Clayton Benjamin Final Recommendations May 5, 2010 Project Overview: We partnered with PACT and First Step Initiative

to design an SMS messaging system that would disseminate information to rural farmers and miners in the Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The DRC has many displaced people, a low literacy rate, and people who work long hours for little reward. The information we can provide to them would help assure fair prices for the goods they grow and mine and hopefully a better standard of living. Our partners in the project are already active in the DRC. PACT is non-profit that works with impoverished persons. Their goal is to teach skills and leave frameworks for people to help pull themselves out of poverty. First Step Initiative is a non-profit as well that works with small lending circles in the DRC to create cooperative farming and small businesses. They emphasize creating businesses that rely upon banks and where people work cooperatively to raise profits. By partnering with these two non-profits, we were able to gain information about the needs of the people in the DRC. Additionally, we were given second-hand accounts and live information from the DRC. Throughout the semester, this project has been a rollercoaster of exploring information design and principles. First we started by brainstorming a system that would work through SMS text messaging to give information to artisanal miners and rural farmers in the Katanga province in the DRC. We came up with several categories of information, including: pricing, emergency, educational, health, and farming and mining information. To simplify our plan, we decided to focus our semester on creating an information design that would relate pricing information to our users. The users in our case are the PACT miners and First Step Initiative farmers in the Katanga province. Though this sounds like a fairly easy project to create, it wasnt. As we explored problem statements and scenarios through our information design, we began to see a lot of issues floating to the surface. In any design process, the key is to unlock the users needs and to design around those needs. From there, you can build an effective system. The system we created was based upon our assumptions of the needs of those in the Katanga province with the help of Francois, a PACT worker. Francois emphasized that workers needed pricing information. From this assumption, we decided to focus this semester solely on creating the pricing information. Once we had our focus, we needed to come up with the architecture for the information. It needed to include the SMS system, and the also the syntax of the language to be used. While brainstorming, we thought it would be a good idea to use the text messaging like a Twitter function. We could deliver/push information to our users, but also allow them the ability to report userClayton Benjamin 1

generated data back to us. We hoped to collect from each farmer/miner how much money they were selling their goods for and in turn share that information with all the users subscribed to the system. Additionally, we thought globally about the information we would release in the future. We wanted to create a system that was open to subscription and channel feeds. For example, if a user solely wanted pricing information, they would only subscribe to the pricing feed, but if they wanted additional information, they would subscribe to an additional feed, such as farming information. We took into account that users would not have a lot of money to spend to text us information. Therefore, we decided it would be best to have the users send an initial text to start receiving the information. From there, we would require them to send us their seller-pricing information once per week. Once we created a wireframe of the system, we started to build our personas, problem statements and scenarios. By doing this type of theoretical investigation, we were able to highlight many important design flaws and elements, which needed further investigation. These problems included ethical dilemmas, design issues, and societal problems. Problems: We uncovered many problems with our scenarios. The problems we paid attention to most were problems with technology, false information, literacy, and business models. Technological: There are obvious technical restraints to the SMS system. First the system relies only on text messaging. Text messages allow for 164 characters. There is not a lot of information you can send in 164 characters. Therefore, we developed a simple syntax of commodity + price + location, and assumed that any information we gathered or sent would have an automatic time stamp. Furthermore, we assumed we could not send pictures or images through the SMS system. Another technological problem included finding a reliable internet connection in the DRC. We would need an office with a computer where a moderator could look up/receive daily stock information for goods our users would be trading. Francois has indicated that PACT could supply such an office. Trust: One substantial problem we investigated was that of trusting users to appropriately use the system. We came up with several scenarios where people may send in false user-generated content for personal gain. Additionally, we werent sure who we should collect information from. Our initial intent was to have users send in the price of the goods they sold. After contacting Francois in the DRC, he told us that it would be better to retrieve that information from the buyers. There are problems with both these scenarios. First, if we receive information from the sellers (farmers and Clayton Benjamin 2

miners) they may misreport their prices to inflate the market, and then sell their own goods at a lower price and receive more profits. Additionally, if we collected information from the buyers, the buyers might under-report the price they bought goods for to drive down the market. In both scenarios there is a huge reliance upon trusting who we give access to the system and who we do not. How will the rules of the system be enforced for those are given access? Currently we do not have a system that can rely on the usergenerated content for two reasons. First, we would need to trust the information is reliable and second we would have to rely upon people actually reporting the information.

Francois Proposed System:

Literacy: Another issue we came across with the system is in regards to the literacy rate in the DRC. Education in the Democratic Republic of Congo is not mandatory and is not free. Because of the economic situation, many parents cannot afford to send their children to school. Families are expected to pay for books, supplies and the salaries of their childrens teachers. To complicate matters more, according to the CIA Wold Factbook, women have a fertility rate of 6.2/women. Large amounts of children expand the number of dependents in the family and families do not have enough money to spend to send each child to school. Furthermore, there is an estimated 1.2 million internally displaced people in the DRC with no recourse for finances, Clayton Benjamin 3

lost property and with little job opportunity. Even for children who are in school, the education remains poor. There are a lack of qualified teachers, materials, financial support, and infrastructure. According to Nsomwe-aNfunkwa Banza, in the article Are Rural Schools of the Democratic Republic of Congo Ready for the $100 Laptop? 35 percent of enrolled primary students complete their primary education. Additionally, children do not gain basic skills; only 50 percent of students at the primary level can read or write. With little government oversight and a lack of governmental funding for education, the education parents pay for is less than adequate. Because of a lower education rate, the DRC experiences an unusually high rate of illiteracy. An essential part of education is mastering grammar and language skills. The CIA World Factbook lists DRCs literacy rate at 67.2 percent of the population. Women of the Congo have an estimated literacy rate of 54.1 percent. Additionally, there is a preference to teach French in Congolese schools, not the national language Swahili. Because of a lack of formal education in the language of Swahili, a SMS text based system and paper handouts could be design flaws. If users cannot read the information sent to them, they will not be able to interpret the messages. To combat this issue, we have devised a system that will be supplemented with paper-based handouts. By combining pictures of products with their word referents on the handouts they will help illiterate users to read the simple syntax we plan to use. Furthermore, to make the messages simpler to understand and to respond to, we could possibly give all the products a code. For example, in the handout below, corn could be referred to as 1. When we received a text message in it could be 1. + location where sold/bought + price. Proposed Paper Handout:

Product Number

Product Picture

Product Maize

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Copper

Cobalt

Business: By continuing our studies in scenario writing we discovered one large piece of missing information. We realized that we really did not understand the business of farming or of mining in the Congo. What are the models for the two different businesses? We ended up brainstorming questions for the miners and farms: Questions for Miners: How are the mines structured? Do individuals sell what they mine out to an administrator? Do they collectively mine and then earn a wage at the end of the day? Who benefits from selling the minerals? Is there a manager structure to the mines? If we delivered pricing information, who would benefit? Would it only be administrators if they exist, or would a trickle-down effect happen and the miners would all earn a better wage? Questions for the Farmers: Do they sell their crops in bundles? Are they selling to individuals or corporations? Do they sell to other markets/grocery outlets? Who is buying their goods? If we gave them all the same information, would they end up flooding one market over another? We concluded that before we could ensure that the individual miners and

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farmers could benefit from releasing pricing information, we would need to know more about their business practices. Another aspect of business model we questioned would be that of our own. How would we financially support the SMS system? Could we create a selfsustaining system? Arguably, we would need to create an office with an internet connection that could look up information from the global market and then relate it to the users. That office would need to be staffed by at least one moderator to collect the information and then disseminate it. Also, we would need to hire people to recruit users and train them to use the system. The only way this can work to become self-sustaining is by selling the information as a commodity through subscriptions. If we sell the information, then we will also need some sort of accounts and receivables department. Overall, to become financially independent, the system would require an office, a moderator, recruiters, and an accountant. Recommendations: By examining the problem statements and scenarios, we that issues with the system are not easily solved. For now, we recommend building the system and piloting it by offering it as a free service for receiving stock exchange information. Once we can provide that information, then we can survey and see if there is actually a demand for the information that we can supply. Furthermore, if we start with that information, it will serve as a base for adding additional information. There is a chance we could unroll the system like Hulu.com. First offer the information for free, then, after people rely on it, we could start a small charge once we add more and more information. At times creating the information architecture and design can be daunting, and it appears there many problems. However, it has helped to simplify the structure and look at one piece of the puzzle. By deconstructing the architecture to its simplest of forms, we have provided a system that is flexible to changing and additional information. Next semester, I believe it would be beneficial to start developing educational information on farming, mining and sanitation. By creating this type of information and preparing it to be added to the pricing information, it would give the information as commodity model a better appeal for subscription. In the educational material itself, I believe there are tough design issues to solve and would serve as a great learning experience. Design issues, like pricing would include problems such as literacy, user needs, and user centered design. Additionally, the educational material cannot be broken down into simple syntax. Instead, it must be contain enough information in a system of SMS packets (perhaps three to five consecutive messages). What should be included in that information? Also, what type of educational information will be offered? What are the categories that fit under education? Will the designers create tests and quizzes to send over SMS? Will the education materials include paper handouts? And, will users be able to text in a code to the system to automatically receive information that is important to them? Clayton Benjamin 6

All of these questions are great to start to begin to think about what the educational side of the system may look like, and will produce unique design challenges. References: Banza, Nsomewe-a-Nfunkwa. Are Rural Schools of the Democratic Republic of Congo Ready for the $100 Laptop? The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology. Oct. 2006. Central Intelligence Agency. The World Factbook. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cf.html. March 31, 2010. Fall, Babacar. ICT in Education in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Survey of ICT and Education in Africa: DR Congo Country Report. http://www.infodev.org/en/publication.395.html. March 31, 2010. First Step Initiative. http://firststepinitiative.net/Default.aspx. April 28, 2010. Gaestel, Allyn. Conflict in DRC Hinders Immediate Education Needs and Long-term Development Goals. Media Global: Voice of the Global South. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cf.html. March 31, 2010. Viso, Mark. Welcome From the President. http://www.pactworld.org/cs/who_we_are/welcome. April 28, 2010. Wikipedia. Education in the Democratic Republic of Congo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Democratic_Republic_of_the_Co ngo. March 31, 2010.

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