Inside the Mind of: Horalia Armas

Our “Inside the Mind of ” series features interviews from the top winners at our 2017 Fellows Hackathon and their ideas for the future of technology.

Right now I want to use my skill set for more data science related technology. I feel like it’s important to understand all the data that we’re able to capture now. It’s a great resource to understand people using data. Now we have the capability to save and log data. Being able to capture how people use different websites — what are they clicking, what are they buying, why aren’t they buying. The skills I have now and the skills I’m building I want to be able to understand what people need based on their online behavior.

I’m interested in learning how to educate different groups of people. I have a disability so I’m personally invested in IOT and data science creating machines that can learn on people’s behalf so that people with disabilities can use these machines as a resource to make learning easier and live a normal life. I’m hard of hearing so going to class and taking notes has always been very difficult. Having a note transcriber in class is helpful, but sometimes it’s very difficult to keep up with the person who’s writing. I want to explore technology where I can use data and IOT to make people’s disabilities not be so impactful on their day to day life.

I was joking around with people when I won an Alexa at the hackathon that maybe I could teach Alexa to use GPS to tell me when my train stop is coming up because I often times can not hear the train conductor announcing stops. If I zone out on the train or I’m not looking at the signs outside then I find myself having to tap people on the shoulder and ask them what stop we’re at. Technology like Alexa is making machine learning that much more accessible and the possibilities are endless. If I can make something that uses GPS on your phone to remind people who are hard of hearing that their stop is coming I’d be really satisfied.