Smartphones are becoming and important tool in helping underserved
populations improve their healthcare, citizen groups increase their
reach, small entrepreneurs improve their businesses, and much more.
Six UW projects ? all connected to real users ? are tackling some
interesting problems for which existing commercial products are
inadequate, inflexible, or just too expensive.
In the ?Designing Technology for Resource-Constrained Environments?
course CSE and HCDE students teamed up over the winter and spring
quarters. First, HCDE students took the lead in developing project
ideas and their requirements. Then, CSE students took those project
ideas to working prototypes.
Below are links to the posters from the project demos.
> Global 2 Local
Helping health clinics coordinate interpreter services for the over 60
languages spoken in the SeaTac community (with the Global2Local
program from the Washington Global Health Alliance, Swedish Hospital,
HealthPoint, and the King County Dept. of Public Health).
http://change.washington.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/g2l_poster_spring_2011.pdf
> Milk Bank
A low-cost sensor (built from UW?s FoneAstra) for guiding the
flash-heat pasteurization of human breast milk to eliminate HIV (with
PATH ? a large local NGO with activities in many countries).
http://change.washington.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/milkbank_poster_final.pdf
> ODK Tables
A new tool in the Open Data Kit suite developed at UW, allows the SMS
population and queries of an on-phone database and presents a
phone-optimized table viewing interface (intended to lower the barrier
to entry by providing an alternative to cloud-hosted servers).
http://change.washington.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/ODKTablesPoster.pdf
> Nature Mapping
Extensions to ODK Collect (a tool in Open Data Kit) to allow data
collection and decision support to extract choices from a database
(local or remote) based on data already entered ? think advanced field
guide (with the Nature Mapping project in UW?s Dept. of Forestry).
http://change.washington.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/NatureMappingPoster.pdf
> Water Use
Using low-power sensing to precisely determine the pattern and
duration of water gathering activities in rural Ethiopia (in
collaboration with Prof. J. Cook, an economist in the Evans School).
http://change.washington.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/WuhaGizePosterFinal1.pdf
> Paper 2 Digital
Using smartphone cameras to translate optical mark forms to
spreadsheets automatically (a Gates Foundation funded project with
VillageReach ? a local NGO working in health clinics in Mozambique).
http://change.washington.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/p2d_poster-final-though.pdf
Find out more at
http://change.washington.edu/2011/07/uw-students-design-smartphone-apps-for-the-underserved
