As a high school student in Redmond, Washington, Emmett Nicholas volunteered with a project that sent old computers to representatives of Enlace Quiche, an organization that offered enrichment programs to Guatemalan children living in remote villages in an effort to get them on track with the national curriculum.

So when Emmett took a class at Duke that helped develop software for non-profits, he knew Enlace Quiche would be a perfect organization to help.

"I knew firsthand about the technology they had," said Emmett, a junior who is double majoring in electrical and computer engineering and computer science. "They had some software, but it was unsatisfactory."

Working with Professor Daniel Egger, managing partner of Eno River Capital and an entrepreneur-in-residence at Duke, Emmett contacted Andrew Lieberman, head of Enlace Quiche. The class began working to outline ideas for a variety of educational computer games, but the organization had many technical constraints, with no access to the Internet and little processing power.

Duke students in the engineering class worked through several iterations to develop complete functional specifications for the games, one of which was an adaptable typing game intended for younger children.

"The functional specification is like an architectural blueprint that makes it possible for someone else to build the software," Professor Egger said. "Once you have that 'blueprint,' about 80 percent of the work is done."

A different software developer used the blueprint to create the final product: a Flash computer game. In the game, which is based around a traditional Mayan ball game, players are asked to correctly type words indicated by objects on a ball. If they spell the word correctly, they hit the ball.

"It's a competitive game that gets kids interacting with computers," Professor Egger said. "It's fun and educational."

So far, the game seems to be a hit among those at Enlace Quiche.

For Emmett, the experience was a memorable one.

"In addition to the gratification that something you worked on is being used, the class was also incredibly educational. We were taken through the entire product development cycle," he says.

"Most people think the coding phase is the focus, but it takes a long time of repeated dialogue and fine-tuning, making phone calls, sending e-mails and screenshots, and getting feedback to get to a solution that was geared toward our rural target audience. It wasn't a trivial exercise."

The success of the project is a testament to the students' dedication and abilities and to the potential power of using classes to help solve challenges faced by non-profit organizations. In the process, the students, all of whom had some prior technical expertise, gained valuable experience with the entire software production cycle.

"The Guatemalans are up and running," says the instructor. "Undergraduates can analyze a real-world problem, find a way it can be done better with information technology, and develop it to a level that a third party can implement. It's pretty amazing."