Friction

Testing messaging for savings group member notifications

I spent the last few months working with DreamStart Labs on a mobile solution for village savings groups (VSLAs). The goal is to help members keep accurate records securely, then access transaction history and balances anytime. DreamStart plans to pilot the digital service with PCI (Project Concern International) in Tanzania, so I led field research with savings group members near Lake Victoria.

VSLAs are informal savings and loan groups. They lack the security of a bank but trust among neighbors along with a shared sense of responsibility (or peer pressure) provides some assurance. Groups add cash to a collective pool of money so members can then take out loans. At the end of a cycle the loans are repaid with interest and everyone gets back the amount they contributed plus interest.

To make contributions, members buy “shares” during weekly meetings. The secretary calls each member by name and they carry their cash to the treasurer one-by-one. Amounts are recorded and passbooks are stamped. Each borrower then makes a payment on their loan one-by-one as the secretary confirms each amount. One person writes while others wait. Sums take time. Corrections can be messy. At the end, totals are announced.

VSLA secretary recording transactions during a meeting

I worked on a similar savings group digitization project in Uganda [1] so I knew the biggest challenge would be social, not technical. From a technological lens, the meeting and its friction looks like inefficiency. However, the friction serves a purpose. People can see and hear what is being recorded in the ledger and question a number while it is still in motion. The routine creates a shared reference point and a socially acceptable moment to question figures. The transparency builds trust among members.

Although all members are eligible to serve as secretary, in practice groups often narrow candidates to members they describe as trusted, literate, and having good eyesight. If the mobile app doesn’t follow the meeting flow, and the UI doesn’t offer clear affordances, it raises the bar higher. The selected member spends a long time in training to overcome the less intuitive It starts to feel like specialist work rather than shared work.

VSLA members with their passbooks

Paper ledgers are slow but they're public in a very practical way. Paper is visible and familiar. People can see what is being written. A phone is personal and smaller. It's easier to treat as one person’s knowledge. Once the record feels private, trust becomes dependent on the person holding the device rather than on the group’s ability to verify what happened. Our design challenge becomes how do we keep bookkeeping public and the group involved in verification?

It's the broader risk in digital transformation when it’s solely framed as efficiency. Removing friction can also remove the social function that friction served. Before automating a process, it helps to ask what that “inefficiency” protects. What social function does it serve?

1. Barclays. (2016, April 1). Providing lending opportunities in Uganda | Barclays [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/ErMX_wL5BM0