1

Enabling factors for local research and

innovation

Lucy MACHARIA1, Moses SITATI

2, Nancy MWAKABA

3, Pauline GITHINJI

4, Brian

OMWENGA5, Mokeira MASITA-MWANGI

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Nokia Research Centre, Nairobi, P.O.Box 29-00502, Kenya

Tel: +254 20 3862243/4/5/7, Fax +254 20 386 2248 1Email: lucy.macharia@nokia.com 2Email: moses.sitati@nokia.com

3Email: ext-nancy.mwakaba@nokia.com

4 Email: pauline.githinji@nokia.com

5Email: brian.omwenga@nokia.com

6Email: 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 Nairobi’s 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 region’s GDP and employs over 5 million people [2].

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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 Africa’s varied cultures, languages, lifestyles

and even commonly owned devices - ‘African solutions’ to the continent’s 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 lab’s 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 socio-

cultural 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.

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)

III. Piloting/field trialing and

further development

II. Concept design and

prototyping based on

research findings

I. Intensive field research in and

with the users in the local

communities

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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.

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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 cross-

functional 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.

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 don’t charge callers for placing a missed call was a popular

Figure 1: The Agile development process

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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

receiver’s 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

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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 caller’s 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 Nokia’s 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 receiver’s device in the sender’s 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

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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

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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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