Exploring suitable interfaces for agriculture based smartphone apps in India

In this paper the authors design, develop and test two Smartphone applications for Indian agriculture workers. The problem under concern necessitates the need to take into consideration the low literacy level of Indian farmers. The authors also present results from two surveys, one with the farmers and other with phone dealers catering to a majority farmer population, indicating the economic and educational constraints that come into the picture while developing assistance tools for them. A detailed mobile phone market study over the past few years is also presented discussing recent trends. The resulting designs for the two apps are a result of a participatory study with farmers, where multiple design iterations were performed to come down to the final design. Testing of the final app designs confirmed recommendations from previous work in the area and also revealed certain new design considerations based on how the users perceive and understand numbers. The paper therefore, presents design recommendations that have been tested with farmers and can be used to develop effective Smartphone apps for rural workers, particularly in the area of agriculture.