All over the world road accidents are the major causes of death, it stems from reckless driving and poor driving culture. The rate of road accidents in developing nations is a lot higher than that of the developed nations. However, while observing the Finnish road users and their driving culture, where commuters respect road rules and pedestrians, inspired the thought of designing a platform more suitable for teaching road users and motorist in developing countries. Usually, majority of public road drivers in Nigeria, a developing country, are low literate; thus, they opt against using text-based road use highway-code information as they cannot read or interpret them due to their level of education. Therefore, they lack information that is supposed to serve as a guide in the prevention of road accident.
Consequently, this thesis explores the opportunity of using the knowledge of ICT4D in building an interactive prototype application for teaching road use and regulation. The application designed incorporates text-free UIs which afford users the use of image/graphics with audio annotations. In fact, text-free UIs has been previously used in making services available to low literate users in sectors such as health, banking and job search with success. Therefore, a text free prototype application is designed to aid drivers, especially low literate and literate but novice technology users, so they can easily learn road use and its regulations. The application will be in a quiz-game like format, designed in three phases which are; User centered design, application version Phido and (PhidoE with English language audio output) as Experiment 1 for literate participants and Experiment 2 (PhidoY with Yoruba language audio output version) for low literate participants. In addition, the application is strategized and gamified with game-like elements as the quiz game show “Who wants to be a millionaire”, to increase both learning motivation and performance.
Furthermore, designing and testing was done at Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife, Nigeria. With test results showing that text-free UI on road use should be suitable for teaching road users in Nigeria, in that it provides access in learning road use for majority of low literate users and literate but novice technology users. Findings from research interviews, observations and questionnaire were used in generating design recommendation on text free user interface for road use
