Measuring Bangladeshi Female Farmers' Values for Agriculture Mobile Applications Development

TL;DR

This study investigates the core values of Bangladeshi female farmers to inform the development of culturally aligned agriculture mobile applications, using Schwartz's theory and a survey of 193 women.

Contribution

It introduces a methodology for eliciting user values in app development, specifically tailored for rural women in Bangladesh, based on empirical survey data.

Findings

Conformity and Security are the most important values for the target users.

Power, Hedonism, and Stimulation are less important to these farmers.

The methodology can be adapted to other communities for user-centered app design.

Abstract

The ubiquity of mobile applications (apps) in daily life raises the imperative that the apps should reflect users' values. However, users' values are not usually taken into account in app development. Thus there is significant potential for user dissatisfaction and negative socio-economic consequences. To be cognizant of values in apps, the first step is to find out what those values are, and that was the objective of this study conducted in Bangladesh. Our focus was on rural women, specifically female farmers. The basis for our study was Schwartz's universal human values theory, and we used an associated survey instrument, the Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ). Our survey of 193 Bangladeshi female farmers showed that Conformity and Security were regarded as the most important values, while Power, Hedonism, and Stimulation were the least important. This finding would be helpful for developers to take into account when developing agriculture apps for this market. In addition, the methodology we used provides a model to follow to elicit the values of apps' users in other communities.