Reading Josh Porter’s book last year Designing for the Social Web I learned only 20% of the world’s population has access to the World Wide Web.

Put another way, take ten random friends from around the world and line them up with numbers 1-10 written on signs in front of them.

Then ask a friend to pick two numbers at random from 1-10. Let’s say they pick numbers 4 and 9. Have those friends step forward.

The remaining eight friends won’t be reading this blog post. Several of those people left in line are also illiterate with little to no access to educational resources for learning.

Adaptive Path has been doing some remarkable research in some of the poorest areas of India where illiteracy is the norm; resulting in the need to completely re-think the design of mobile devices.

An estimated 40% of India’s rural population is unable to read text or numeric information.

I was talking with Chris Palle today @chrispalle about next steps for me and how I would like to evolve the UX Workshop.

In the short term, I’d like to interview people new to our respective industries of IA, UX, IxD, and capture their ideas. After all, communities of practice can’t evolve if they don’t continue to look to those entering the industry.

Over the longer term, I would love to travel the world to do similar research that Adaptive Path has completed and then share those experiences as a presenter at conferences like UX Week and Idea.

MobilGlyph: Making Data Tangible from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.