Operationalising Values in Mobile Applications: A Mixed-Methods Empirical Study on Agriculture Apps for Bangladeshi Female Farmers

The ubiquity of mobile applications (apps) in daily life raises the imperative that apps should reflect end users' values (e.g., transparency, privacy, social recognition, etc.). However, users' values are not usually taken into account in app development. Violations of end users' values by apps have been reported in the media and have resulted in a wide range of difficulties for end users. Value violations may bring more severe and lasting problems for marginalized and vulnerable end-users of apps, which have less been (if any) explored in the software engineering community. This research aims to fill this gap by understanding the human values of Bangladeshi female farmers as a marginalized and vulnerable group, identifying the extent to which the existing Bangladeshi agriculture apps reflect their values, and exploring possible strategies to address their values in agriculture apps. To this end, this research conducted a mixed-methods empirical study that collected and analysed data from 1522 user reviews from 29 Bangladeshi agriculture apps, a survey with 193 Bangladeshi female farmers, 4 focus groups with 20 Bangladeshi female farmers, and 13 semi-structured interviews with practitioners working/previously worked on Bangladeshi agriculture apps.

This research found that conformity and security are the most important values for Bangladeshi female farmers, while power, hedonism, and stimulation are the least important. Furthermore, this research also identified 22 values of Bangladeshi female farmers, which are expected to be reflected in the agriculture apps. Among them, 15 values (e.g., accuracy, independence) are currently reflected in the existing apps and 7 values (e.g., accessibility, pleasure) are ignored/violated. The research conducted in this thesis also articulates 14 strategies (e.g., “applying human-centred approaches to elicit values”, “establishing a dedicated team/person for values concerns”) to address Bangladeshi female farmers’ values in agriculture apps.

This research creates awareness among Software Engineering researchers and app developers to consider human values in mobile apps. The findings of this research provide implications for Software Engineering research and practices on how to measure the values of end users, which values should be prioritized during apps development, and how to address the values of vulnerable groups of women in mobile apps.

Investigators:

Dr Rifat Shams, Adjunct Prof Jon Whittle, Dr Mojtaba Shahin, Dr Waqar Hussain, Assoc Prof Gillian Oliver

Further project information:

Selection of papers:

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