Day 29: People-centric technology

I’m glad that people-centric technology is part of the COVID-19 conversation in Aotearoa New Zealand. This clip is taken from the 19 April daily update all-government response press conference. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern highlighted that citizens' uptake is one of the challenges in implementing a successful contact tracing app. Technology should be supplementary. People first then technology.

I see that my PhD research is becoming more and more relevant. I want to highlight some key insights from my published work:

• Research on the public's use of mobile technologies for crisis communication is fairly young. More research is needed on the public's motivation behind downloading, adapting, and the use of technology is critical to ensure the full realisation of the crisis apps' purpose. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2017.06.009 
• For example, a user’s perspectives on the usability of an app will affect their intention to continue or abandon an app. http://idl.iscram.org/files/marionlaratan/2018/1643_MarionLaraTan_etal2018.pdf 
• Users’ can give insights to crisis app design. Consider familiarity and comfort. From one of my inquiries, a participant mentioned: “I appreciate that it looks like an app that I am familiar with. […] It’s what I’m used to. Which make me comfortable.” http://idl.iscram.org/files/marionlaratan/2019/1946_MarionLaraTan_etal2019.pdf

There are many research questions with COVID-19 and apps. Topics could be on trust, acceptability, usability, usage, ethics, etc. Definitely keen to pursue research in enhancing resilience through understanding the intersection between human behaviour and technology during disasters.