In brief: Moving on with another in the “best of” selection of executive interviews from the Netsize Guide 2010 we examine how innovation in user-centric design and user-centered services are improving lives and livelihoods in developing markets. Susan Dray, President, Dray & Associates, walks us through the real-life examples that set the bar.

Despite the excitement about the advance of the iPad and the avalanche of smartphone apps, the real innovation is in services that harness universal tools and technologies, such as text messaging and speech recognition, to reach (and empower) every person on the planet.

This is the message that came across loud and clear in this well-written analysis in the New York Times. To drive home this key point the article recounts how people in emerging and developing markets are using their simple mobile phones and SMS text – a language you could say is truly native to mobile devices – to improve their lives, conduct commerce, transfer money, record and share sermons and even oversee elections.

This mobile revolution has been hailed as the enabling force for emerging markets and developing countries to become more active participants in the global economy. Given the right tools and environment, people can harness mobile technology to leapfrog more developed countries, creating localized content and services that address local problems and issues, and ultimately close the digital divide.

Susan Dray, President, Dray & Associates, has worked as both an internal and external consultant, combining her expertise in interface evaluation, usability evaluation and ethnographic research to help develop solutions that increase benefits to people in emerging markets and the service providers that operate there. I caught up with her between trips to talk about the positive impact of mobile and the ways in which local communities are using mobile tools to achieve socioeconomic development goals.

INTERVIEW WITH SUSAN DRAY

Q: What is user-centered design (UCD) and what are the benefits, particularly in emerging countries and markets?

A: Much of the motivation guiding design and development of mobile technology today is ‘techno-centric.’ User-centered design (UCD) begins from a very different premise. If companies are to design products and services that will truly meet users’ needs, they have to start by gaining deep understanding of who their users are, and, most importantly, how the new product or service will fit into the cultural, social, technical, and physical contexts of the intended users’ lives. Localization – or fitting a product to the users and context of another country – is not simply a matter of translation, adapting the interface to fit local information display conventions, or visual design preferences that are different from those we are used to. We also need to understand how people work and live in other places, so that the localized product will fit into their lives. When we learn about this, we may decide that the very product concept has to change for localization to even be possible. It is very common that early user research in a variety of international markets results in new product concepts. This is equally true for mobiles as it is for PC-based applications.

Q: How has the market changed over the years?

A: In 2009 we saw a proliferation of people developing mobile phone content and services that fit their context because they finally have the tools to do it. Some of this driven by the advance of voice-activated services which are becoming ubiquitous and extend mobility to the functionally-illiterate in these regions.

But there is also a new wave of interest and excitement in SMS as more people design more applications that make use of text. Indeed, there is a groundswell of grassroots efforts around the globe to meet local needs with text services that are relevant to the lives of people and improve life in the community, particularly in areas where village residents share a mobile phone.

On one hand, it’s about education, healthcare and using mobile to help bring socio-economic stability and sustainability. On the other hand, it’s about progress and services such as mobile banking, where Africa leads the world because its people are under-banked and under-served. At both ends of the spectrum, it’s fascinating how incredibly creative scarcity can make people.

Q: From healthcare to banking, the mobile phone is at the center of this innovation. Can you provide some concrete examples?

A: Take Ushahidi, which means “testimony” in Swahili, a website that was initially developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Ushahidi’s roots are in the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists using their mobile phones to capture and report incidents during a time of crisis. This initial deployment was the catalyst for realizing there was a need for a platform based on it, which could be use by others around the world. It has since been used in the DR Congo and South Africa. In fact, I was in South Africa during the xenophobic riots where Ushahidi was used to map the incidents of violence. It’s an exciting project with obvious benefits that continues to grow in scope and impact.

Another example is Souktel, an SMS service based in the Middle East and East Africa, which uses text to connect users to everything from jobs and internships to humanitarian aid and youth leadership programs. Job seekers can register via SMS with Souktel, and then, through a series of text messages, enter details about themselves into the system. Whenever the job seeker is looking for a job, they can text ‘match me’ to Souktel to receive an instant list of jobs that matches the resume stored in the system. The service also helps connect humanitarian agencies with people who are looking for aid.

And let’s not forget how mobile is improving healthcare awareness and treatment. In India IFFCO, a service provided by a fertilizer cooperative with over one million members, provides rural Indian farmers voice messages and regular updates about crop and veterinary information and empower them through technology. The voice messages are in local languages, so they are accessible even to illiterate farmers or those who don’t speak English and who can’t read text messages.

In South Africa an impressive project is Cell-Life, which uses mobile phones in the hands of rural HIV/AIDS workers to monitor patient health and reactions to AVRs. The HIV Aids rate in South Africa is over 30 percent of the population, so services that allow healthcare workers to collect symptoms from patients and text those back to the doctor or pharmacist ensure that the right treatment and dosage is given. And in Malawi, UNICEF has been using cell phones to monitor children for signs of malnutrition using the RapidSMS system that allows UNICEF can rapidly move into areas where malnutrition appears to be imminent.

Q: These are some amazing success stories. What will ensure that there are more to come?

A: I am optimistic because I see signs that companies understand they can not just export their ideas to an emerging market or country. It’s about understanding the people and their environment, and the more companies internalize this the more they are going to be able to mail it with an application that, like Cell-Life, is ethnographically-driven at its core.

Q: What are some key learnings or lessons you can offer?

A: Mobile companies have to think locally and tailor services to the local environment. So, developing a basic toolkit and being able to tweak it is important. We also need to do more to educate people in different parts of the world so they can take these basic ideas and services and make them their own, using them to design new technology, new applications and spread brilliant ideas like m-banking. Mobile banking came out of nowhere and now it is everywhere [in the developing world] because it fits the local environment and understands the needs of local people.

The success of mobile in the developing world is linked to the commitment of companies to understand local needs, and translate it into usable and affordable product. The impact of these innovations will be global, providing benefit to all people. Some companies are retrenching due to the recession, but I am hopeful that these companies will soon realize that – if they really want to have impact – they must have a grasp of the local situation. Nokia and Intel, for example, are companies that understand the importance of local perspective in the creation of mobile technology and services. They also understand that the central position of mobile – the only screen for users in these regions – influences the kind of chipsets and services we will likely need for all mobile phones, in these regions and – ultimately – around the world.

THE NETSIZE GUIDE

The Netsize Guide – which features exclusive interviews with 28 industry senior executives at leading companies and organizations including Havas, M&S, MMA, Nokia NAVTEQ, PayPal and Sony Music Entertainment — provides unique perspectives and reveals how players across the mobile ecosystem are preparing to meet the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities ahead.

The Netsize Guide 2010 also includes the results of Mobile Trends Survey 2010, an online survey asking +1,000 mobile professionals and practitioners across 67 countries their views on these key themes and their insights into trends that top the industry agenda, including the advance of mobile applications stores, progress towards global mobile commerce and the increasing importance of mobile across a range of business verticals.

Finally, the Netsize Guide 2010 presents detailed data on the wireless telecoms sector in 41 countries, including revenues, market shares and value-added service offerings for messaging and billing of 194 mobile network operators worldwide.

Disclaimer: Netsize is an MSG supporter. Peggy Anne Salz is author of the Netsize Guide 2010 and has been commissioned to write the Netsize Guide 2011.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 26th, 2010 at 1:47 pm and is filed under Mobile Research, Netsize Guide, Usability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.