Hello everyone!

Hi everyone, I’m a research fellow at the Berkman Center, working on developing framework for UX, cultural context, and technical feedback for open source public interest projects. 5 years ago I founded a non profit organization called Localization Lab that works on tech adoption through collaborative localization. Before starting the organization, I often encountered developers not interacting at all with the end users, sometimes over years of product development. This not only has a huge impact on the usability and security of the tool, but also on the diversity of the user base, as they are not involving people from the focused group as an integral part of the process. On the other hand, the people from these communities, who often come from developing countries, also miss out on socioeconomic opportunities that come with having some experience working on a product, design, coding, or project management. We do co-design through structured exercises with end-users, UX designers, and developers, and I’m looking forward to learning the history and different theories in the class.

So, I want to move away from the equity in access to technology to the right to participate in the technology.

I want to incorporate principles of co-design with developers we work with, because so often we see this colonial narrative in public interest tech where developers know what’s best for end users without seeking their input or cooperation. I want to offer some principles applicable to all the projects that we work on, to make them more usable and more secure. I would love to see this as a principle in international development too, where there is a similar problem in the right to participate in the design, solutions, and development of one’s own community.