For Mobile Banking, Lessons from Research into Illiteracy

The UN estimates that there are approximately 800 million illiterate consumers worldwide and in addition not all consumers use products that support their primary language. To what extent do designs need to cater for, or specifically design for the illiterate?

The first thing to recognize is that there are different kinds of illiteracy – the most common definition being textual illiteracy ‘being able, with understanding to read and write a paragraph on your own life’. Other forms of literacy – technical, financial as well as numerical also play a significant role. Literacy is not, as many people assume a question of intelligence but rather one of opportunity, and our research has shown that motivated illiterate users are capable of completing complex tasks – either through rote learning or through engaging others with the task.

Every day millions of illiterate users are able to use mobile phones to receive and make calls – many start by inputting phone numbers written on scraps of paper, a common form of ‘address book’ amongst this user group, before migrating to using the call log as a form of self-generating address book. Problems using the phone generally start to occur with more complex tasks, in particular anything that requires managing or editing.

From a design perspective – one way of thinking about illiterate users is that they are ‘just like us only more so’ in that in certain contexts they share behavioral characteristics with their more literate counterparts, such as a rushed or multi-tasking literate user. In this respect a simple, stripped down device or service build around known principles of human computer interaction (HCI) will also meet many of the needs of the illiterate user – issues such as dividing information into easy to remember chunks, consistent use of interface elements and recoverability.

Whilst it is tempting to assume that there is a silver bullet solution for illiterate users – iconic and audio based interfaces being the two most commonly proposed solutions, the reality is far more challenging. Icons are in effect another form of alphabet and their meanings also need to be tested across user groups – challenging enough for a single user group, problematic when you’re designing for a global roll-out. Concepts that may be new to the user group such as ‘passwords’ or ‘withdrawing from an account’ are problematic to articulate in iconic form. Audio interfaces needs to support the users language and dialect, and assume that they understand what is being said, and are less appropriate in a range of contexts. Many of the environments where the services are used are highly noisy.

It should be recognized that literacy, numeracy and basic arithmetic are inherently empowering and that providing realistic opportunities to learn is an desirable goal in itself, one that will have a broad positive impact on society. Instead of asking ‘how to design an interface for illiterate consumers’ we need to take a narrower focus and reframe the question: ‘what skills need to be learned to be able to competently carry out series of simple mobile money related tasks’? If all the user wishes to do is make a phone call then pressing buttons on a keypad and correctly holding the phone to an ear will suffice. Mobile literacy – raising awareness of what a mobile phone can do and how to do it, can be achieved through a variety of means – from in-store posters, booklets, classes to more creative forms of communication such as leveraging the strong oral traditions in India. Looking ahead it is worth noting that the illiterate probably have the most to gain from ever more of their social and transactional graph being mapped and becoming query-able since it enables the auto-generation of relevant contacts, overcoming some of the problems relating to editing content, and innovative use of SMS data channels through services such as Ovi Mail are pushing the boundaries in this space.

Where possible the user should be able to build on successful outcomes. For example – the first time a consumer wishes to transfer money they may ask a literate family member or field agent for assistance – a process that may take half a dozen steps to identify whom to send money to, how much to transfer and input their details. The next time they approach the same person with the same request jumping directly to a transaction log will allow them to repeat the same task in a smaller number of steps. For subsequent requests the mediator is in a position to show the illiterate user how to complete the task using the transaction log as a short cut.

What steps can we take to increase accessibility for illiterate consumers?

-Jan Chipchase