The research trip to South Africa

As mentioned earlier we have been on a research trip to the Agincourt clinic in Mpumalanga, South Africa from March 21 to March 29 2010. Following is a summary of the trip and the conclusions we made.



What we have done
At the first day, we set up the Sendinel server and connected it to the local network. This enabled us to conduct our user research under the proper conditions.

We tested how users react to Sendinel and tried to find out which features were accepted by the patients and staff. Furthermore we evaluated various input methods and the understandability of computerized voice calls. We also tested the reminder service. Sendinel informs patients about their next appointment at the clinic via their mobile phone.

Since many languages are spoken in South Africa (there are 11 official langauges), we tried to find out which languages should be supported by systems used in that region. We also interviewed all participants about their usage of technology. In total, about 60 people participated in our user research.

On the last day we made Sendinel available from all computers at the clinic and trained the nurses on how to use it. For example we showed them how to send messages to groups of subscribers like informing all pregnant women if a gynecologist is going to be at the clinic.



Conclusions
Generally all participants were excited about the possibility to remind patients of appointments and vaccinations.

The interviews with the patients of the clinic showed, that nearly everyone owns a mobile phone. We also learned that internet usage is not widely spread. So we decided to focus on contacting patients via SMS or telephone calls.

During user research we realized that only the nurses of the clinic are trained well enough to use the computer. A lot of the patients that participated in our tests had never used a computer before. Therefore we decided that the target users of our system should not be the patients themselves, but the clinic staff.



We had previously planned to provide the patients with a knowledge base holding health related information. Since patients are no longer our target user group, we decided to drop that part.

The clinic staff speaks English fluently, so this is what we chose as the main language for Sendinel. However it can easily be adapted to other languages. For example in Agincourt we are considering to send messages to the patients in Tsonga, the local language.



What happens next?
We are preparing to release Sendinel as an Open Source project in May 2010. In the process, we will use the information gathered during the research trip to improve the system. We also plan to further engage third parties to pursue the development of Sendinel after the end of the bachelor project in June 2010.

You may also view and download a more formal version of this travel report in pdf format here.