What international development can learn from web development

This blog article is from a series of reflections by Siobhan Green, during her attendance at the World Hunger Food Prize Borlaug dialogues on food security.

I have been involved in international development since the beginning of my career in 1992; even before my formal education, I was raised on ideas around international development, as my mother was a fundraiser for UNICEF. I also jumped on the technology bandwagon at an early age - we got a Franklin Ace when I was 12 and I never looked back.

My dissertation for grad school was on the Internet in Africa in 1997. So I merged the two passions into ICT for international development. My firm, Sonjara, builds technology solutions for international development challenges. But until recently, I didn't realize how a powerful concept in web development could help international development more than building web applications.

As wikipedia defines it, "User-centered design (UCD) is a type of user interface design and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of end users of a product are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process. User-centered design can be characterized as a multi-stage problem solving process that not only requires designers to analyse and foresee how users are likely to use a product, but also to test the validity of their assumptions with regards to user behaviour in real world tests with actual users. Such testing is necessary as it is often very difficult for the designers of a product to understand intuitively what a first-time user of their design experiences, and what each user's learning curve may look like."

It occurred to me during a session on communications with smallholder farmers at a recent conference, that many of the tools and approaches we use in UCD can be used in developing international development interventions.

The key elements in UCD that I believe are useful for international development practitioners include:

1. The extreme focus on the "needs, wants, and limitations of end users:" This is the fundamental concept that users are subject matter experts in their own experience. We need to see ourselves as vendors providing services to clients, rather than benefactors giving knowledge/capacity/tools to beneficiaries. The difference is in attitude and assumptions about power - a client is always right, but a beneficiary takes what s/he gets.

2. User centered design as a "multi-stage problem solving process:"  This iterative feedback cycle is key. It is incumbent on the designer to change the design (up to and including the product or service) to meet the need and to recognize that many changes may be needed. Users are also annoying in that they change their needs often, just when you think you have figured them out.

3. The requirement to  ... "test the validity of their assumptions with regards to user behaviors:" To fundamentally get user centered design, one must understand that that users are never wrong; if they are not using your product or service it is because the product doesn't meet their need the way THEY conceive of their need. The user doesn't need to change; our intervention does.

4. Finally, "real world tests with actual users:" Real world tests can be expensive. But there is no replacing testing your work on your end users. Especially working cross-culturally, real world tests are even more crucial.

Applying the concepts around UCD to international development is not a new idea ( see http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1241087, http://www.bidnetwork.org/en/organization/user-centered-design-international-development-ucd4id) but it is not a common one.  It is one I hope becomes more commonplace.
« Back to Sonjara Blog