Creating Tools that Locals Can Shape

Since most of our work is in low resource settings, most of the people who use our technologies have very little education.  We call these people "low level users".  Even though these users have little to no education, we still find that using technologies to help them share information is incredibly helpful.  The most important thing to remember when designing tools for them is to build on the skills and resources that they are already familiar with.

Learning and growing: from my first programming experience to the present

Remembering back to college, when I was first being taught how to program computers with HTML, my teacher demonstrated a web application he had made to calculate electricity expenses by entering the previous and current months’ electric meter numbers.  That moment was so amazing, and I looked at the demo without blinking.  I almost forgot to breathe as he said, “We were about to be able to do the same thing by the end of the day."  That was how engaging my first day as a software developer was for me.