In this blogpost, Purity Kahoru, our new IT Support Coordinator, reflects on a recent visit to Kampala, Uganda. I recently travelled to Kampala to improve the user experience on the family reconnection platform, www.refunite.org. Another goal was to test our SMS notification system. My overall question was: how can we improve the user experience on the REFUNITE platform?

We currently serve nearly 400,000 forcibly displaced people who speak different languages and come from different cultures and regions. Creating a digital family reconnection platform that is accessible in remote areas and from low-end mobile phones is at the heart of our activities.

Meeting the Mobile Outreach Team

The Kampala mobile outreach team consists of four members; Rodrigue Bashizi, Paul Kithima, Abana Sharifu and Claire Kipenda who are refugees themselves.

The team facilitates the registration of urban refugees living in Uganda who are searching for their missing relatives. According to Urban Refugees, there are nearly 200,000 refugees in Kampala. That number has undoubtedly increased due to the recent fighting in neighbouring South Sudan.

I was inspired by the diversity of languages spoken by our mobile outreach team, such as Kinyarwanda, Lingala, Kirundi, French, English Swahili and Luganda. Their languages skills empower us to serve refugee families, regardless of their nationality.

The team’s high morale was also very encouraging. The mobile outreach volunteers walk long distances in extreme weather (heat and rain!) to reach refugee families. They also have to deal with impatient registrants but remain patient and helpful. Their resilience and positive attitude was inspiring.

Zooming In On the User Experience

Improving our platform is an important aspect of our day-to-day activities as we want to make it easier for separated families to search, connect and communicate.

Our overall mission is to reconnect families torn apart by conflict, war and natural disasters. We believe everyone has the right to know where their family is. Anyone searching for their missing loved one can use one of our four search options:

1. SMS – Our mobile application allows separated families to search through SMS
2. Call Us – Our toll-free line provides access to our multilingual call center
3. USSD – This mobile service empowers separated families to search for missing loved ones using a low-tech phone without access to the Internet
4. REFUNITE.ORG – Enables families to search through the REFUNITE website through web or a smart phone.

Lessons and Feedback from the Field

Based on some of my conversations with urban refugees, REFUNITE’s mobile outreach volunteers and our Ugandan platform users, I arrived at the following:

• REFUNITE ought to make the ‘Invite a Friend’ feature more visible
• Our mobile outreach team was experiencing challenges with the messaging system, which sends SMS notification and alerts to registered users who are searching for their missing loved ones.

A glitch in the system caused the system to send SMS messages too late or not at all. This issue raised concerns among refugee families who trust us to rapidly reconnect them with their missing family members.

• As part of the family reconnection platform, we always make sure to explain to families how the process works, and how we can help them with their search. They are eager to find their loved ones why the SMS notification system needs to work. All the time.
• Unlike our other mobile outreach projects in Africa and the Middle East, the Kampala team primarily offers web registration; this limits entry to people without an Internet-enabled smart phone. Building on our partnership with MTN Uganda, we are currently exploring next steps and how we can offer mobile registrations from low-end phones.
• The REFUNITE platform should create space for online feedback from users
• More outreach and publicity is needed on REFUNITE services in Uganda
• Some refugees identified the need for literacy support
• Profile photos would ease the family reconnection process; this is especially useful in instances where many share similar names
• The SMS notifications needs to be a bit more customised and user-specific
• All SMS notifications to users should be identifiable as coming from REFUNITE

Next Steps

We are always looking to improve our family reconnection platform to make it easier for families to reconnect with their missing loved ones. We will be making some changes and fine-tuning the platform based on the feedback we received from our users in Kampala.  The experience in Kampala has motivated me to find more ways to leverage new technology to support our teams in different locations.

Connect with Purity and share your ideas: pk@refunite.org