Abstract:
The purpose of this thesis is to design, develop, and evaluate a mobile application for illiterate people in Bangladesh following Design Science Research approach. We first conducted a requirement elicitation study with 40 illiterate people in Bangladesh to identify their needs. From this study, we found a set of design principals to make the user interface (UI) intuitive for illiterate people. The design principals include developing the application in native language, use of voice, symbols, pictures, and minimal amount of texts in the UIs. Then, a mobile application (Chakuri-Bazaar) was developed following these design principals. Finally, the application was evaluated with 40 illiterate people through a field study. The findings of the evaluation study suggest that the application was effective, efficient, and the users were satisfied in terms of its ease of use, ease of learning, willingness to use it in future, and willingness to recommend it to others.
Description:
I would first like to thank my thesis advisor Major Muhammad Nazrul Islam, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science (CSE) and Engineering, Military Institute of Science and Technology (MIST). The door to Nazrul Sir was always open whenever I ran into a trouble spot or had a question about my research or writing. He consistently allowed this paper to be my own work, but steered me in the right direction whenever he thought I needed it.
I would also like to thank the participants who were involved in the survey for this research project. Without their passionate participation and input, the survey could not have been successfully conducted.
Furthermore, thanks to ICT Division, Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology, for providing me the prestigious ICT fellowship to pursue this thesis work,
Finally, I must express my very profound gratitude to my parents for providing me with unfailing support and continuous encouragement throughout my years of study and through the process of researching and writing this thesis. This accomplishment would not have been possible without them. Thank you.
