Take

Spectacular take on, well, you guessed it.

The section about the OLPC project is especially informative.

I don't design for other cultures, but I've been in plenty of projects where no thought at all is given to how what's being built will be used by the person who will be using it.

All of "enterprise" software is a jousting match of checklists, evaluated only by people who either do not know or do not care whether the product will be of any use whatsoever. (By inference, this extends to most Microsoft software.)

Even with that in mind, it's still surprising how something can go so sideways.

An interesting coda is a comment by what looks like a fellow Swede:

I rarely comment , but had to. My father Lars (RIP) worked for SIDA to develope road construction in developing countries. What he saw was that western aid in Africa always failed by bringing european engineers and their ordinary road construction techniques to their world. It failed because it was dependant on the workers from europe, their machinery breaking down waiting for spare parts for months, and most importantly - that the road built was not the "property" or the work done by the locals themeselves - which resulted in the roads never being used or being poorly maintained after the aidworkers had left.

My dad changed that completely with what he called "labour intensive road construction"... which was; doing away with all the machinery, employing the locals with shovels and wheelbarrows building the road going past their village. Then an elder in each village was appointed "Road Chief" to be responsible for the upkeeping and maintenance of their designated stretch with salary from the aid-program.

This proved to be a very successful model, gaining roads in good quality that the locals considered their road (since they'd built it) and would use and maintain with pride. An example that aid has to be IN CONTEXT with where it is applied.