CyberRwanda: Learnings from using youth-centered design for a digital intervention
Summary:
CyberRwanda is a digital platform aiming to improve the health and livelihoods of Rwandan adolescents (12-19 years). Co-designed with Rwandan youth, this Direct-to-Consumer platform weaves together edutainment content, such as drama with choose-your-own-adventure storylines, knowledge-based content through a robust FAQ library, with online pharmacy ordering and a clinic locator. Together, these components deliver integrated age-appropriate adolescent health information, employment skills, and linkage to youth-friendly services. CyberRwanda aims to increase modern contraception use and HIV testing. Using human-centered design and youth-centered design approaches, CyberRwanda has been designed with and for youth throughout every step of the design process; from the design research and ideation phases where we aimed to understand the issues that were of biggest concern to young people and what solutions we could implement to address those concerns, to our testing rough and live prototypes and now piloting in schools. This oral presentation will share the lessons learned as CyberRwanda has grown from a paper prototype to a large scale project ready for an RCT in 40 schools across 6 Rwandan districts. We'll share learnings from these various iterations of CyberRwanda and how we got to our current implementation design and model. We'll also discuss our findings from the recently completed pre-implementation pilots, demonstrating how you can and should rigorously evaluate throughout the HCD process, and how we incorporate best practices in digital design and edutainment content into our social and behavior change intervention.
Background/Objectives:
CyberRwanda is a digital platform aiming to improve the health and livelihoods of adolescents (12-19 years). CyberRwanda will have completed 2 large scale pilots by February 2020 with rich learnings on designing solutions for young people with various levels of tech access and literacy. Building on these learnings, in April 2020, CyberRwanda will launch in 40 schools, beginning a 3-arm cluster randomized controlled non-inferiority trial study across 6 Rwandan districts. The RCT will measure modern contraception use and HIV testing. The objectives are to improve the knowledge, access, and quality of FP services.
Description of Intervention and/or Methods/Design:
CyberRwanda is a digital platform that aims to improve the health and livelihoods of urban adolescents (12-19). The three components: Learn, Shop and Ask, deliver integrated age-appropriate adolescent health information, employment skills, and linkage to high-quality, youth-friendly services. CyberRwanda also trains pharmacists, using a digital training game that helps train pharmacists at partnering clinics on contraception access laws in Rwanda and the fundamentals of contraception. The 3-arms of the RCT include: 1) Control; 2) Self-service model, where schools receive how-to guides and a light training; 3) Facilitated model, where schools will receive a clubs booklet and training. New edutainment content will be produced every 6 months, with lighter touch updates throughout. During the RCT, CyberRwanda will provide tablets in schools and work with administrators to support CyberRwanda usage in schools. We aim to scale nationally once the RCT is complete.
Results/Lessons Learned:
Lessons learned that have led to the current design and implementation model for CyberRwanda include: Data is expensive and wifi in schools is not always reliable, but a native app is resource-intensive and young people often don't want to download and update one due to phone storage space. A norms analysis and preliminary pilot data highlight key barriers to modern contraceptive use amongst Rwandan young people. These social and cultural barriers are factored into the character journeys, clubs curriculum and training to shift norms. Tracking the number of unique users is challenging with a digital intervention. Requiring users to register can be a barrier to entry and a site designed for multiple users means back-end data is not an accurate representation. A solution has to be built with different levels of tech access and literacy in mind, so it needs to balance innovation and ease of use.
Discussion/Implications for the Field:
Human and youth-centered designed approaches and digital solutions are increasingly being used in the SBCC field to develop interventions. Through the experience of CyberRwanda, we will share how these approaches can develop scalable and sustainable solutions when evaluated and implemented along the way. Additionally, through the way these approaches engage the target audience throughout the process, we uncover the internal motivations and barriers to action that are critical to behavior change and get instant feedback on what would encourage or deter them from using a specific solution towards a certain behavior.
Abstract submitted by:
Laura Baringer - YLabs
Mireille Umutoni Sekamana
CyberRwanda is a digital platform aiming to improve the health and livelihoods of Rwandan adolescents (12-19 years). Co-designed with Rwandan youth, this Direct-to-Consumer platform weaves together edutainment content, such as drama with choose-your-own-adventure storylines, knowledge-based content through a robust FAQ library, with online pharmacy ordering and a clinic locator. Together, these components deliver integrated age-appropriate adolescent health information, employment skills, and linkage to youth-friendly services. CyberRwanda aims to increase modern contraception use and HIV testing. Using human-centered design and youth-centered design approaches, CyberRwanda has been designed with and for youth throughout every step of the design process; from the design research and ideation phases where we aimed to understand the issues that were of biggest concern to young people and what solutions we could implement to address those concerns, to our testing rough and live prototypes and now piloting in schools. This oral presentation will share the lessons learned as CyberRwanda has grown from a paper prototype to a large scale project ready for an RCT in 40 schools across 6 Rwandan districts. We'll share learnings from these various iterations of CyberRwanda and how we got to our current implementation design and model. We'll also discuss our findings from the recently completed pre-implementation pilots, demonstrating how you can and should rigorously evaluate throughout the HCD process, and how we incorporate best practices in digital design and edutainment content into our social and behavior change intervention.
Background/Objectives:
CyberRwanda is a digital platform aiming to improve the health and livelihoods of adolescents (12-19 years). CyberRwanda will have completed 2 large scale pilots by February 2020 with rich learnings on designing solutions for young people with various levels of tech access and literacy. Building on these learnings, in April 2020, CyberRwanda will launch in 40 schools, beginning a 3-arm cluster randomized controlled non-inferiority trial study across 6 Rwandan districts. The RCT will measure modern contraception use and HIV testing. The objectives are to improve the knowledge, access, and quality of FP services.
Description of Intervention and/or Methods/Design:
CyberRwanda is a digital platform that aims to improve the health and livelihoods of urban adolescents (12-19). The three components: Learn, Shop and Ask, deliver integrated age-appropriate adolescent health information, employment skills, and linkage to high-quality, youth-friendly services. CyberRwanda also trains pharmacists, using a digital training game that helps train pharmacists at partnering clinics on contraception access laws in Rwanda and the fundamentals of contraception. The 3-arms of the RCT include: 1) Control; 2) Self-service model, where schools receive how-to guides and a light training; 3) Facilitated model, where schools will receive a clubs booklet and training. New edutainment content will be produced every 6 months, with lighter touch updates throughout. During the RCT, CyberRwanda will provide tablets in schools and work with administrators to support CyberRwanda usage in schools. We aim to scale nationally once the RCT is complete.
Results/Lessons Learned:
Lessons learned that have led to the current design and implementation model for CyberRwanda include: Data is expensive and wifi in schools is not always reliable, but a native app is resource-intensive and young people often don't want to download and update one due to phone storage space. A norms analysis and preliminary pilot data highlight key barriers to modern contraceptive use amongst Rwandan young people. These social and cultural barriers are factored into the character journeys, clubs curriculum and training to shift norms. Tracking the number of unique users is challenging with a digital intervention. Requiring users to register can be a barrier to entry and a site designed for multiple users means back-end data is not an accurate representation. A solution has to be built with different levels of tech access and literacy in mind, so it needs to balance innovation and ease of use.
Discussion/Implications for the Field:
Human and youth-centered designed approaches and digital solutions are increasingly being used in the SBCC field to develop interventions. Through the experience of CyberRwanda, we will share how these approaches can develop scalable and sustainable solutions when evaluated and implemented along the way. Additionally, through the way these approaches engage the target audience throughout the process, we uncover the internal motivations and barriers to action that are critical to behavior change and get instant feedback on what would encourage or deter them from using a specific solution towards a certain behavior.
Abstract submitted by:
Laura Baringer - YLabs
Mireille Umutoni Sekamana
Source
Approved abstract for the postponed 2020 SBCC Summit in Marrakech, Morocco. Provided by the International Steering Committee for the Summit. Image credit: YLabs