The Importance of Building Simple, Realistic Solutions
How can individuals use their skills to target real-world issues and create something impactful? In this spotlight, Blueprint alumni Jason Won and Alton Zheng share their experiences and thoughts about what matters when it comes to developing solutions for social good.
Right Intention, Wrong Solution
At Blueprint, Jason and Alton both worked with Project Homeless Connect (PHC), a nonprofit organization that holds several large-scale events every year providing the homeless population in San Francisco with vital resources including medical care and employment assistance.
In 2014, Blueprint stepped in to build an Android app to carry out these functions. When the app was completed and handed off, the project leader, Byron Zhang, did his best to help smooth out the transition. However, there were some minor bugs with the original code that made it difficult for PHC to make full use of what the team at Blueprint had created.
“Not only did the bugs made it harder for the people at PHC to use it reliably at events with over thousands of people coming in, but the fact that we chose to build an Android app also made fixing these bugs so much more difficult for them,” says Jason. The app was complicated and needed maintenance, but PHC didn’t have the people to continually maintain the project.
“Our team had built 90% of the project, but the last 10% was what mattered.”
Keeping Things Minimal
Upon graduation, Jason and Alton decided to take the project into their own hands. Their goal was to completely rebuild and simplify the application.
This time around, their approach was completely different. Firstly, they aimed to build a web app instead of an Android app which would have to be deployed to the Play Store and would only be used 5 times a year.
“The original app had its own database, and that added a lot of complexity,” says Alton. “When rebuilding the app, we realized that it didn’t need it’s own database, and that we could just directly sync everything to Salesforce.”
They were also more realistic with what their minimal viable product would look like. They would start with something small by including only the check-in feature and making sure it was bug-free first, instead of adding on everything at once. Worries about appearance were pushed to the back of their minds.
In just a month, with about 80 hours of work between the two of them, they managed to give PHC a working prototype (Github repo).
How to Build Solutions for Social Good
When asked to give advice for individuals trying to use technology to help the world, Jason stressed the importance of being realistic with your goals. “When building solutions for nonprofits, you need to know how much time it’s going to take, and how much time you can dedicate to the project,” he says.
He stressed that the issue with many solutions shipped off to nonprofits is that they aren’t fully sustainable yet. Instead, each project should be built to the point where the non-profit can use it sustainably without anyone at the NPO touching it.
Both alumni did note that it was encouraging that more and more people were willing to pursue meaningful and impactful projects. If someone has the drive and the time, Blueprint has a nonprofit database that anyone can consult if they want to build something that can change lives.
“But oftentimes people don’t realize until halfway through their project that they don’t have the time to carry out their app through to completion,” says Jason. “To avoid this, expect that the project will take double the time you initially estimated. Will you still be able to ship a completed product?”
Another pitfall that our alumni mentioned is when people think their product has to look beautiful, and has to be cool from a tech standpoint. They expressed that when starting your project, you should always be focused on the problem and working towards building something minimal.
“Whether the product uses all the cool frameworks or has incredibly fancy UI, it won’t matter if you can’t finish it or if the project doesn’t address the end goal.”
The main takeaway was to have a clear plan at the very beginning. Know the problem you are solving, understand and simplify what needs to be built, and be realistic with how much you can contribute.
But both of them emphasize that even if you aren’t entirely sure about the scope of your project, sometimes your best bet is just to go for it. “After all, the world always needs more people who are trying to build clean and simple solutions for problems that matter.”
During their time at Blueprint, both alumni contributed to several projects, with Jason serving as Project Leader for Food Shift and with Alton Zheng serving as Internal Vice President. Currently, Jason is working at Color Genomics, a healthtech startup, and Alton is working on infrastructure at LinkedIn.
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