CS+Social Good Stories: Claire Huang, 2017 Fellow

CS+Social Good Stories is a new Medium series by Stanford CS+Social Good to spotlight members of the CS+Social Good community doing important work at the intersection of tech and social impact. Our first article in the series features a reflection written by Claire Huang ’20 on her experience as a 2017 CS+Social Good Fellow at TalkingPoints, an education nonprofit based in SF that aims to connect teachers and families across language and cultural barriers.

A quick intro!

I’m Claire Huang, a sophomore potentially majoring in CS (but also exploring product design, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering…lots of things). I was directly inspired to apply for the CS+Social Good Fellowship after taking CS 106S last winter quarter, but I’ve also always gravitated towards real-world applications of my interests in software, especially in areas that are often looked over traditional “big tech.”

What I did

This summer I was working at TalkingPoints, a tiny education technology startup based in San Francisco. TalkingPoints’ main product is a web and mobile app that helps teachers break down language barriers and encourage two-way communication with low-income families who don’t speak English at home. More specifically, they automatically translate messages between teachers and families, and allow teachers and school administrators to track and improve inclusive communication practices.

High-quality and timely translation is a crucial aspect of gaining families’ trust. While machine translations are speedy and free, and for many languages, they are often pretty unintelligible. I built a web and mobile app (the “Crowdsourcing app”) that allows TalkingPoints to get quality, human crowdsourced translations in a timely manner. (It’s live here!) In the last six weeks of my stay at TalkingPoints, we had 20 translators and 3000+ real messages go through Crowdsourcing.

I also spontaneously picked up several print and digital design projects for TalkingPoints, which snowballed into over ten deliverables by the end of the summer.

What I learned

1. Having a full-time and in-person mentor is immensely helpful for getting up and running ASAP. I had no experience with Javascript/Meteor JS or developing full-stack web applications before the summer started. I was lucky enough to work with an in-person technical employee who I could constantly poke, observe, and discuss software design decisions with for the first few days. She was absolutely the reason I had a working MVP (emphasis on M) by the end of my first week.
2. At such a small startup, time is so precious. Know how to prioritize and timebox. Perfection is the enemy. This was a pretty hard mindset to wrap my head around, as I’m accustomed to taking more time to consider all the edge cases or get the interface looking just a bit more beautiful. But at a small startup, it makes more sense to get something out there first and optimize and refine after seeing how people respond. I had heard “MVP” being tossed around in academic/lecture settings, but only after working this summer have I begun to fully internalize that mindset.
3. Impact at TalkingPoints (and I presume other small startups) is quite direct. Because I got to see all the messages going through Crowdsourcing, I got an intimate view into how users were utilizing TalkingPoints’ main product. It was fun to have little celebrations when a particularly positive or amusing message came through, especially when we saw a flood of messages about the solar eclipse.
4. Be proactive. Being on a small team means (1) that you have near direct access to everyone, and (2) nobody really has time to look after you/hold your hand. As such, to get the most of the experience, being proactive is crucial. I wish I had been more nosy earlier on and asked my coworkers about what they were doing. I wish I had had more lengthy conversations with the CEO. About halfway through the summer, I did volunteer myself for a project completely outside my role, which ended up opening a lot of doors to other aspects of the company.
5. The education tech space is getting quite saturated. I didn’t realize this before joining, but schools are constantly bombarded with new ed tech products that often do pretty similar things, and it can be hard to stand out. In a sense, it’s no different from every other competitive tech area.

What wasn’t so great

1. For my future career, I’m not sure I want to sit in front of a computer screen every day. I find that I become a bit too removed from my work and its impact, and I start itching to interact with something or someone physical.
2. The tiny startup environment is simultaneously tight-knit and isolating. Everyone is working in their own zone, tight on time. Perhaps I am spoiled by the collaborative, talkative nature of group work at school, but the quietness of the environment came as a surprise to me.

Last spring, I was debating between the CS+Social Good Fellowship and a big tech company program. I have absolutely no regrets about taking the fellowship: I got to see the direct impact of my work and I got to know a group of incredible, inspiring people.

Apply for the 2018 CS+Social Good Summer Fellowship here! Applications are due by February 6.