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As a computer science student in Nigeria, Rita Orji says she had little idea how influential her field would become. But as smartphones reshaped the world of IT, she was able to bring her expertise to bear on her true passion: social change.

At Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Orji split her time between studying and community development work. She was part of a World Health Organization initiative aimed at reducing the spread of HIV using public information sessions, and she founded a non-profit to promote education for women and other marginalized people.

But Orji lived in a comparatively poor region, and computers were not widely available. The result was that she did not initially see her academic career as a path to combatting the social problems that most concerned her.

“At that time, there were not a lot of people in my community – which was a disadvantaged neighbourhood, not a high-class community – that could afford a computer,” she says.

Graduate studies in Turkey and then Canada helped change that: “When I moved for my master’s, I saw how computing has become part of the day-to-day lives of people.”

First at Middle East Technical University and then at The University of Saskatchewan, Orji studied information systems and computer science, finishing her PhD in 2014. She says that, for her, studying in more developed regions demonstrated personal computing’s transformative potential.

At the same time, smartphones were becoming near-ubiquitous in Africa, with their relative affordability making them popular even in underprivileged communities.

By 2017, more than 90 percent of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa was covered by 2G networks, and by 2018, the region was the fastest-growing mobile phone market on Earth.

For Orji, this presented an opportunity. She could use the growing popularity of smartphones to capitalize on the same capacity for large-scale social change that she had seen from computers – all without the costs and logistical challenges associated with desktop and laptop devices.

“In many programs aimed at promoting social good, what we do is we bring people together once or twice a year and try to educate them,” she says. “Well, how about we have something that wouldn’t require me to be physically present... Something where I’m always there, even when I’m not there. Something to let me be constantly with them.”

Human Computer Interaction

Now the Director of Dalhousie University’s Persuasive Computing Lab, Orji is focused on an area of research called human-computer interaction and its subcategory, persuasive computing, for which she says smartphones are an ideal delivery mechanism.

Persuasive computing is the practice of using technology to help users to change their behavior in beneficial ways. For example, Orji says, an app might encourage users to exercise more or eat healthier. The technology pairs well with smartphones because users carry their devices with them throughout their days and can interact with apps in real time.

“It’s something that can be permanently with them, promoting these positive behaviors,” she says. “These are tools that integrate well with their everyday lives, helping them when the need arises.”

Orji takes an unusual approach to software development. Most engineers design and build a program before making it available to users who test its functionality – a process that she says is called the “system-centred approach.” Instead, she and her team favour a more collaborative “user-centred approach.”

User-centred design relies on iterative consultations with the software’s intended consumers, beginning at the earliest stages of the development process. Orji says this results in apps that are better suited to their target populations. Without involving users, programmers often have a poor grasp of how their products will actually be used.

Users of technology often make assumptions about how it will respond, based on their pre-existing mental models and cultural context. Light switches in Britain, for example, often have their on and off positions reversed, compared to those in North America.

And even if users are operating from within the same cultural and social contexts, they may have cognitive differences, such as dementia, that affect how they interact with software.

“If you’re designing an application for people who are 60 years old or more, that application is going to be different than for youths,” says Orji. “Even if I come up with an initial prototype and give it to them to critique it... at the end of the day, I’m going to get an entirely different system from my initial concept of what I though it would be.”

That, she says, is why user-centred design is so useful.

Team Has Grown

Her team at Dalhousie has now grown to between 15 and 20 people, depending on the time of year and whether any visiting students are temporarily lending a hand. Most of Orji’s researchers are graduate students, but she also occasionally hires undergraduate interns during the summer months.

Orji’s published work includes both guidelines for making apps more effective at changing users’ behavior, as well as actual apps that she eventually makes available on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

Because persuasive computing aims to change real-world behaviors, she also frequently teams up with subject-matter experts from other faculties.

Orji and Sandra Meier, an associate professor in Dalhousie’s Department of Psychiatry, are currently collaborating on an app to track youths’ behavior during the pandemic, offering insights into their mental health.

The software, which is being used by about 1,000 people, tracks indicators such as how much they sleep, whether they exercise, and what apps they use. The goal is to identify ways to help young people manage their mental health.

Orji’s team is also developing an app to encourage physical activity by encouraging users to care for a digital tree, which grows when they exercise. If they are sedentary, the tree withers.

The tree is an example of the gamification process that Orji often relies on to keep users engaged. She leverages the same properties that many smartphone games use to hold players’ attention, but repurposes them to incentivize healthy behavior and help users achieve their goals.

Meanwhile, a second fitness-focused app from Orji’s lab is testing an alternative approach. Rather than relying on a game-based interface, the app pairs users with workout buddies.

Benefits of Exercise Partners

Research from Scotland’s University of Aberdeen, among other institutions, has shown that having a workout partner can encourage people to exercise more. Now, Orji hopes to use the app to determine how to pair users based on their fitness levels to maximize the benefit for both people.

“We want to compare across different groups and see which combination (of activity levels) is the optimal grouping,” she says. “If you have someone who is moderately active, do you group them with someone who is moderately active? Or do you group them with someone who has very high physical activity?”

For all of her apps, Orji and her researchers use a similar, three-stage development process.

After consulting with their target users about what they would like help with, Orji’s team creates a “low fidelity prototype” – a storyboard, sketch or diagram illustrating how an eventual app might function.

The researchers conduct focus groups and hold interviews to gather feedback about the low fidelity prototype. Then, they use the information gleaned to create a more detailed, but still non-functioning “medium fidelity prototype.” The new prototype often takes the form of an app that allows users to see what the finished product will look like, and even type passwords or tap buttons.

Finally, Orji’s team creates a fully functional app and distributes it for a third round of testing. Because the software is still not ready for public consumption, the first users bypass the app store using APK files on Android, and a beta testing platform called TestFlight on iOS.

It is only after the final, protracted round of testing that Orji’s apps become available to the public. The process is time-consuming, but Orji says her goal is always to make her work widely accessible, so that it can help improve the lives of as many people as possible.

“The work of maintaining an app on the app store is always a lot,” she says. “But the main objective at the end of the day is that we evaluate these products to make sure they are at a stable state and working very well, and then we can release them to the public.”

And despite the labour-intensive nature of Orji’s user-centred software design, she says the process is an ideal marriage between her technical expertise and the community-minded inclinations that motivated her charitable work in Nigeria.

“What I always want to do is something that involves humans and helps solve a problem for people,” she says. “This lets me combine my training in computer science and my passions for helping people. This is the kind of research I want to do, because it gives me an opportunity to use my skills to solve problems that I’m passionate about.”

Sponsored by Dal Innovates 

Dal Innovates provides opportunities for students and faculty at Dalhousie University to explore and experience innovation and entrepreneurship and develop knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to translate new ideas into innovations.  We empower our students & faculty to be the best innovators, creators and entrepreneurs and make an impact on local and global challenges.