1) Empowerhack

assumptions, the 

tech, the reality

3) THE BIGGER PICTURE

2) DATA (FOR HUMANS)

drawmylife, the mvp

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collaboration, hdx & HXL

a child's drawing

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a question

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"How can Terre Des Hommes use drawings collected from art therapy sessions in refugee camps to advocate for children's mental health support?"

a diverse discussion

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developers

designers

health workers

humanitarian workers

students

parents

UX analysts

test analysts

ideas v more questions

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• search portal for campaigners
• interactive image wall to raise awareness on social media
• art exhibitions, fundraisers
• unique dataset for psychological / statistical analysis

• advocacy/lobbying?
• who will use, grow & maintain this? do field workers have the capacity / environment / time?
• how do we train content creators and users of the data?
• sensitivity/privacy?
• what data should we collect?
• what data CAN we collect?
• how do we build sustainably, with others in mind?
• ...

the project(/s)

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1) a SEARCH PORTAL of images and data that campaigners can access for lobbying

2) a BACKEND for field workers to upload images and data

3) An API to share this data with the humanitarian community (later)

I'll be talking

about these two!

WAIT, API?

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"Application Programming Interface"; a kind of specification for how other things can interact with your software and access your data in a simple way.

facing walls (use post-its)

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Camille, our rep from Terre Des Hommes helping us model and prioritise the data. The most important types weren't even on our sticky notes!

a mockup

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DRAW MY LIFE - SEARCH PORTAL

highlighting

migration stages

clarifying usage of data / trust

simple

search UI

A RAILS APP

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DRAW MY LIFE - BACKEND / API

a tired, happy team

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learn. build. measure.

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BUILDING "LEAN" IS THE WISE ACCEPTANCE THAT YOU DON'T TRULY KNOW YOUR USERS YET

humans using this

assumptions

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• Who is involved? Field workers.
• They are in camps
• They scan drawings or take pictures on their phones
• They are busy, time-limited
• They might not have great internet connection in camps
• They might not have fast, modern machines in camps

assumed solution

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"SIMPLE-TO-USE IMAGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM WITH FAST, ASYNCHRONOUS, MULTI-IMAGE UPLOADING AND DATA INPUT CAPABILITIES"

or a very long sentence

The fiddly bit - process uploads behind the scenes with background workers

background workers?

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• Background jobs, placed on a queue, processed by workers
• A recommended pattern to enhance performance and user experience
• Popular background job processors for Rails apps: Resque, Sidekiq
• Think pasta! "Vapia-no."

the reality

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• All this effort is based on assumptions we haven't proven yet
• There aren't that many images we need to upload right now
• This is experimental and we need to trial it with field workers sooner rather than later
• Insight > Data and perfect tech practices at this stage. Iterate!

introducing the hdx

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an open platform for sharing data

introducing HXL

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pronounced "hek-sil"

HXL is open source

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you can get involved

take-aways

GETTING TO KNOW PEOPLE AND CONTEXTS > BUILDING FOR THINGS YOU THINK YOU KNOW

WORKING WITH TECHNOLOGY IS NOT EASY.

WORKING WITH HUMANS IS NOT EASY.

WORKING WITH BOTH IS EVEN TOUGHER.

WORKING TOGETHER MAKES IT SO MUCH EASIER.

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT AND SELF-DEVELOPMENT GO HAND IN HAND. GET USED TO NOT KNOWING THINGS LEARNING NEW THINGS EVERY DAY. (ATTITUDE IS KEY)

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links for later

• EmpowerHack 
• Terre Des Hommes
• Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) 
• Humanitarian Exchange Language (HXL)
• HXL open source tools on GitHub
• The Lean Startup Principles
• Heroku's awesome intro to jobs / queuing systems
• APIs on Rails (free e-book)
• API blueprint (great for prototyping!)

Ask me things!

twitter.com/krissygoround

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