Society-Oriented Applications Development: Investigating Users’ Values from Bangladeshi Agriculture Mobile Applications

Limited consideration of users’ values in mobile applications (apps) can lead to user disappointments and negative socio-economic consequences. Therefore, it is important to consider values in app development to avoid such adverse effects and to secure the optimum use of apps. With this aim, we conducted a case study to identify the users’ desired values that are either reflected or missing in the existing Bangladeshi agriculture mobile apps. We manually analyzed 1522 reviews from 29 existing Bangladeshi agriculture apps in Google Play by following a widely used human values theory, Schwartz’s theory of basic human values. Our results show that users of the selected apps have twenty one (21) desired individual values where eleven (11) values are reflected in the apps and ten (10) values are missing. This research provides a basis for the developers to design apps that consider users’ values. It also provides a direction on which values they should address while developing apps. Moreover, repeating this research in different domains or societies would result in society-oriented apps that are more sensitive to users’ values.