Case Study: Field worker mobile app

BRAC began its operations in South Sudan in 2007 before their independence in 2011. They assist in supporting the communities through agriculture, health, education, youth development and the ultra-poor programme.

In 2015, Deloitte Digital partnered with BRAC to deliver a field worker mobile app to enable field workers to monitor, maintain and report real-time information on the ground in South Sudan.

This mobile app is envisaged to give rise to being more responsive to the evolving needs on the ground and to equip BRAC with the ability to adapt quickly based on real-time reporting from their field workers.

Our business goals:

• Facilitate the growth and empowerment of South Sudan’s communities.
• Gain insight into real-time, in the field data.
• Improve the ability to reach the most vulnerable of areas.
• Look after the staff on the ground and provide aid and alerts to field workers.

Along with BRAC’s research and incident reports, we interviewed field workers from Sudan, India and Afghanistan.

Difficulties volunteers experience on a daily bases are:

• Access to resources and supplies.
• Analysis and anomaly recognition.
• Accommodation and transport.
• Support system.
• Personal security and conflict resolution.

These findings only solidified our business goals moving forward.

By aligning our user and business goals we identified the following key architectural requirements:

• Field workers must be able to log events in the field using their smartphones (Android 4.0 and newer).
• The solution must be able to work offline where there is no network coverage.
• The solution must provide an admin dashboard to analyse logged events.
• SOS functionality must be available for all field worker. This features should be data and SMS based depending on signal availability.

A field worker can log an event based on available categories. The system will intuitively recognise and prioritise your most used categories.

Events are divided into three tabs:

• Drafts — these are events in progress not yet submitted or synced.
• Unsynced — these are events that are completed but not yet synced. Events can still be edited and media like video, voice or image can still be attached.
• Synced — these are events that have been synchronised to the Brac server and are not editable anymore.

Field workers can switch to a map view to see pinned events. They can also see pins and event details from colleagues nearby. Maps can be saved offline when travelling.

Events can be filtered by date, area and event type.

The SOS feature is key within the field worker app.

When the user activates the SOS functionality:

• Their coordinates are immediately sent to the Brac server.
• If the data connection is not available, an SMS is sent to the server.
• Brac security officers are alerted to the SOS via SMS, email and the dashboard. They will then dispatch a response team and alert colleagues in the nearby vicinity.

The app will be used in remote locations and must continue to function when no internet connection is available.

The field worker should be able to start a synchronisation when they have network access and can be cancelled at any time. They will also be reminded to perform a synchronisation if one hasn’t been performed after extended periods.

• Collaborating with an international team of field workers that are unavailable for long periods of time.
• The responsibility of creating a solution that could potentially save field workers life’s in challenging situations.
• No internal user testing could simulate the real situation of what field workers face on a daily basis in the field.
• Maintaining a simple and uncomplicated user interface.

• 💡 Working with tech leads and international telecoms to find multiple solutions to the SOS functionality.
• ❤️ Workshopping with international field worker teams from Sudan, India and Afghanistan.