A comparison of mobile search interfaces for isiXhosa speakers

Search interfaces have for a long time been targeted at the resource-rich languages, such as English. There has been little effort to support African (Bantu) languages in search interfaces when compared to languages such as English, particularly the isiXhosa language. However, due to the increase in use of mobile phones in developing countries, these interfaces can now be adapted to languages in these settings to support information access on the Web. This study proposes mobile search interfaces to support isiXhosa speakers to search for information on the Web using isiXhosa as a discovery language. The isiXhosa language is considered a low-resourced African (Bantu) language spoken in resource-constrained environments in South Africa. The language is spoken by over eight million people. Yet, there has been no search interface specifically targeted at supporting isiXhosa speakers. Two mobile search interfaces were developed on an Android application. The interfaces were text based and voice based. The design of the interfaces was based on feedback from 4 native isiXhosa speakers in a design focus group, and guidelines from the literature. Using the developed interfaces, an experiment was conducted with 34 native isiXhosa speaking students at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. This was done to investigate, which interface could better support isiXhosa speakers to search for information on the Web using mobile phones. Quantitative data was collected using application log files. Additionally, user feedback was then obtained using the standard Software Usability Measurement Inventory (SUMI) instrument, and both interfaces were confirmed as usable. In contrast to what was expected, users preferred the text interface in general, and according to most SUMI subscales. This could be because of greater familiarity with text search interfaces or because of the relative scarcity of voice interfaces in African (Bantu) languages. Where users are not literate, the voice interface may be the only option, so the fact that it was deemed usable is an important independent finding. Search in African (Bantu) language collections is still a largely unexplored field, and more work needs to be done on the interfaces as the algorithms and collections are developed in parallel