Design of a mobile user interface and user interaction experience for semi-literate users in rural India

Design of a mobile user interface and user interaction experience for semi-literate users in rural India

Landre, C.M.

Kandachar, P.V. (mentor)
Parmar, V.S. (mentor)
Sengupta, S. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Industrial Design

2010-02-25

The introduction of interactive technology might help rural health care workers in doing their job. By replacing the current paper-based system of data collection, time can be saved and information can be used more effectively to tend to patients in the different villages. Because of its mobility, connectivity and low energy use, the mobile phone is a good product to use as a stepping stone for introducing technology to the Rural Health sector. This can be done, for example, by means of creating mobile user interfaces that will replace the notepad of the community health workers. However, the existing literacy rate and limited technology exposure of the community health worker may cause usability issues. Normal use of mobile phones requires different skills from the user, such as literacy, understanding of hierarchical menus, and appropriate cognitive models. It is not clear to which extent semi-literate users possess these skills and much remains unknown about how they respond to different UIs The current, paper based information collection system poses the following problems: • Loss and deformation of correct information • Loss of time • Overwhelming amount of paperwork. The proposed solution involves introducing mobile phone technology to the users which in turn poses its own problem: • Usability issues due to existing literacy rate and exposure to technology. By conducting context research and a usability test with an existing mobile application, the needs and goals of the users and other stakeholders could be investigated. Furthermore, a literature research was done to get a clear overview on related work and important information with regard to this subject. Also, an intermediary list of design guidelines for semi-literate users was derived by means of extracting these from various articles. By means of an iterative design process two user interface design ideas were developed and an experiential prototype was made. During a final user and product evaluation qualitative and quantitative data were collected and previously setup guidelines and requirements were evaluated. After a discussion on all the aspects such as UI components, usability, the intermediary guidelines and requirements conclusions could be drawn. Conclusions include statements with regard to the use of different UI components and usability. Finally a list of improved and more specific design guidelines has been made and some recommendation are made with regard to UI design, user evaluations and further research.

usability
mobile user interface
iterative design procses
context research
user evaluations

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:1917e9f7-943a-41b3-9437-53813921eb2b

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2010 Landre, C.M.