The challenge:

After some ethnographic research, a real insight was gained: young women between 10 and 21 feel that they have nobody to talk to about life, love, and sex.

They are often ignorant and ignored because of this lack of mentorship. HIVSA and the Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Foundation tasked us to help make a difference. 

The approach:

The idea was to develop a community where young girls (who, at the time, primarily communicated through Mxit) could ask questions, get advice, and generally feel as if they have a big sister.

We designed and developed a range of digital channels that housed a lifestyle magazine plus an advice column for young women.

My focus was primarily on Mxit where I led the UX work.

• The “Ask Choma” feature where girls could anonymously ask any question that they were too scared to before. “Choma” would answer up to 10 questions per day. In the first few months, over 13 000 questions were asked by around 178 000 users.

• A gamified quiz game where girls answered a mix of serious and fun questions. The game was based on a Candy Crush model, where if a girl got 3 answers incorrect in a row, they could only try again the next day. This created an enormously viral game that reached thousands of young girls.

• We used the data on the correct v. incorrect answers to develop new content for the magazine on Mxit. For e.g. if a large proportion of girls were getting pregnancy questions wrong, the content would be buffed up to support that knowledge. We also linked related articles at the end of each game session so that the young women had the opportunity to learn.