Enabling factors for local research and innovation

Lucy MACHARIA1, Moses SITATI2, Nancy MWAKABA3, Pauline GITHINJI4, Brian OMWENGA5, Mokeira MASITA-MWANGI6 Nokia Research Centre, Nairobi, P.O.Box 29-00502, Kenya Tel: +254 20 3862243/4/5/7, Fax +254 20 386 2248 1 Email: lucy.macharia@nokia.com 2 Email: moses.sitati@nokia.com 3 Email: ext-nancy.mwakaba@nokia.com 4 Email: pauline.githinji@nokia.com 5 Email: brian.omwenga@nokia.com 6 Email: Mokeira.masita-mwangi@nokia.com
Abstract: This paper discusses the method and challenges in the approach to research at Nokia Research Center Nairobi as well as the ecosystem building required to get services and products out to market that can be of benefit to the community. It gives recommendations and suggestions towards research approaches for delivering research results to communities. It provides a comprehensive overview of NRC Nairobis way of working and aims of the lab through a case study of a recent research project on the youth. We highlight the findings from the study and related community needs which were the motivation for two technological concepts: Buzzenger and Voice Echo. We detail the design and ideation process and provide illustration of the technology solutions that were proposed to meet the community needs as per the research findings. The paper also discusses user testing and validation of the concepts and resultant version changes to the design as well as business benefits in terms of opportunities and challenges from proposed business uses of these technologies marketization and monetization. In conclusion we compare the final products to initial research goals and outline the research lessons learned in terms of the entire building process and as a result make recommendations on a framework for more effective research work based on our experiences. Keywords: qualitative research, user centred design, usability, growth economies, youth livelihoods, content sharing, agile development, living labs

1. Introduction
The increasing role of mobile-related Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the transformation of emerging economies is well recognized although some debate persists on how to measure this contribution [1,2]. African governments have made ICT policies a fundamental pillar in fostering their countries growths [3,7]. These investments coupled with increased competition amongst Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) have led to greater affordability and wider access in countries like Kenya [5]. Africa has risen to be the second largest mobile market in the world after Asia with over 600 million mobile connections as of September 2011 [2]. The mobile industry in Africa is estimated to contribute 3.5% of the regions GDP and employs over 5 million people [2]. 1

This growth of the mobile ICT industry has encouraged development of innovative mobile solutions in various sectors including education, health, agriculture, governance, commerce and banking [1, 8] with software applications (apps) being developed to meet observed needs [6, 9]. Further, these solutions have been built to fit Africas varied cultures, languages, lifestyles and even commonly owned devices - African solutions to the continents unique circumstances that need to be researched and understood. The methods in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research are continually being adapted to suit use in mobile technology research - qualitative methods and user studies, design and iterative prototyping and evaluation [9,11]. Covering the larger social issues as well as specific technical questions the scope of HCI has grown into the research area of HCI for development [9] requiring multidisciplinary teams to address the technical, societal and individual concerns [10]. ICT for Development (ICT4D) is a related term that has been used in recent years to describe how technologies can contribute to the socio-economic development. We will not debate on the commonalities and different nuances of ICT4D and HCI in development (HCI4D) in this paper but merely introduce the two terms as a backdrop to our work in the field of mobile technology. In this paper we present our approach to research in Africa in the context of a dynamic culture and environment to transform findings into relevant innovations.

2. Methodology
Nokia Research Centre (NRC) Nairobi studies users in low income communities in Africa. The end goal of the labs research projects is development of mobile solutions that are best suited to the needs of African users and that can spark and accelerate the growth of the grassroots economies. The solutions are also designed to achieve economic and sociocultural sustainability by ensuring that devices through which these solutions are made available are: affordable as are the solutions themselves; solutions are benefitting and/or profitable to both users and Nokia; and are locally relevant i.e. drive the local content for local needs ideology.
I. Intensive field research in and with the users in the local communities II. Concept design and prototyping based on research findings III. Piloting/field trialing and further development

Figure 1: The NRC research process

A multidisciplinary team (social scientists, computer scientists/developers, development economists/business analysts, usability experts and user experience designers) is core to this process that requires varied expertise for the different stages. In addition, NRC fosters relevant local partnerships on a project to project basis with local universities, NGOs and other grassroots organizations. 2.1 The Young Africa/GENUINE Research Project The combined Young Africa and Growth Economies New User Interface (GENUINE) projects are used to illustrate the design and development of two mobile solutions further discussed below. Youth between the ages of 18 and 25 in rural and urban settings of 6 representative Sub Saharan African (SSA) countries were studied given that they are an integral part of the future socio-economic development in the region and have the potential to be the drivers of this, given their numbers (44% of population is under15yrs in SSA) 2

The overall goal of Young Africa was to understand in-depth what being an African youth is all about; map out the various challenges and opportunities in terms of education, employment and entertainment. The study was an ethnographic one conducted through qualitative techniques namely group discussions, in-depth interviews, ethnographic immersions and participatory youth scouts. The GENUINE study on the other hand sought to create and pilot new user interface (UI) concepts for rich content (mobile Internet, music, maps, messaging, payments, etc) on low cost mobile devices in Growth Economies. The GENUINE study was done alongside the ethnographic Young Africa study. Youth were engaged through focus group discussions of about 3 to 5 participants. In total approximately 100 youth participated in the study. The topics covered included: Communication (frequency, forms, social norms and expectations); Media - Internet, Radio, Music, Movies (exposure, uses, consumption patterns, sources); Leisure, Work, Wealth (activities, norms, expectations, preferences); Friends and Problem Solving ( definitions, interactions, social rules); Information needs (type, source, need); Personal preferences (personal identity, desires, likes/dislikes, mobile phone use, Internet use). Prior to the main Young Africa and GENUINE studies an initial pre-study was done to inform the design and implementation of the main studies. It covered desk research and gathering of real time youth insights in five countries - Kenya, South Africa, Botswana, Nigeria, Ghana and Angola providing information about youth culture hence unearthing relevant insights and dynamics pertaining to the youth segment (16-30yrs, Male and Female) and their interaction with various elements that influence youth culture.

3. Technology Description
In this section, we first present relevant research findings from the above mentioned study and then present two mobile software solutions addressing these findings as well as the process and approach used to develop them. 3.1 Background: Relevant Research Insights It was observed that there was a need to address the issue of low literacy through a redesign of apps. Various technology services and features could not be used due to inability of users to understand the language or metaphors being used to present them. Another opportunity was in the incorporation of the ability to share content such as Internet pages, media, games and general life with others. Sharing (especially for media) was observed to be a common phenomenon, whether by circumstances, for fun/enjoyment or preference. Many African communities have a social backbone that embraces fellowship and sharing. This can be supported by enabling new sharing interactions between individuals or groups via several channels according to the need. Related to this was the area of enabling natural communication by tapping into the natural local communication styles gestures, languages, self-expression, and emotions. The communities studied are richly expressive, using multiple levels of communication to get across meanings, messages, inferences, etc. Overall, cost constraints set the context for these observations as communication patterns methods selected were seen to revolve around the recipient, cost, time and distance. With this in mind, ideation sessions explored new UI designs taking into account the different levels of literacy in the communities to propose equally usable tools that can be used by non-technology oriented users with little or no experience in graphical user interfaces and menu navigation.

3.2 Software Development Methodology In developing solutions, functional requirements of a concept those that describe a need or desire for which there is an information system solution are the primary focus of the engineering team. The non-functional requirements, which may include items such as usability, interface design, business requirements, etc. are also identified and passed on to the other teams within the lab. The entire team conducts a series of brainstorming workshops that include members from the various teams. This approach provides multi-dimensional input and ownership to each project while helping to maintain a clear vision on the purpose of the project by avoiding scope creep through consistent communication. This process of concept specification and refinement results in a list of application use cases and system architecture which then inform the concept specification document that acts as the blueprint for each project. NRC Nairobi employs the agile software development methodology which has been identified as an effective method in software projects involving self-organizing and crossfunctional teams [13]. It promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development and delivery, a time-boxed iterative approach, and encourages rapid and flexible responses to change. Further justifications for the choice of agile methodology are the several collaborative agreements and software development partners who can also be engaged in the development process. A notable partnership exists between NRC and the University of Nairobi School of Computing and Informatics. Through this collaboration, NRC informs and develops applications together with students and faculty of the Computer Science Department. Figure 1: The Agile development process Agile favours an incremental software development approach incorporating prototyping and rapid development. Iterative prototyping builds a cut down, simpler version of an application at the first stage, with the intention of clarifying the requirements and the specification. In this way it is easier to address the uncertainty about the requirements. Most of the first prototypes and mockups go through focus group testing by our usability team in our lab. This is followed by creating increasingly functional versions of a system in short development cycles. The process is repeated until all functionality has been developed to the concept specification and backlog satisfaction. 3.3 Resultant Projects The two concepts below were developed through this process based on the above research findings. They were developed in collaboration with University of Nairobi Computer Science students. From the observed need to tap into local communication styles and obey cost constraints it was seen that flashing or beeping (that is, messaging through missed calls), because service providers dont charge callers for placing a missed call was a popular 4

practice. Based on this, our team set out to develop a practical, free, mobile phone based implementation of the asynchronous missed-call messaging duration interpretation or Buzzenger. The project involved developing a client application that runs on the sender and receivers phone. The primary modules were the transportation module that interpreted missed call durations as well as performing checksums; the durations were then relayed to an interpretation/parser module connected to a database that would map the durations to pre-defined messages/data. Finally, there was a presentation layer that acted as the user interface for composing and receiving messages. Our project focused on developing a simple software application that could relay messages accurately from one node to another by purely sending missed calls of varying durations. More than a simple proof of concept, the project also offered a good foundation to consideration of duration encoded messaging for other small data messaging systems and structured messaging that may be useful in further ICT4D settings. The second concept labelled Voice Echo was an enhanced mobile phonebook especially targeted to non-literate members of society. Voice Echo sought to solve the literacy problem by associating short voice signatures to phonebook contacts to facilitate their easier identification without the need to read a name or number.

4.0 Developments
Following the agile development method, an inclusive design process was followed to validate the ideas with the target users. Validation of the Buzzenger concept pursued the following objectives: To find out the place that beeping or flashing has in the lives of users; to find out the various meanings attached to beeps; to find out the conditions in which people use beeps; to find out if people use pre-defined codes when communicating amongst themselves. This was done with students from the University of Nairobi as the main respondents. Students were furnished with a flash demo of the concept and were given time to interact with the demo. A focus group discussion was then held with the discussion being guided by the test objectives. It was validated that beeps were commonly used among the youth as a coded language through the frequency and timing of beeps. This form of communication has unique benefits, most rewarding being that it is free. For this concept to be successful among the youth, it was found that it was necessary that it be as swift if not swifter than sending short coded text messages already in use by the youth for swift and discrete communication. Further, it was found that two unique use cases would greatly enhance the experience and usability of the concept. In the first use case a user would be able to send a normal text message which would then arrive at the destination in the form of beeps that would represent a comprehensible message to the recipient. In the second use case, where a sender beeped e.g. in the instance where the sender did not have the airtime to send text messages then the beeps could be translated into coded text messages or emoticons and would subsequently be saved on the receiving device as normal messages. The validation process of the Voice Echo concept followed the same format as the first concept and sought to establish the following: What helps users to identify and recognize contacts in their phone book; what additional information users would require for easier identification of contacts. In addition to a flash demo, respondents were engaged in a brief exercise to determine and further observe their task process in a natural setting or environment. With the usage of the demo, we were able to establish that users have very specific preferences when using an application of this type. The preferences were specific 5

to their desired experience with the phone book as well as the call application. For example, the users want to be able to decide when to start recording the callers voice. However, they preferred that the recording stops automatically after a predefined talk time. To make it even more relevant, it was desirable that the application provided the option of playing the voice tag when the user found a missed call. Further to this, the users expressed strong preference to not having the voice tags play as they scrolled through the phone book. It was not only annoying but distracted the user from the primary task of finding a contact. To have a feel of control over the application, users expressed the need to have the option to disable the voice tags at will, as well as being able to define the recording settings at any other time, as opposed to when the application first loads.

5.0 Business Benefits

The main value proposition for the Buzzenger feature was seen to be: Free messaging and chatting for cost-contrained consumers through the missed calling phenomenon; allowing groups of friends to build on code language and signals that are only known to them and used amongst them as a formal means of communication. The main business opportunity envisaged for this feature was for emergency messaging in cases where a user has no credit available to make the required call. Noting that internationally used emergency service contacts such as 911 or 112 are not used in most emerging economies, the application may be developed with a set of SOS message templates (e.g. Ambulance required, Community Attack, Flooding, etc) and pre-linked to these emergency services. In such a case, direct monetization is not immediately possible and the feature may ultimately be viewed as a social good (with potentially significant impact) rather than a profitable business opportunity. The Voice Echo application offered a number of opportunities that could be leveraged for business benefits. The first is in the area of Software and Applications where the Voice Echo feature may be developed as a software feature and built into e.g. low end phones as an easy to use interface for interacting with the mobile device. Such a feature would be an important differentiator among other similarly priced handsets for prospective low-literacy customers. Secondly, a Voice Echo mobile application that can be cheaply offered for purchase and download from a mobile app store to GPRS enabled handsets for entertainment or utility purposes. Such apps allow owners of Internet enabled phones to obtain additional services and features which provide Nokia with a channel for continued engagement with the customer as well and delivery of value. Such a relationship is vital for brand building and customer loyalty in a competitive environment such as the mobile industry in Africa and where Voice Echo can improve on perceptions of Nokias brand quality and brand affect. Lastly, the technology provides a rich exploration ground for patent licensing and further research where ground-breaking research findings in this area can be used for competitive differentiation for Nokia or for royalties through licensing of these patents. An example here is the building of a personalized text-to-speech system that allows cross-language communication e.g. a text message sent in Swahili is read out in French on the receivers device in the senders voice.

6.0 Results
The results in this section are discussed in the context of the NRC research process presented in section 2.0. The field research phase: Firstly, for each research project the team is open to new experiences and learnings that serve to inform future work. We benefited greatly from our initial desk study of other reports that had already been done based on youth in Africa. This 6

allowed us avoid duplication and to narrow our focus to gap areas and specific questions that had not been addressed. Secondly, going to foreign countries to do research both in urban and rural settings required a pussyfoot approach. In each country we recruited coordinators and stayed in the background while making sure that they remained true to the task. This was both beneficial and limiting to us - inarguably beneficial in terms of better local knowledge to guide us in terms of norms, language, security amongst other factors; and limiting because this was the first time we were working with these researchers (sourced through personal networks) whose work ethic sometimes affected the fieldwork e.g. due to the lack of preparation in one case and lack of integrity in another. In the concept design and prototyping phase we observed that the research topics we started off with were large in scope. For feasibility and to minimize technical complexity the emerging concept ideas could only target a small part of the research problem observed. This limited the transformative impact of the emerging solutions. It was also not always possible to technically implement some of the proposed solutions owing to technical limitations leading to dropping off of these promising ideas. The collaborative software creation model that we adopted with external partners also presented various challenges including schedule adjustments e.g. to accommodate the students coursework or training for Nokia specific software development and user interface design. A positive result was that this co-creation resulted in new knowledge creation where the students enriched the ideas by building them up with their own creativity and insights. In the piloting and further trialing phase, the Buzzenger concept emerges as an example of a technology solution conceptualized to meet an expressed user need (cheap/free communication) and yet which is challenging to pilot/monetize. For example, enabling free communication through missed calling is a notion that Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) would certainly challenge as it would deny them the opportunity to make money while increasing non-productive network traffic. A mobile device manufacturer may promote such a service to prospective customers but the effective implementation of such a concept would require extensive negotiation and buy-in from MNOs and possibly security agencies of governments that are interested in monitoring citizen communication. As a result, the emergency use case that emerged for the Buzzenger concept was one with promising social impact that was not originally intended in the original concept intention. The iterative design process was informative and successful for both concepts and yielded numerous user contributions for concept improvement.

7.0 Conclusions
Based on the research process for this project, we draw the following recommendations for researchers in this field. It would be beneficial for researchers in Africa to form close networks to aid knowledge sharing and simplify collaboration e.g. having a network of validated researchers. Different and agile research approaches that enable fast and low-cost grassroots studies should also be explored e.g. through partnerships with research bodies, use of local informants with eyes/ears on the ground, and rapid research investigations on narrow topics with continual insights from the community contributed over the concept development phase. With the proposed solutions often being stand-alone ideas yet targeted at complex socio-economic situations. The desired impact of these proposals is limited without adequate supportive structures. Spaces for open innovation and co-creation where concepts can be merged vertically and horizontally to create system wide solutions for greater impact can enable this to happen for instance by including partners from the research/academia, private sector, public and non-profit sectors. Such stakeholder partnership groups can 7

identify their respective wins and absorb and breakdown complex proposals sharing tasks and resources in the joint creation process. Lastly, we advocate for adoption and expansion of the principles of agile development into the research process for local innovation. If well understood by other stakeholders besides software developers, such an evolutionary and iterative approach will strengthen the local suitability of solutions and smoothen efficiency in their creation.

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