Lifestyle Africa SMS technology development
HBC
The research team met with and vetted multiple US and SA technology companies to describe the project’s SMS development and programming needs and obtain quotes. The research team eventually decided to contract with a US-based company that had prior experience and vested interest in academic research and HBC via SMS. Specifically, the company had advertised on their website a previous partnership with US academic researchers to implement an HBC text messaging program in a foreign country. During initial meetings with the company, the CEO provided an in-depth overview of how their team approached international SMS campaigns with academic partners in the past and provided some initial “ballpark” thoughts on pricing for the project. Given this company’s well-aligned experience and their proposal of a price within the project’s budget, the research team quickly decided to hire and execute a contract.Early in the timeline of the overall project, multiple months of weekly planning meetings between the company’s project managers, engineers, and The developer designed a web-based system that allowed for enrollment of program participants and their personal mobile phone numbers into the SMS program. Because there were multiple program locations with associated cohorts moving through the program at somewhat different points in time, the systems allowed for tracking of each location’s progress throughout the program; this ensured the appropriate session-specific and reminder messages were delivered to the relevant participants in sync with their location’s progress through the curriculum.The technology company also walked the research team through the pros and cons of using a 5-digit “short code” versus a 10-digit phone number. For example, some participants’ mobile devices may block 5-digit short code messages, misidentifying them for spam messages. On the other hand, participants may mistake messages from 10-digit numbers as coming from a person with the wrong phone number instead of the program. The CAB was consulted and indicated that most local participants would be more familiar with short codes, so researchers decided to select a 5-digit short code as the sender number from which 