Ustaad: A Mobile Platform for Teaching Illiterates.

According to a recent statistical analysis conducted in 2018, more than 40% of the population has no reading or writing skills especially in rural areas of Pakistan. On the contrary, the mobile phone users have grown at a very steep rate even with a stagnant literacy rate. We formed a user-driven approach to research, develop and test a prototype mobile application that could be used to teach illiterates basic reading, writing and counting skills without using traditional schooling techniques. This first of a kind application provided the user the ability to customize their own learning plan. Focusing on native language Urdu, the application teaches them the required skill they need for daily life activities such as writing their own name, scenario-based calculations, identifying commonly used words.