User Experience for a Better World
Providing a new user experience for millions of small enterprises
Massive user experience potential exists long-term with huge numbers of users that aren't even 'experiencing' technology at the moment.
The so-called 'bottom of the pyramid' traders seldom use technology in their day-to-day lives, and this is why solving their needs holds so much opportunity for the User Experience industry. Whilst their business tools might currently be no more than a pocket book, pen and phone; the success of future digital products will need to be as simple.
An increased use of technology is thought to be crucial to ensure their rising living standards, and to compete in the marketplace. Information can make a big difference with making decisions, lowering transaction costs and selling.
Mobile solutions with excellent user experience will give hope to the ‘bottom of the pyramid’, benefiting farming, transport and banking.
LIRNEasia is a regional ICT policy and regulation think tank, feel there is a need to address the agricultural sector in South Asia which makes up a large share of the labour pool but a low share of GDP. Sriganesh Lokanathan is a senior research manager at LIRNEasia who is concerned that "You have highly inefficient agricultural markets with a large information disparity".
Although ICTs cannot solve all problems, (land reform probably being a major hurdle), things like categorising the decision-making process and information value, can help enormously. With the paper-thin profit margins for traders, help with decisions on seeds, planting, growing, harvesting and selling can make all the difference.
Information search costs are highest at the beginning of the cycle. Information on deciding what to grow are three times all other costs, and this is where ICTs with enabling software have a potential role to play.
Lokanathan said that ideally he wanted to change the decision-making chain into a cycle where the decision on what the farmer wants to grow is based on the price when he expects to harvest. For this to happen, prices and supply and demand needed to be predicted and farmers need to get into forward sales contracts which does not often happen in the developing world.
A number of mobile information services aimed at farmers are now available in India offering crop advisory, weather forecasts and market price information. For example, Bharti Airtel offer a non-subscription voice-based service through the phone with 1.5 million subscribers. The revenue model is through the sale of specially enabled SIM cards and the service costs one Indian rupee (US 2 cents) a minute.
Reuters Market Light has 170,000 subscribers in 17 states. It does not partner with telcos and instead sells scratch cards directly to the farmers - using technology already familiar to the user.
Mobile operators are getting into the market to gain subscribers now that the urban market is saturated. Apart from Reuters, revenue from the service itself seems to be secondary right now.
The problem with agricultural value-added services is that it is very localised. A farmer in Punjab wants weather conditions, markets and soil conditions for his farm, not what is happening in the city.
Lower literacy levels mean that they prefer voice to text, but with the younger generation becoming more technology-savvy, the farmers’ children are now serving as information conduits.
Muriuki Mureithi of Summit Strategies, Kenya, spoke of the mobile payments experience in Kenya — a country were 26 percent of the 39 million population have bank accounts but 52 percent have mobile phone SIM cards. A study of the unbanked said that most did not have a bank account as they do not have regular income; that they do not need a bank account or that they did not quality for a bank account.
"That was a challenge, for these people not to be excluded from the mainstream of society," he said.
M-Pesa, a mobile payment system launched by market leader Safaricom, today has 9 million users. Twenty three percent of the population are registered on M-Pesa but it is not necessary to be registered to receive payments, but it is cheaper. The average transaction per month across all the users comes out at 2,500 Kenyan shillings (US $32) which addresses the Bottom of the Pyramid.
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12 May 2010 - Bangkok Post - DON SAMBANDARAKSA - page D1
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Comment
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Comment by Jin Zhao on June 9, 2010 at 8:30pm -
Interesting article. Perhaps mobile technology is one way to bring closer the digital divide between industrial countries and developing countries. But India is not the most deprived country in terms of information technology. I was at a computer and writing conference just a couple of weeks ago. There was a presentation about global access issues and the speaker talked about her experience in Uganda. It was a very difficult situation there.
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