Ehtesab
Just as I was thinking nobody ever reads blog posts anymore, along comes Sara Wahedi, a social innovator / entrepreneur / inspiring person who had read a post I wrote about digital democracy and decided to reach out to see if I wanted to help her with a related project — an app called Ehtesab (Afghani for “Accountability”) that would allow the citizens of Kabul to report incidents of civic concern (like say — an undetonated bomb in the street), report corruption, and connect with elected leaders.
I offered some thoughts on how to approach the project and put together a demo that Sara used to secure an incubation arrangement with Netlinks, an Afghani app developer. I had the pleasure of providing a bit of creative direction for their team who designed, coded and launched the final product.
In any design project, I do my best to empathize with potential users and put myself in their position, but with concerns like bandwidth limitations, multiple languages and cultural differences, Ehtesab provided an exceptional opportunity to stretch my awareness into new territory.
