IDG News Service —
If you were thinking of designing or building a Web site, you'd be in luck. If you were thinking of writing a suite of financial management software, you'd be in luck. If you were even thinking of creating the next big video game, you'd be in luck. Visit any good bookstore, and the selection of self-help books and "how-to" guides leave you spoilt for choice. People have been working on these things for ages, and good and bad practice in Web site, financial software or games development -- among many others -- is well established. The biggest challenge you'd likely face is deciding which book to choose. If you're anything like me, you'll leave the store with at least a couple.
Unlike the plethora of self-help guides on the more established topics, if you were looking to do something with mobile phones, you'd likely have mixed results. There are plenty of books available extolling the virtues of Java, Python, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, C++, Symbian, Android and just about any other development environment or platform out there. Combine that with the growing field of mobile user interface design, and you'd think that pretty much everything was covered. But there is one thing missing, although you'd probably only notice if you're one of a growing number of developers turning their attention to the developing world.
Over the past few months, I've started to see something very interesting happening. Conferences that traditionally focus on "design for the developing world" are beginning to see the challenges of mobile applications development in the same light as those faced by people building more tangible products, such as solar charges or water pumps. This is something of a sea change in thinking, and a critical one at that. Building a good, appropriate technology -- say, a water irrigation system for a rural Ugandan village -- will on the surface present a very different set of challenges than those faced if you were trying to build a mobile health application for the same people.
Or would it?
Approach and best practice are cornerstones of "design for the developing world" as a discipline, and that's where the similarities lie. Books like Paul Polak's "Out of Poverty" can -- and should -- be adapted to fill the growing literature gap in the so-called "social mobile" space. If, as a developer, I can get hold of infinite numbers of books on the intricacies of mobile programming languages or user interface design, why is it so hard to find similar sources of information on how to build applications that have the best possible chance of being successfully deployed and adopted in the developing world?
