Mobile Devices in supporting members’ participation to Village Community Banks: The Design Thinking Approach

Abstract

Village Community Banks (VICOBA) and mobile phones have become assistance to many rural societies in encountering financial problems. However, mobile phone usages to VICOBA are isolated resulting in unsubstantial benefits that do not foster member’s participation. The weak participation of members to Village Community Banks activities has been one of the major impediments to their success despite owning of mobile devices to some members. The paper applies design thinking approach to explore the situation through identifying the deficiency available in mobile devices to VICOBA microcredit programmes in enhancing member’s participation and suggest the effective usage pattern The study captured 7 groups of village community banks at Ndungu village with a total of 70 members whereas 48 female and 22 male participants. The study employed interview, observation and focus group discussion for data collection. Content analysis and coding approaches were used to analyse data and interpreting findings. The findings observed that there is a big potential in mobile phone use to village community banks activities and explicitly linking between design thinking and the qualitative data collection methods in the inception phase of the design process has been perceived to exist