Fisheries App Support

Organization: USAID Indonesia

Challenge Owner Name: Muhammad Yusuf, Febrina Berlianti

Contact: myusuf@wwf.id

Video Link

Challenge Statement:

Data about the catch of seafood is essential for managing fisheries, traceability and marketing to buyers yet is often collected with pen and paper from fishers. Apps for collecting this data on smartphones are starting to emerge but in many instances a lack of familiarity from fishers may prevent broad-scale uptake.

Background:

The ubiquity of smartphones is truly remarkable. As a result, the digitization of data from small-scale fisheries is more in reach than at any previous point. The cost of devices has come down greatly and cellular connectivity reaches many hard to reach corners of the globe. Unfortunately, fishers are not often a young, tech-savvy group. They often need substantial training to gain comfort in the use of fisheries data tools. Even with proper training, fishers may run into issues with the apps when they are trying to use them at sea.

Possible Solution:

An effective solution to this challenge will make in-app support to aid fishers technologically feasible. The solution should bear in mind that fishers may need help navigating the app and in other times, they may need help troubleshooting an error. An effective solution should require low bandwidth since fishers may be at sea and operating on cellular data networks. Interfaces should be intuitive and consider that fishers maybe busy doing other tasks. Solutions could leverage AI-enabled chat bots to aid fishers. Considering the diversity of languages used by fishers globally, the solution could include a translation tool so customer support technicians in only a small set of languages are needed. Fishers often operate very early in the morning and very late at night; hours outside of typically customer support timing. Effective solutions could explore technological work-arounds that help bridge those timing challenges.

Resources:

• Nemo fishers data collection app
• MyFish, a seafood traceability app from WWF Indonesia
• [Sample seafood EPCIS event data – GDST team will supply]