Farmers’ perceived rating and usability attributes of agricultural mobile phone apps

Abstract

Cassava crop is in the forefront among the arable crops mostly cultivated in Nigeria. It is a crop that International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) have invested more efforts to develop mobile digital solutions for farmers to address some of the agronomic issues threatening its productivity. The ultimate aim of the digital solution is to bring innovations closer to farmers as well as to bring about the transformation needed to achieve food security in Africa. However, farmers’ (users) quality rating and usability of agricultural mobile apps remains uncertain thereby, creating knowledge gap. Feedbacks of users are critical to inform developers of the apps about necessary modifications. This study therefore examined the usability attributes of Agricultural Mobile Phone Applications (AMPAs) among cassava farmers in South-west Nigeria using users-centered approach. Because of the selected crop, apps evaluated in this study were Akilimo App, Airtel 4-21 call App and IITA herbicide calculator App. Akilimo App is an advisory tool that provides site-specific recommendations to cassava farmers in order to increase their cassava-based cropping systems; Airtel 4-2-1 call App provides a voice-based tutorial on cassava production, weather, education, rice amongst others by simply dialing 4-2-1 on any mobile phone with an Airtel sim card; while IITA herbicide is a mobile application developed to prevent herbicide abuse, such as over-dosing and/or under-dosing. Four hundred and ten (410) cassava farmers were recruited as respondents for the study. Data were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics, including frequency counts, percentages, means and standard deviation. As the major contribution, it was shown for the first time, how users (farmers) rated the three Apps in terms of engagement, functionality, aesthetics, information quality, and subjective quality while usability of the Apps were rated for efficiency, effectiveness, satisfaction, learnability, memorability, cognitive load, accuracy and error. Similarly, pattern of usage, benefits of usage and constraints to usage of the Apps were further investigated.