Kristen Tonga
I am a software engineer, with a specialty in mobile application development. Over the past 7 years I have worked, mostly in the private sector, on enterprise and start-up applications on 3 continents. My experience in the industry has taught me that good application development iteratively builds off the existing ecosystem, and must be done in close collaboration with end users, principles also enshrined in the UNICEF Principles for Digital Development.
Session
By 2025, HOT aims that communities in 94 countries vulnerable to disaster or experiencing multidimensional poverty are equipped and able to map the locations where they live and work. We believe that accessible mobile mapping tools are key to this effort. Since I started working for HOT in January 2022, I have done informal interviews, observations, focus groups and experiments with more than 100 regional users, primarily in East Africa, looking at the accessibility of current OSM mobile editing tools. Sharing this research with the wider community will help everyone build technology that fits the needs on the ground.