Nelson Mandela University, OutSystems, the global leader in high-performance application development, and NTT DATA, one of the world's largest IT services company, created an app to increase cancer awareness through technology within rural South-African communities. It is called C-vive APP and it is already available to be downloaded in the Play Store.
Realizing the prevalence of certain cancer types in the Eastern Cape, the Nelson Mandela University’s Centre for Community Technologies (CCT) decided that there was a need for the creation of a technical solution for awareness and mainly prevention, especially based on the local reality.
According to Darelle Van Greunen, Founder and Director of CCT, “Research has shown that cancer patients seldom understand the disease, the treatment, its side effects, and the emotional impact the disease has on their lives and families. The lack of information and the misinterpretation of available information leads to fear and stigmatisation, resulting in evading medical advice and treatment. So, we thought an app could address all these challenges…”
Partnering with the Cancer Association of South Africa (CANSA), the CCT used the Build for the Future Hackathon, organized by OutSystems, to challenge NTT DATA into developing this solution. NTT DATA proudly accepted it as a pro-bono project framed within its sustainability strategy. The solution developed won the award for the Best User Experience and The Best Technical Solution and is now available for download. The project stood out for:
Cultural Inclusiveness
The navigation is intuitive and easy to understand, to ensure it can be used by a wide variety of users, with different backgrounds. It uses carefully crafted illustrations and neutral colours, to ensure all users identify easily with the APP.
Gamification
The APP has an interesting gamification feature to increase user adoption and engagement to show the progress in the contents users have mastered. As the knowledge evolves, the flower grows and blooms rewarding the user’s content exploration.
Accessibility
Text-background contrast to increase readability and text to speech, to help users understand the content when they’re not able to read, were also taken into account in the app’s design. All screens are designed carefully, so that the app is always attractive and engaging and no text-heavy screens exist, to drive users away from the app. The high number of colour blind people in the communities was also considered, so colours were chosen to support colour blindness.
Animations to Guide Users in Key Areas
It uses self-examination steps, explained using lottie animations that can be fully visible offline. These animations show how the user can perform a self-exam in a visual way, reducing the need to read a lengthy explanation.
Multi-Language
To ensure language is not a barrier, the APP supports multiple languages: Xhosa, Zulu, Afrikaans, and English. This also helps address the problem of very little information about cancer being available in most of these languages.
Fully Offline Content
To make sure the app can reach communities without access to Internet, the mobile application was developed so users can access all contents offline.
Gerda Strauss from CANSA adds that “Ignorance, myths, fears, and stigma contribute towards late diagnoses and poor prognosis. That is why we use every avenue, partnership, and opportunity to get the message out there. We strongly believe that knowledge can help beat cancer and we have great expectations on the success of the C-vive APP”.
The details of this APP can be known in the webinar ‘Increasing Cancer Awareness Through Technology’ available here.
For more information on NTT DATA's Business Experience services, please visit our Business Experience Design page