Designing Software to Prevent Child Marriage Globally

Abstract

Child marriage is any marriage where one or both of the participants is under the age of 18. Today, more than 12 million such marriages happen every year [11]. Giving children and the communities around them access to information about the dangers of child marriage is crucial in order to change the cultural norms that enable and perpetuate it. Mobile applications have so far seen sparse use to combat this problem. This paper covers a project that looks to evaluate the effect of different design options for mobile applications in this field. It covers seven different design approaches, as well as the testing and evaluation of these in a case study amongst youth in Malawi. During Spring 2019, an initial testing round will be held there in cooperation with Plan International. There, we will gather feedback from local youths on what they know and think about child marriage, as well as seeing how they interact with the designs we have made.