Mobile devices have proven to be a hugely powerful tool for data collection in the developing world. NGOs and government agencies are able to leverage mobile platforms like Open Data Kit (ODK) to collect clean, complex data, even without the presence of an Internet connection. Rich interactions with this data, however, still require mobile programming expertise and a custom-built solution. This is prohibitive for many organizations in the developing world, where web developers outnumber mobile developers. In an effort to harness this potential, we have created an app-building framework that makes building fully functional, disconnected mobile apps as simple as writing a web page. This web-based approach brings quick iteration, real-time updates, and IDE-free debugging to mobile apps. The framework, called ODK Tables, handles database management (using SQL) and synchronization with a one-click install server on App Engine. It runs on Android and emphasizes ease of app creation over cross-platform support. Tables apps are coded as webpages with a thin JavaScript API on two global objects that access the database and control the flow of the app. We describe the platform, its key abstractions, and the app-building process. The talk will discuss basic apps that were created in a matter of hours and deployed as offline, fully featured mobile apps with global health researchers and the Red Cross in Kenya and Jamaica.
Speaker Bio
I am a computer science PhD student at the University of Washington, where I get to travel and write apps. My work focuses on mobile systems, particularly those targeted at developing regions. I've interned at Yelp and will be interning at Google this summer for the Chrome team. In my spare time I like to birdwatch. My favorite authors are Hemingway and Coetzee.
Web-Based Mobile Apps for the Developing World
The story you'd like to tell
Mobile devices have proven to be a hugely powerful tool for data collection in the developing world. NGOs and government agencies are able to leverage mobile platforms like Open Data Kit (ODK) to collect clean, complex data, even without the presence of an Internet connection. Rich interactions with this data, however, still require mobile programming expertise and a custom-built solution. This is prohibitive for many organizations in the developing world, where web developers outnumber mobile developers. In an effort to harness this potential, we have created an app-building framework that makes building fully functional, disconnected mobile apps as simple as writing a web page. This web-based approach brings quick iteration, real-time updates, and IDE-free debugging to mobile apps. The framework, called ODK Tables, handles database management (using SQL) and synchronization with a one-click install server on App Engine. It runs on Android and emphasizes ease of app creation over cross-platform support. Tables apps are coded as webpages with a thin JavaScript API on two global objects that access the database and control the flow of the app. We describe the platform, its key abstractions, and the app-building process. The talk will discuss basic apps that were created in a matter of hours and deployed as offline, fully featured mobile apps with global health researchers and the Red Cross in Kenya and Jamaica.
Speaker Bio
I am a computer science PhD student at the University of Washington, where I get to travel and write apps. My work focuses on mobile systems, particularly those targeted at developing regions. I've interned at Yelp and will be interning at Google this summer for the Chrome team. In my spare time I like to birdwatch. My favorite authors are Hemingway and Coetzee.