Monday, November 08, 2010

Erik Hersman (Interaction 11 keynote speaker) on design in Africa. A Johnny Holland interview.

Johnny Holland posted an interview today with Ushahidi founder Erik Hersman, one of the Interaction11 conference keynote speakers. JH talked with Erik about his hopes and dreams for crowdsourcing, and the role interaction designers can play in fulfilling that dream. Erik also talks about how he wants to touch on some of the constraints and cultural differences impacting design in Africa.

Amplify’d from johnnyholland.org



Recently we got a chance to interview Erik Hersman. He is the co-founder of Ushahidi, a web application created to map the reported incidents of violence happening during the post-election crisis in Kenya.

For those who don’t know you. Could you please introduce yourself?

Certainly. I grew up in Africa, Sudan and Kenya to be exact, and I live here in Nairobi with my family. I’m intrigued by the way technology helps us overcome inefficiencies in the system, of which we have our fair share on the continent. This led me to start blogging at WhiteAfrican and AfriGadget many years ago, and it was the driver for me co-founding Ushahidi and building the iHub this year.

Read more at johnnyholland.org
 

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