Mazi Umntanakho "Know Your Child": An Accessible Social-Emotional Assessment Tool for Children in Low-Income South African Communities.

Ensuring proper developmental and behavioral assessments for children is crucial, particularly in contexts where resources are scarce, developmental delays carry a stigma, and specialists are lacking. However, adequate and culturally appropriate methods for screening and assessing children in the Majority World still need to be improved. In this context, mobile technology can be crucial in providing accessible assessments and screenings that better fulfill the needs. In this work, we present the design and development of Mazi Umntanakho "Know Your Child," a conversational agent on WhatsApp that supports South African home visitors in assessing and tracking children’s socio-emotional skills. The agent is based on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) and International Development and Early Learning Assessment (IDELA) to provide culturally appropriate assessments. The agent is personalized to user preferences and language and provides feedback and advice in various multimedia formats, including infographics, video, audio, and photos.