Noko

User Experiences of a City Infrastructure Fault-Reporting Mobile Application: A South African Case Study

Organisations have taken an active role in improving the living conditions of members in under-resourced communities. One such organisation, initiated a fault-reporting mobile application that allows users to report on the conditions of public infrastructures, such as taps and toilets. The mobile application was used in the community of Monwabisi Park, an informal settlement located next to Khayelitsha, in Cape Town. The users of the application were seven residents of Monwabisi Park, who were employed by the City of Cape Town for a period of 6 months.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the experiences of these users. The researcher used semi-structured interviews, in a focus group style, to collect data on users’ experiences using the mobile application.

Main findings included: (1) Due to the hidden nature of some taps, locating these was difficult and posed the risk to nullify the purpose of the mobile application i.e. to record the status of these infrastructures; (2) There was a lack of awareness by the local residents as to the work that the field workers do; and (3) The paper maps the workers used to locate items were not ideal in the long term, because new shelters are built regularly, often rendering them outdated.

This presented an opportunity for the use of GPS. However, because informal settlements are usually densely built, single mapping (which normally requires more modern data mapping tools to detect single shack discrimination) becomes difficult.

A further opportunity – to study the experiences of users from other informal settlements – was identified.