Kiva is a non-profit organization that allows individuals to lend money via the internet to low-income entrepreneurs and students in nearly 100 countries. It is Kiva’s goal to bring lenders and borrowers together in order to increase financial access and improve the quality of financial services in underserved communities.

User stories that outline the borrower and lender personas are provided below:

1. As a Kiva borrower, I want to access information about Kiva and about borrowing from Kiva with my flip-phone (which is an embedded device), so that I can stay informed, request loans, and track my loan payback process.

2. As a Kiva lender, I want to explore borrower requests, analyze my and others’ lending data, and follow borrower loan payments (in a cloud application) so that I can forecast how I will loan funds and plan the recycling of previously paid funds.

You will be thinking about the borrowers’ and lenders’ needs as you start to explore the data Kiva has made available. Use the Kiva Lend Filter and the Kiva Data Snapshots pages, linked in this module’s Resources, as you work through this assignment.

QUESTION

1. Evaluate the data requirements for borrowers. Using the CS 319 CSV Tutorial, linked in this module’s resources, download data from the Kiva Data Snapshots page. Review this information to shape your thoughts. Consider the borrower user story and assess what available Kiva data will best fit their needs and can be developed within an embedded system, given technology limitations. Think about the following questions as you make your assessment:
   • What data does the borrower want to access locally?
   • What data fields from the CSV file will be most applicable?
   • What type of interface is possible with the limited resources of an embedded system?
   • Who will the different users of the system be? What will each user need to be able to do?
   • What are the design requirements for the system?

2. Assess specific borrower stories to refine their data needs. Review at least five borrower stories on the Kiva Lend Filter page, which is linked in this module’s resources, to better understand the specific needs borrowers have. Discuss the stories you reviewed and whether your assessment of the data requirements has changed based on your evaluation of the five borrower stories.

3. Recommend borrower data priorities for UI/UX development. Based on the analysis you completed using data from the Kiva Data Snapshots page and the Kiva Lend Filter page, determine what data you would display in a UI/UX wireframe for an embedded system. Explain the importance of the data you selected and remember to focus on serving the needs of the borrowers. You do not have to think about how the data could be displayed in a wireframe yet.

4. Evaluate the data requirements for lenders. Consider the provided lender user story and assess what data from the Kiva Data Snapshots page will best fit their needs. Keep in mind that although cloud-based systems have the capacity to scale, Kiva is a nonprofit, and scaling data in the cloud is expensive. Think about the following questions as you consider the data desired by lenders for the cloud-based system:
   • What data does the lender want to access?
   • What data fields from the CSV file will be most applicable to the lender’s needs?
   • What type of interface is possible with the available resources?
   • Who will the different users of the system be? What will each user need to be able to do?
   • What are the design requirements for the system?