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The Women Passion program (WOPA): Designing with the user in mind

It is now two weeks since the second cohort of the Women Passion program started their engagement. Last week, it was all about leadership: understanding self and others. This week, we introduce the ladies to Design thinking by teaching them how to practice Human Centered design.

 

The ladies under our Women Passion program had an intense week on leadership delivered by one of our facilitators - Michael Niyitegeka. We shared the importance of understanding self. How does one’s motivation for participating in the program align with their purpose. Further to that, they also learnt how to position themselves within an environment and to develop a leadership mindset.

 

Within our program, we strongly believe in the creation of leaders that create fellowship around a common purpose. Thus the importance of incorporating it within our program.

 

This week, the participants will start their journey on how to design with the user in mind through Human Centered design. Human Centered design is a creative process to problem solving - one that starts with people.

 

They will learn how to develop a beginner’s mindset and gain a deeper understanding of the challenge they are trying to solve through interviews and in-context immersions.

Further to that, they will also start their first sessions on web programming by setting up their development environment.

 

We cannot wait to see how this will turn out once the participants start working on their design challenge.

 

How can you participate?

 

Are you interested in participating in the next intake for the Women Passion program, send an email to wopa@outbox.co.ug and let us know.

 

If you are interested in learning Human Centered design; you can download the toolkit at Open IDEO’s Design Kit website and contribute to IDEO.Org’s Amplify design challenge.

 

About WOPA

 

WOPA is an experiential learning program one that seeks to equip women and girls with skills in web programming and entrepreneurship. Each program is 12 weeks and participants receive training in Human Centered design, Lean startup methodology and web based programming languages.

 

WOPA is supported by Google for Entrepreneurs under the #40Forward and WeTech global under the Seed fund for women + girls in Computer science.

 

About Michael Niyitegeka

 

Michael Niyitegeka is an expert in Leadership Development, IT Strategy, Social Media Integration, Communication, and Business Process Strategic Alignment. He holds an MBA from MsM/ESAMI Business School and is a Franklin Covey Certified Facilitator.

He possesses 16 years of working experience in both the private and public sectors. Michael worked with Makerere University for 12 years in varied capacities as a researcher, trainer and head of Corporate Relations. He also worked with coffee exporting firm managing supply side operations in western Uganda.

 

He has extensive consulting experience with government, private, regional and international institutions such as Higher Education Institutions in Uganda, Private Sector Federation of Rwanda, State University of Zanzibar, National IT Authority of Uganda, British Council Uganda, and ICT Policy Center for Eastern and Southern Africa (CIPESA) among others. Michael is an Adjunct Lecturer with the ESAMI Business School and a Board member of the ICT Association of Uganda, Uganda Youth Forum and AIESEC Uganda. Michael is a member of the ICT Technical Working Group of the Presidential Investor Round Table. He is a member of several technology innovation review panels both locally and internationally.  He is a Rotarian and is passionate about mentoring the next generation of technology business leaders.

He has been listed among the thought leaders, influential people in the ICT Sector.

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