For centuries, rural communities have relied on their indigenous knowledge for survival and sustenance. Indigenous Knowledge (IK) is understood as local knowledge, which is unique and traditional to a specific community. Due to the fact that IK plays an important role in the general well-being of a community, IK needs to be properly collected and protected. In view of this, the South African government undertook the development of a National Recordal System (NRS). However, User Experience (UX) in IKS has been largely ignored and as a result very little is understood of UX related challenges within the IKS field. This paper makes a case for the understanding of UX challenges confronting IK Recorders in rural communities in South Africa. Understanding UX challenges will improve on the overall quality of the captured IK and is important for the enhancement of the NRS processes, tools and the system that has been deployed.

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In this paper, we describe the development of a generalized metric for computing response time of a web service. Such a generalized metric would help to develop consensus with regards to the meanings of contracted Quality of Service (QoS) parameters; this also avoids the confusion that may arise when the same QoS parameter is understood differently by both the service provider and the consumer (e.g. response time versus execution time). Without a generalized metric for response time, contemporary monitoring approaches employ measures such as incentivizing the service consumers to honestly report their perceived service quality. Other measures involve using a dedicated monitoring service to observe the service execution and enforce the contracted QoS. This is a costly duplication of infrastructure. Having a generalized metric for each QoS parameter eliminates the need for incentive schemes or costly dedicated monitoring infrastructure.