The GSMA mWomen Design Challenge aims to improve the smartphone user experience for resource-poor women. Now, ‘resource-poor’ can mean many things, but in the context of our programme, it refers to those in low-income households, who may be functionally and/or technically illiterate, living in remote areas or with limited mobility, or those who are lacking in empowerment. This lack of resources has an important bearing on how women engage with mobile technology and therefore, how innovators can improve the user experience of smartphones. Today, I’ll focus on the economics of obtaining a phone and discuss how cost constraints affect how our target users interact with their phones.
When you are struggling to afford the basics, such as nutritious food, school fees and healthcare, a new mobile phone is not an option. So many women buy second-hand phones, or in those cultures where it’s inappropriate for a woman to interact with men outside her family, a male relative purchases it for her.
In most developing world markets, users pre-pay for airtime on a SIM card rather than committing to a regular contract. This is topped-up with credit using the codes from scratch cards that are sold by street vendors. Typically people will add between USD $0.20 and $0.40 worth of airtime, though vouchers with higher denominations are available.
A typical resource-poor user can spend as much as US$2 per week on a phone. Whereas a woman may be able to afford the handset, or be given one by a relative, she may struggle to meet the airtime and charging costs. In some cases, women need to walk or travel long distances to top-up their service as well as charge their phones if they live off-grid. This increases the time and total cost of using a phone. Often living on incomes of less than US$2 per day, many resource-poor women are therefore very conservative in how they use their phones.
Cost-saving measures include sharing devices between several people, often in the same household. Sometimes families will share a device and each person will have their own SIM card; in other cases, everyone shares the same SIM. In many countries, people have multiple SIM cards that can be used on a single phone, often in order to take advantage of in-network tariffs or other deals from multiple mobile operators. In some cases, multiple SIMs enhance privacy on a shared phone, or are used to enjoy the prestige of more elite service while using the lower-cost service for day-to-day use.
“Flashing” or “beeping” is another common cost-saving practice, whereby people initiate phone calls which the recipient does not answer. The free call serves as a signal to return the call or to pass along a pre-agreed message (e.g. ‘I am on my way home’).
Therefore, to improve the resource-poor women’s smartphone user experience, it’s vital we consider these cost constraints and common phone practices. And that is why we’ve asked innovators to tackle these tasks when entering our Design Challenge. Helping women monitor their airtime, data usage and power consumption and enabling them to share a phone whilst keeping their profile private will help them to access more of the information and services that can enhance their lives.
Learn more about the Challenge and the design brief here.