
What I Learned from Building an App for Low-Income Americans - prostoalex
http://www.fastcolabs.com/3038792/what-i-learned-from-building-an-app-for-low-income-americans
======
soneca
> _The best thing about my time at Significance Labs was meeting incredible
> people like Jason and Angel. The most fun I had last summer was sitting in a
> room chatting to housecleaners._

This ending shows how hard it is to escape the "feeling/looking good rather
than doing good" trap. This motivation about meeting and relating to people
and realities outside of your usual social network are legitimate, but
dangerous. If you don't evolve pass through this phase, you will end up
getting used to this alien world, and it will become routine. And you will see
the problematic and boring issues about chatting with housecleaners and also
the flaws of Jason and Angel.

This, in itself, is enlightning. You stop considering yourself disconnected
from your users or the people you are trying to help. The time has come when
you might _actually_ create some impact. But you must find your motivating
above this fugacious desire to be contrarian among your peers. If your
motivation ends when you feel you already have enough stories to share with
your friends and that the "i am good people" stamp is already attached to your
personality in your own and other's view; then you quit. And make no impact.
Muhammad Yunus took decades to create impact.

I don't want to doubt the author's motivation, or predict that she won't cause
any impact. Just that defining meeting interesting people (who are just boring
people you don't know enough, like the rest of us) as the best thing on a
"what i learned" post is definitely a red flag.

~~~
tootie
I won't say you're wrong, but this an awfully cynical top comment.

~~~
nine_k
I don't see a problem with that. Note that the comment is both correct and
polite. It just replaces some warm and fuzzy emotions with sober reasoning.

The truth is sometimes bitter.

~~~
Dewie
> The truth is sometimes bitter.

And HN is often bitter. And cynical.

~~~
kefka
And there's an awful lot of truths here. That's why I'm here.

------
roneesh
I encounter these "civic engagement" apps every week. Honestly, unless the
author plans to actually work hard on this, I find these kinds of apps more
damaging than helpful.

No one benefits from a half-baked half-implemented app, which these kinds
almost always are. If they are fully-implemented in maintained, then it's a
different story, apps can change lives, but it's hard long work to change a
life. But if the app is abandoned or half-done, then really the client will
end up viewing the developer more or less like the other scam artists they
have to fend off.

In my opinion, the approach itself is pretty flawed. You as a talented person
come help those less fortunate than you for 12 weeks, it seems like a win-win,
but really I think most sides just end up frustrated. Off the top of my head,
a better solution might be to actually try and build your own cleaning
business with that community and then see what tools you need. Software is
software, cleaning is cleaning, you can't be a domain expert in one and then
just know what will work in the other, I think you need deep expertise in
both.

~~~
ams6110
Disagree with the premise that apps can change lives, at least in the way I
think you mean. Apps are conveniences, that's all. An app is not going going
get a person out of poverty, unless the person is the developer and can sell
the app to people who have the disposable income to pay for conveniences.

~~~
egd
We're a bit cynical here because we tend to make frivolous stuff and market it
as life-changing, but conveniences can actually add up for people in need. The
problem with poverty, as the article notes, is that it's only partially about
money - along with a scarcity of money comes a scarcity of time, a scarcity of
information, and a scarcity of opportunity. If you can give someone below the
poverty line more time or information, it may not change their life, but it
can allow space for things that do.

------
cmarschner
Thanks for sharing. In the upcoming years a billion people will come online
that have less than $20000, $5000 or $2000 per year. They will have less
education and less foreign language proficiency than the current internet
users. At the same time the internet will provide the opportunity for them to
make more informed decisions and become more productive. The sets of problems
might differ vastly from the rich people's problems that are solved by the
current internet ecosystem. I would love to hear some more perspectives on
this matter.

~~~
nkuttler
> and less foreign language proficiency

Really curious about how you came to that conclusion. You don't exactly see a
lot of multilingualism in most developed countries, where people are also most
likely to consume content in their own language, or don't have too much
economic pressure to learn other languages. Stable borders and a working
education system where people learn a foreign language for a few years without
using it much later might not necessarily lead to a high language proficieny.

Edit: a word

~~~
comrade1
I'm not sure why you would say that. Here in Europe most people, even the
working class, have some understanding of multiple languages.

Here in the german speaking part of switzerland most people, even the grocery
store clerk, speak english as well as german. And when you get into the middle
class many speak three or more languages (english, german, french, etc).

The u.s. is uniquely mono-lingual.

~~~
Kurtz79
"I'm not sure why you would say that. Here in Europe most people, even the
working class, have some understanding of multiple languages."

Sorry, but this is just not true for "Europe" in general.

If you go to Italy, France, Spain (large countries with their own languages
where basically all media is transalted/dubbed) you will will find out that
also many people with higher education rarely go beyond very basic English
(and, btw, I'm Italian, live in Spain and deal with French customers).

This is probably different in Germany, Austria, Switzterland, Nordic
countries... the fact is that "Europe" is still made up of many different
countries, it's very hard to speak in general.

~~~
adamors
People whose mother tongue is a romance language usually speak at least
another romance language one fluently. Foreign language != English.

~~~
mogrim
They don't in Spain. They might be able to read it (just about), and given a
week or two on holiday they might be able to understand a fair bit... but
fluently? No.

~~~
personlurking
There was a recent article (I forget if it was in Spanish or Portuguese) that
said the Spanish have higher fluency than Portuguese when it comes to English.
Living in Portugal, having traveled in Spain, and having Spanish friends, we
all had a lil' laugh at that. Of all the Portuguese people I've met living
here, only two weren't fluent in English (one was an old man, the other was
conversational).

~~~
icebraining
Only two non-fluent? Really? I think you were either extremely lucky or have a
rather low bar for "fluency". I'm Portuguese, and a software developer, and
yet I know barely anyone I'd consider fluent (myself included) - especially
when it comes to the 50+ demography, since at the time it was common to have
French classes instead of English.

That said, we do have a better accent than the Spanish, probably thanks to
watching TV shows and films subtitled instead of dubbed. Watching TV in Spain
is painful :|

~~~
personlurking
I'd like to think my bar is pretty normal, but I admit my friends and
acquantances are late 20s/early 30s, live in Lisbon, and have pretty frequent
interactions with foreigners.

For example, though, I'd consider you fluent, based on your comment.

~~~
icebraining
_have pretty frequent interactions with foreigners_

Yeah, but that's not exactly common for the average citizen. At least, they
don't interact with tourists or students, who are more likely to speak
English, but with immigrants, who are _usually_ even less fluent.

 _For example, though, I 'd consider you fluent, based on your comment._

Well, in writing, sure. But then I open my mouth :)

------
hereonbusiness
> In fact, a higher proportion of low-income Americans rely on their
> smartphone for Internet access than the population as a whole. A 2013 Pew
> research survey showed that 45% of users living in households with an annual
> income of less than $30,000 mostly use their phone to go online, compared
> with 27% of those living in households with an annual income of $75,000 or
> more.

If the situation is similar in the rest of the world, could this then be the
driving force behind the trend of ever increasing screen size (phablets)?

I mean, if a smartphone was my only means of accessing the internet you can
bet I would want it to have a big screen.

~~~
lmm
> If the situation is similar in the rest of the world, could this then be the
> driving force behind the trend of ever increasing screen size (phablets)?

I don't think it's a trend that needs explaining - it just makes sense. I'm
baffled by how long it took us to get to the 6" form factor.

~~~
hereonbusiness
Now I imagine a brainstorming session at Apple a couple of years ago;

Jobs: Ok, we are going clockwise, start.

Engineer1: We should use a 5" screen in the new iPhone 5, Samsung will go 5",
and it even has a 5 in the name.

Jobs: Why the hell should we do that, just because Samsung is doing it?

Engineer1: To improve user experience for using the internet and watching
media content?

Jobs: I don't see where you are coming from, why wouldn't they just use their
iPad or MacBook for that?

Jobs: Next!

Engineer1: But, but ... some of them don't ...

Jobs: I said next.

Engineer1: Ah, nevermind.

------
tedchs
I was really hoping for some concrete app-development lessons learned. For
example, was it important to target old/low-end versions of phones? The
article both says SMS is a lowest-common-denominator, but also that
smartphones are more prevalent than one might assume; what was the outcome
from those considerations? I noticed the food stamps app presents one question
at a time, with a "Next" button after each one. Was that approach discovered
after user testing, or was there just an assumption that that would be more
successful for the user base than showing all the prompts on one screen?

Also, I am excited the IT industry has evolved to where these point-solution
apps are both easy to build and plentiful. This is the "long tail" in action.

There is a lot of backend infrastructure that enables what I call "UX apps",
where 90%+ of the effort is on frontend design and functional requirements,
and very little consideration needs to be paid to infrastructure issues like
OSes, networking, high availability, etc. The enablers here are things like
PaaS, powerful mobile and browser clients, and reliable and prevalent
communications (cellular / WiFi).

------
kokey
It's really nice to read that this sort of thing is being done. I believe
technology can be a great enabler to create new low and semi skilled jobs, or
improve current jobs. House cleaning and related duties I always felt has
great potential when combined with technology. You could have a person come in
and take and capture your requirements regarding cleaning, packing, organising
parts of the house, including handling the laundry with a laundry service, or
you could capture this information yourself with an app. Then you can have
casual or full time workers use an app to guide them through the house and the
requirements, even if they haven't been to the particular house before. It
could organise and schedule rounds of these people serving multiple households
and schedule laundry pickups and drop off around it. It could allow people to
pick their 'shifts' and move them in advance. It could encourage more people
to take up shifts when there's a spike in demand.

~~~
toyg
In practice this doesn't work for most people, because effectively you're
allowing someone to get into your house, so you want to know him/her. We first
signed up with an agency, but they kept changing our cleaners so we gave up
and went for a broker, who "captured our requirements" and procured us a
stable cleaner we could trust in the long run.

Automation maximizes efficiency, but some human elements often cannot be
replaced.

------
username__
I like this article.

Most of my friends and family are the working poor and for years I have been
struggling to find a way to give back in a meaningful way. I would love to
help them technology-wise, but I've come to realize is that they are not
facing a technology problem -- they are facing a problem of opportunity, or
lack thereof.

Instead, I've been offering them free training and equipment to learn what I
do (software engineering), as I know there is a demand in the area that has
not been filled and they can get those jobs if they put in a few months of
time and dedicate themselves. Even if they couldn't get those jobs, they could
get an office job and 'automate it away' to impress their bosses (this is
exactly how I started).

So far, I've had surprisingly little interest. That said, they are not ones to
take handouts...

~~~
toyg
_> So far, I've had surprisingly little interest. _

Not everyone can be an automation/programming geek. I know I'd rather work a
low-pressure, no-customer-facing, low-salary job than a high-salary, high-
pressure PR job, even if handed out to me on a platter. For some people it's
the opposite.

Also, you "struggling to find a way to give back" can come across as
patronising.

~~~
username__
I suppose I might be coming off as patronizing, but I only offer to teach
those who have expressed an interest first.

------
jroseattle
> housecleaners prefer to be paid in cash (so mobile payments were out),
> mainly use text messaging, and sometimes don’t want to reveal professional
> information online, especially if they were undocumented.

We have many users who fall into the lower-income bracket, and understanding
their needs at a design level is very challenging. Many functions that we
might take for granted within an application -- logging in, downloading,
installing from the app store, etc. -- can be foreign if not altogether new
concepts. We have to deliver success, error and information messages to users
who fundamentally won't read or anticipate what is happening.

The SMS/text scenario is a big deal for us. We have users who interact with
our service solely through their text message application -- nothing installed
from our service on their end. When we offer a chance to use our mobile app,
we have been asked "what's the app store?"

That said, it's rewarding to build something that makes someone's life easier
for them. We are certainly falling in the _do good_ camp.

------
VLM
"What he really needed was a steady job which would provide him with an income
for his family. No mobile app I could build in three months was going to
deliver that."

In summary, our economy is too small for our population, so minorities and
others defined as undesirables get heartlessly kicked out of the economy. I
don't like it, but that's the facts of our ever shrinking economic system and
ever expanding population. So their plan is to use technology designed for the
people still inside the system, on people outside the system, because by being
insiders they are morally superior and should culturally imperialize the folks
kicked out of the economy. And if it works inside the system, being very
provincial, they think that all that exists is the inside of their system, so
obviously we need to re-educate those in another system to see things the one
true insider way. And despite having been kicked out of the economy, they are
assumed to still have something that can be harvested from them that insiders
value that isn't already being harvested by efficient megacorps (walmart has
all their money, you aren't getting it). And somehow its assumed imperialism
is not only a good idea, but it should work if they just wish hard enough,
despite centuries of past experience showing imperialism mostly just screws
things up. The whole thing is just nonsense on a big picture systemic level.

People kicked out of our economy already use logic and reasoning and
technology, at least as much as our educational system permits them, to solve
their own real problems, and this isn't one of them. In an era of hyper
pervasive media they don't need to be shown how the remaining rich/lucky
people live, they're drowning in it from the media and it causes little other
than resentment. If the square peg doesn't fit in the round hole, working
smarter not harder fails just as bad as getting a bigger hammer or pretending
there is no fundamental as designed by our oligarchs mismatch.

------
anigbrowl
_Nevertheless we often had trouble persuading housecleaners and other domestic
workers to come to interviews, even though we paid $25 per hour, which was
higher than their regular hourly rate. They didn’t know us and it looked too
good to be true._

You could pay $25/hour for some product interviews, but how long does that
last? Say someone does 4 interviews with you for a total of $200.
Housecleaning for a new client might pay less per hour, but it also has the
potential to be a steady gig which might yield a few thousand a year in
additional income whereas this app probably won't. One also has to factor in
the non-negligible time cost of getting to and from the interview. It's not
really enough for someone to get excited about unless they have nothing else
going on; people who work hard place a high value on their limited leisure
time, and giving product design interviews sounds more like a way for the
interviewer to pad a resume than anything that will deliver a long-term
benefit to the interviewee.

As someone who spent quite a lot of time at the bottom of the economic
pyramid, doing similarly casual labor, there's probably not a lot of value
that an app cobbled together in a few months can deliver. The most useful
things you can do with a smartphone are:

1\. receive calls, email and text messages

2\. Maps app and public transit scheduling to get you to your gigs on time

3\. web browsing to check Craigslist

Those three things deliver a _lot_ of value because they save a _lot_ of time.
It's unlikely that a shallow app is going to deliver anything like as much
utility, and the utility it does add has to be weighed against the time it
takes to use.

After that your income comes down to knowing whatever job it is that you do
and being able to set prices and stick to them. The latter is quite important;
some people are a pleasure to do business with, others will try and beat you
down or trick you out of money. I've had people that owed $150 for furniture
removal lie about the rate they negotiated and try to pay only $100, and when
called out on it they shrugged and said 'no harm in trying.' That's a lot
harder to deal with for someone who doesn't have English as a first language
or the confidence to call someone's bluff.

The best way to empower a poor person is to teach them something that allows
them to charge more money, which is typically a different skill as low-paid
laborers tend to be price takers more than price makers and competition is
friendly but intense. Short of a new work skill, the other thing a lot of poor
people could benefit from is a basic course in microeconomics from a labor
perspective - not so they can quote Adam Smith but so they have a consistent
way to model things like opportunity cost and production possibilities and
make decisions in less time instead of puzzling over things and wondering if
they could have made a better deal.

Not everyone can do this, but basic micro does not involve a lot of math and
gives people a systematic way to think about the economic problems that they
already face on a regular basis. Developing a course based on the practical
problems like deciding which of two mutually exclusive jobs to take or how to
maximize profit would have enormous value. For a housecleaner, say, you could
figure out that offering 'natural cleaning products' might have a cost in both
consumables and additional cleaning time amounting to $4/hour, but clients who
care about that may be willing to pay an extra $5/hour (or more), yielding
greater profits.

~~~
hyperliner
It really bothers me when people take advantage of workers who do manual labor
for what we privileged would consider "little."

Talking with an acquaintance, she was "calling the maid to cancel tomorrow." I
said, "but it's too late." Response: "Oh, not, she can come back next week."
My answer: "sure, but this week she will be short $100 to make the rent."

She looked at me like I was a Martian. I don't think I made a dent in her
understanding.

~~~
anigbrowl
A great example. People in low-wage jobs who face situations like that usually
lack two things the know-how to set business terms and conditions like
cancellation fees, and the leverage to enforce them (when losing a client
could be financially very painful). People who are poorly educated, illegal
aliens, parolees and others often have difficulty learning about or asserting
rights they might have under city, state or federal labor laws.

Now, I know that the original goal here was to find better ways to empower
poor people with technology, not to set up an additional social service. I
thought the example in the article of an app that helped people submit an
application for food stamps (saving many hours of standing in line at an
office) was right on point.

One idea that occurred to me since I wrote the grandparent comment last night
(and forgot to post before I went to bed) was to flip an existing concept on
its head. The article mentioned a tool for people in Mexico who were outside
the regular financial system to establish some sort of credit profile that
would allow them access to lower-cost cellphone plans. Maybe a useful thing
for poor people in the US with smartphones would be a parallel 'client credit
report' that would let casual and informal workers alert each other about
problem clients who attempt to evade payment or behave abusively, as well as
hooking them up with other resources, eg there are probably people with
paralegal experience who would be happy to draft a demand letter for a small
fixed fee. Think LinkedIn for low-income people as a way to vet potential
clients and avoid persistent troublemakers. The best thing about NeatStreak
(the author's app) was not the housecleaning-specific stuff (although that's
helpful) but automating the booking/billing process, which is something that a
_lot_ of casual/informal workers need.

Of course an approach like this turns up some interesting legal questions,
because reversing the usual top-down direction of economic influence is
politically loaded and would upset some people. But I think sooner or later
there will be demand for such functionality; the 'sharing economy' we are
moving into matches buyers to sellers effectively for many casual services,
but the firms that establish such new markets are typically also seeking to be
monopolistic brokers and their economic interests are not necessarily aligned
with those of the people who actually provide the services; to the extent that
the latter are organized, it could disenfranchise the job brokers. I think
it's only a matter of time before established players attempt to capitalize on
that, so that the SEIU attempts to organize Taskrabbit workers or the
Teamsters try to sign up Uber and Lyft drivers, and I'm not so enthused about
that because I think unions can often end up as rent-seeking organizations
themselves. Perhaps technology has the potential to provide low-income workers
with more practical organizational benefits by automating the information-
brokerage function of trade unions without the administrative overhead.

------
comrade1
This is a good example of trying to create demand where there was none before.
This can work if you have a really great salesperson, but it's hard.

Also, I see your survey results on smartphone usage but I'm not convinced. In
my experience poor people have spotty data plans - either no data or very
limited, and only use their phone for sms and voice.

I'm making some decent money - not huge amounts - providing a service to low-
income Americans. I have a server application that is used by 211
organizations, suicide hotlines, government groups, etc to communicate over
sms with mostly low-income Americans.

~~~
dannyr
"This is a good example of trying to create demand where there was none
before."

In the article, they are conducting user interviews to figure out demand. They
are not creating demand themselves.

"Also, I see your survey results on smartphone usage but I'm not convinced. In
my experience poor people have spotty data plans - either no data or very
limited, and only use their phone for sms and voice."

WiFi is also pretty prevalent here in the US. Even when I traveled to other
countries, WiFi can be found in most cities.

It's possible that your experience may just be yours and other people's
experiences are different.

~~~
comrade1
I can't remember the last time I saw an open access point. You can't expect
someone to buy a cheeseburger or coffee everytime they want to check their
smartphone app.

Most people on hn have no idea what it's like to be poor. Checking your email
is an ordeal - have to go to the library for example - and infrequent.

But everyone has a cellphone and even tracphones can do SMS (but can be costly
so you want to make it count)

~~~
Pxtl
What? Where I live every library, McDonald's, and Tim Horton's has free WiFi
no purchase necessary, so if you want to check something it's at the nearest
plaza.

(too cheap for overpriced Canadian data plan)

~~~
ismarc
You're showing your ignorance of what it's like to be poor. It takes time and
money to get to those locations, two things the poor don't have. The bus trip,
or train, or gas in a car that's used has to cost less than what the app would
gain them and that money/time needs to not be slotted for anything else (such
as making it to and from jobs until payday).

Someone elsewhere in the thread said that the poor aren't good with managing
money. From my experience, it's the opposite. Imagine you're behind on every
bill, with less money coming in than it costs to have electricity, get to and
from work, eat and pay rent. You literally rotate which bills get paid based
on what will be shut off next. If someone gives you $100, you could pay more
of the bills, or put it in savings, or spend it on entertainment/something
fun. In 3 months, no matter what happens, you'll be back in the same state you
are now. Spending it on entertainment to feel like a person isn't a bad
decision at that point. It's just not one that those who live privileged lives
would make

