Metaphor Design in Localising User Interface for Farmers in Malaysia Using User-Centered Approach

摘要

Metaphor is a representation of objects and situations that have meaning and comparable to the real thing to convey the message to people. This study reveals design metaphor issues for paddy farmer population in agriculture domain in Malaysia. The work is motivated by the ICT-Based Agriculture Flagship Blueprint of the Malaysian Government, an initiative to equip agriculture stakeholders in Malaysia including farmers with ICT knowledge on multiple platforms e.g. mobile phones. The metaphors design is deemed to have a huge potential to improve usability through localising user interface of related apps. The work is conducted involves three main studies in the fieldwork. The paddy farmers were involved in the entire development process to be able to obtain deeper understanding of their background, tasks, and environment. The study has led us to proposed nine elements incorporated as guidelines in metaphor design. A mobile paddy app is developed to demonstrate the practicality of the design metaphors. The app provides several main features such as diary, calendar, reminder, and pesticides and crop illness information. Then, this app was evaluated by conducting usability testing with the farmers. The results were gathered and being analysed using descriptive statistics which shown positive constructs. The participants (N=5) expressed agreement with the system usability (M=1.62, SD=0.43), strong agreement in system appearance (M=1.34, SD=0.22), and design metaphor (M=1.5, SD=0.27) and agreement for overall acceptance (M=1.6, SD=0.35).