A comparison of mobile money-transfer UIs for non-literate and semi-literate users

ABSTRACT

Due to the increasing penetration of mobile phones even into poor communities, mobile payment schemes could bring formal financial services to the "unbanked". However, because poverty for the most part also correlates with low levels of formal education, there are questions as to whether electronic access to complex financial services is enough to bridge the gap, and if so, what sort of UI is best.

In this paper, we present two studies that provide preliminary answers to these questions. We first investigated the usability of existing mobile payment services, through an ethnographic study involving 90 subjects in India, Kenya, the Philippines and South Africa. This was followed by a usability study with another 58 subjects in India, in which we compared non-literate and semi-literate subjects on three systems: text-based, spoken dialog (without text), and rich multimedia (also without text). Results confirm that non-text designs are strongly preferred over text-based designs and that while task-completion rates are better for the rich multimedia UI, speed is faster and less assistance is required on the spoken-dialog system.

References

1. EKO: http://www.eko.co.in/pilot.html
2. Equity Bank : http://www.equitybank.co.ke/
3. M-PESA: http://www.safaricom.co.ke/index.php?id=228
4. GCASH: http://www.GCash.com.ph/
5. GSMA Development Fund: http://www.gsmworld.com/developmentfund/report_top20_form.shtml
6. ITU ICT Eye. http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/icteye/Reporting/ShowReportFrame.aspx?ReportName=/WTI/CellularSubscribersPublic&RP_intYear=2007&RP_intLanguageID=1
7. WIZZIT: http://www.WIZZIT.co.za/
8. Abadzi, H. Improving Adult Literacy Outcomes: Lessons from Cognitive Research for Developing Countries. World Bank, 2003.
9. Boyera, S. The Mobile Web to Bridge the Digital Divide? Paper presented at the IST-Africa Conference 2007, Maputo, Mozambique, (2007).
10. Chipchase, J. Literacy, Communication, and Design. Paper presented at the UIAH, (2006).
11. Chipchase, J., Persson, P., Piippo, P., Aarras, M.,&Yamamoto, T. Mobile essentials: field study and concepting. Proc. Designing for User eXperience Conference, San Francisco, USA, (2005).
12. Chipchase, J. (2005). Understanding Non-Literacy as a Barrier to Mobile Phone Communication. Retrieved September 16, 2008, from http://research.nokia.com/bluesky/non-literacy-001-2005/index.html
13. Cooper, A. and Reimann, R. About Face 2.0, The Essentials of Interaction Design. Wiley Publishing Inc. USA, 2003.
14. Donner, J., and Tellez, Camilo A. (in press). Mobile banking and economic development: Linking adoption, impact, and use. Asian Journal of Communication 18(4), (2008).
15. Donner, J. Research Approaches to Mobile Use in the Developing World: A Review of the Literature. The Information Society 24(3), (2008).
16. Grisedale, S., Graves, M and Grünsteidl, A. Designing a graphical user interface for healthcare workers in rural India, Proc. SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, Atlanta, USA, (1997), 471--478.
17. Havelock, E. A. Prologue to Greek Literacy. Cincinnati: University of Cincinnati Press, 1971.
18. Huenerfauth, M. Developing design recommendations for computer interfaces accessible to illiterate users. Master's thesis, University College Dublin, (2002).
19. Ivatury, G. Harnessing technology to transform financial services for the poor. Small Enterprise Development 15 (4), (2004), 25--30.
20. Jones, M., Buchanan, G., Thimbleby, H., and Marsden, G. User interfaces for mobile web devices www9 mobile workshop position paper. Proc. 9th International World Wide Web Conference, (2000).
21. Lehrman, S. Dialing in. Mobile phones target the world's nonreading poor. Scientific American, 296(5), (2007), 30--31.
22. Medhi, I. and Toyama, K. Full-Context Videos for First-Time, Non-Literate PC Users. IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development, Bangalore, India, (2007).
23. Medhi, I., Prasad, A. and Toyama K. Optimal audio-visual representations for illiterate users. International World Wide Web Conference, Canada, (2007), 873--882.
24. Medhi, I., Sagar A., and Toyama K. Text-Free User Interfaces for Illiterate and Semi-Literate Users. International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development, Berkeley, USA, (2006).
25. Medhi, I.,&Ratan, A. L. Usability test of -bank's biometric-ATM prototype: an evaluation Microsoft Research India. (2006).
26. Parikh, T., Javid, P., Sasikumar, K., Ghosh, K., and Toyama, K. Mobile Phones and Paper Documents: Evaluating a New Approach for Capturing Microfinance Data in Rural India, ACM Conference on Computer-Human Interaction (CHI), Montreal, Canada, (2006).
27. Parikh, T. Ghosh K. and Chavan, A. Design Considerations for a Financial Management System for Rural, Semi-literate Users. ACM Conference on Computer Human Interactio, Florida, USA, (2003).
28. Parikh, T. Ghosh K. and Chavan, A. Design Studies for a Financial Management System for Micro-credit Groups in Rural India. ACM Conference on Universal Usability, Vancouver, Canada, (2003).
29. Plauche, M., Prabaker, M., Text-Free User Interfaces, Working Papers in ACM Conference on Computer Human Interaction, Montreal, Canada, (2006).
30. Porteous, D. The enabling environment for mobile banking in Africa. London: DFID. (2006).
31. Ratan. A. L. and Medhi, I. Eko report: an evaluation. Microsoft Research Technical Report. (2008)
32. Ratan. A. L. Using technology to deliver financial services to low-income households: A preliminary study of Equity Bank and M-PESA customers in Kenya. Microsoft Research Technical Report. (2008)
33. Sherwani, J., Ali, N., Mirza, S., Fatma, A., Memon, Y., Karim, M., Tongia, R., Rosenfeld., R. HealthLine: Speech-based Access to Health Information by Low-literate Users. Proc. IEEE/ACM Int'l Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development, Bangalore, India, (2007).
34. Singh, S. The Digital Packaging of Electronic Money. In N. Aykin (Ed.), Usability and Internationalization. Global and Local User Interfaces, New York: Springer, (2007), 469--475.
35. Thatcher, A., Mahlangu, S.,&Zimmerman, C. Accessibility of ATMs for the functionally illiterate through icon-based interfaces Behaviour&Information Technology, 25(1), (2006), 65--81.
36. Thatcher, A., Shaik, F. and Zimmerman, C. Attitudes of semi-literate and literate bank account holders to the use of automatic teller machines (ATMs). International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, 35, (2005), 15--30.
37. UNCTAD, Information Economy Report 2007-2008: Science and Technology for Development - The New Paradigm of ICT, Geneva: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2008.
38. Walton, M., Vukovic', V. and Marsden, G. 'Visual literacy' as challenge to the internationalisation of interfaces: a study of South African student web users, CHI '02 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, Minneapolis, USA, (2002).
39. Warschauer, M. Demystifying the Digital Divide. Scientific American 289, no. 2 (April), (2003) 42--48.

Index Terms

• Human-centered computing

  • Human computer interaction (HCI)