This Is AuburnElectronic Theses and Dissertations

MTOTO-BEBE: PROMOTING ACCESS TO AND USE OF PRE- AND POST-NATAL CARE SERVICES AND INFORMATION BY HARNESSING SOCIAL CAPITAL THROUGH INCLUSIVE MOBILE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT IN ILORIN

Date

2022-08-03

Author

Asipade, Akolade

Type of Degree

PhD Dissertation

Department

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Restriction Status

EMBARGOED

Restriction Type

Auburn University Users

Date Available

08-03-2026

Abstract

One of 21 Nigerian women still die from avoidable maternal death. Yet, one of the most critical interventions for safe motherhood is ensuring that women (even in the most remote areas) have access to and are well informed of antenatal and postnatal care information and services. As the price of mobile devices plumet, more people around the globe and particularly in Low-and-Medium Income Countries (LMIC) now have access to smart mobile devices. However, majority of this population are disadvantaged by their levels of literacy as most applications are designed with the assumption that users possess the ability to read and write in certain languages and that users possess cognitive skills like language processing, visual organization and visual memory, speed of cognitive processing, divided attention and perceived self-efficacy are considered essential for realizing interactions on many mobile interfaces. In this dissertation, we include Ilorin women as co-designers in the design and development of Moto-bebe, a mobile application that provides greater access to ante- and post-natal care information. The study is divided into three phases. In phase I, through literature review, conducting and analyzing data collected from surveys and interviews, we learnt about the current eco-system of maternal care available to Ilorin women and how these group of women used mobile technology. The ubiquitous property of mobile technology and its penetration makes them a viable candidate as 47% of women owned a smart phone and 33% more had access to an android powered device as shared device with spouse or family. In phase II, we implored HCI and HCI4D techniques including open card-sort, think aloud protocol and participatory design to learn about the structures of social capital that exist amongst Ilorin women and to identify dominant mental models of this population around maternal care. Ilorin women expected chronological organization of information from birth till after delivery. In the absence of access to adequate healthcare, Ilorin women looked to other women in their communities for ante-natal and post-natal care information. This point of contact for this population in case of an emergency is a family or friend that lives in the same community. Armed with these findings, we designed the interface for mtoto-bebe and in phase III, we evaluate the efficacy of the application. Using general assistant score as the main metric, we found that no/low literate users can benefit from the use of contextual pictorial representations (e.g., icons, illustrations, digital/hand drawn images, gifs etc.) instead of text, as all participants easily completed the assigned task and 20% needing minimal mediation to identify specific images, or transitions.