate an average of three student-led discussion every class (20-30 mins each).
  • Guided Design Process: Student teams are expected to present completed project milestones to the class and submit their work to structured sessions of expert and peer reviews. We expect half of the teams to present in a given week, with the other half presenting the following week.

Project Teams

The projects are the central part of the course and will be done in teams of three to five students. Each team will schedule a formal project meeting time as well as meeting times with its Team Advisors and Project Partners throughout the semester.

Because important work for this course will be done during class time, attendance is essential. Students missing a class or meeting should notify their instructors and teammates in advance and make arrangements to make up the work.

Grading

ACTIVITIES PERCENTAGES
In-class participation and paper in-class discussion 20% (individual grade)
Working prototype 40% (team grade)
Sustainability plan 20% (team grade)
End-of-term public presentation 20% (both individual and team grade)

Course Schedule

WEEK # IN-CLASS DISCUSSION AND CASE STUDIES GUIDED DESIGN PROCESS
1   Introduction to NextLab
2 Project proposal presentations

Needs assessment

Team formation

Class logistics
3 Planning ICT4D interventions

Economic and social conditions

Technology survey / ICT penetration
4 No class Milestone 1: elevator pitch, including related work
5 Social and cultural considerations Milestone 1 (cont.)
6 ICT4D history Milestone 2: needs assessment results
7 No class (holiday) Milestone 2 (cont.)
8 Interfaces Milestone 3: system design and initial implementation results
9 Health Milestone 3 (cont.)
10

Disaster management

Health (cont.)

 Milestone 4: sustainability and financial factors
11 No class (holiday) Milestone 4 (cont.)
12 Education Mobile money and transactions
13

Environment and other applications

Milestone 5: demo

 Milestone 5 (cont.)
14 Milestone 6: final presentation practice Milestone 6 (cont.)
15 Conclusion Final presentation event

Instructors

Jhonatan Rotberg (Founder, Instructor)

Jhonatan Rotberg is the founder and director of the Next Billion Network program at MIT, and the instructor of MIT’s NextLab course series. He is the Telmex Researcher at the MIT Media Lab and a Lecturer in the Media Arts and Sciences Program. A serial entrepreneur, he is experienced in the original conception and deployment of innovation, applications and content in developing countries, and in building projects and organizations based on digital technologies. During his career, he has founded and sold various startups in the financial and high-tech sectors. His current focus is on designing innovative mobile technologies that help people reduce friction in their local markets from the bottom up, and on incubating ventures that allow them to scale and become sustainable in the emerging markets. Previous to joining Grupo Carso, Latin America’s largest telecoms provider, he spent 7 years in the financial services practice of Accenture, and in the Investment Banking divisions of Baring Securities and Deutsche Bank. A native of Mexico, Rotberg is a graduate of Brown University.

Luis Sarmenta (Instructor)

Luis Sarmenta is a Research Scientist at the MIT Media Lab. Originally from the Philippines, he has personally experienced the revolutionary impact that mobile phones have had in the developing world, and thus deeply believes in the enormous life-changing potential of mobile phone applications. While working as a professor at Ateneo de Manila University, he founded and directed an R&D center that worked with the largest mobile operator in the Philippines and produced 30 commercially deployed mobile phone applications and services in its first two years. Dr. Sarmenta holds a PhD in EECS from MIT, and has done research and consulting work in a variety of topics aside from mobile computing, including volunteer computing, grid computing, computer security, medical computing, educational computing, and others. He was a recipient of the ASEAN Young Scientists and Technologists Award in 2005.

Gari Clifford (Instructor, Medical Technologies)

Dr. Clifford is a Principal Research Scientist in the Laboratory for Computational Physiology at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences where he manages a R01 NIH-funded research program, and contributes to the PhysioNet Research Resource. His research is focused on providing open-source tools and public-access data for the evaluation of clinical problems. Clifford is also a member of SAMP, the Systems Analysis, Modelling and Prediction Group in the Dept. of Engineering Science, Oxford University. Dr. Clifford has published widely on biomedical signal processing, including a recent book, and is an editor for BioMedical Engineering OnLine, a BMC Open-Access Journal with discounted publishing for developing countries.

Rich Fletcher (Instructor, Sensing and Wireless)

Dr. Fletcher is currently Research Scientist at the MIT Media Lab, where he received his PhD in low-cost RFID technology and wireless sensors. Rich also holds two undergraduate degrees from MIT in Electrical Engineering and Physics. He has over 15 years research experience in RFID and wireless systems, participating in a number of projects in industry and the military as well as academia. Fletcher is Colombian and since 1996 has been working with a number of MIT initiatives in the area of ICT for developing countries. As an entrepreneur, Dr. Fletcher has co-founded for-profit companies First-Mile Solutions and United Villages that are deploying technologies in developing regions around the world.

Advisors

Andrés Monroy-Hernández (Advisor, Education and Learning Technologies)

Andrés Monroy-Hernández is a PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab, his research focuses on web-based tools for creative learning and collaboration. Andrés leads the development of the Scratch online community where thousands of children share their own interactive content. Most recently he has been doing work on the use of camera phones to assist health care workers in developing countries. He holds a Masters degree in media technology from MIT and a bachelors in electronics engineering from Tec de Monterrey in México.

Elisabeth Megally (Advisor, Entrepreneurship and Economic Empowerment)

Elisabeth holds an M.S. in Economics and an MBA from MIT. Prior to her MBA Elisabeth worked at the European Commission in the department of Trade, where she, among other things, analyzed the economic and legal eligibility of a non-EU country for the status of market economy.

Elisabeth is currently doing research on corporate governance in emerging economies. She is also volunteering with Harvard Business School non-profit organization The India School Fund focusing on breaking the cycle of poverty in rural Uttar Pradesh (India) by delivering high quality education. Elisabeth has been mentoring this year a team of MIT graduate students for the new D-Lab II ICT4Dev class, and is now leading the team to develop an innovative concept of a mobile platform for banking and microbusinesses for the rural poor in India and China. She defended the idea at the final round of the Stanford Social eChallenge competition.

Esmeralda Megally (Advisor, Entrepreneurship and Economic Empowerment)

Esmeralda recently obtained her MBA from MIT Sloan, where she mainly focused on Finance and Entrepreneurship. She also holds an M.S. in Economics and a huge interest for disruptive technologies for the next billion. During her studies she served as co-president of the Sloan Entrepreneurs for International Development (SEID), a position which allowed her to advise MIT social inventors on their business strategies. Esmeralda is also a founder at Aerovax, a startup that is developing a low-cost drug and vaccine delivery device for low-income settings. The invention, which was featured in Forbes.com, received the Award for International Technology at the MIT IDEAS competition in 2006 and was finalist at the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship competition in 2006.

Esmeralda currently holds an associate position at Commons Capital, a Boston-based venture capital firm to help launch a $100 million for-profit venture fund focused on Global Health. The firm received a seed grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help pioneer this new VC model.

Teaching Assistants

Luis Blackaller (Creative Advisor, Media Producer)

Luis Blackaller is an artist from Mexico City with an interest in culture, technology and media. He graduated with honors as a Mathematician in the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He has worked as a Designer, Art Director and Motion Graphics Artist in the Mexican film industry for 10 years. He recently graduated as a Master of Science in the MIT Media Lab under the mentorship of John Maeda, where he explored online creative social systems and their relationship with artistic expression and communication.

Jen-Hao (Paul) Yang (Teaching Assistant)

Jen-Hao Yang is a Master student at System Design and Management program. He is interested in mobile technology, system architecture and entrepreneurship, and his research at MIT is related to location-based service. Before coming to MIT, he worked as a Principal Engineer at Alcatel Corporation for six years. Paul acted as System Architect to design innovative fixed, mobile, and data services over GSM, 3G, NGN, and IMS network. He also led a team for service development, integration, and technical support.

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