2012

MICRO GRANTS

Micro grants
IDEO.org is proud to have supported eight projects from across the globe as part of our first class of HCD Connect Microgrants. Our Microgrant recipients used human-centered design methods to tackle agriculture challenges from Peru to Ethiopia. Assisted by a panel of six experts with agriculture, social sector and design backgrounds, IDEO.org selected seven Microgrant projects to receive $5,000 research grants (to assist in the Hear stage of the human-centered design process) and one project to receive a $10,000 implementation grant (to assist in the Create and Deliver stages of the HCD process). As the first cycle of Microgrants came to a close, recipients were asked to summarize and their experiences in the field by publishing reflection stories on the HCD Connect platform. Here are those stories.

Designing a Groundwater Meter School Food Gardens in Nicaragua Increasing Farm Produce Value Getting Value from Waste Community Centers for Farmers The Pepper Shredder Microloans for Farmers M-Farm: Text Messages for Farmers

Designing a Groundwater Meter

This team from Stanford used their HCD Connect Microgrant to fund a project using human-centered design to create a low-cost device called the Paani Meter that measures groundwater availability in rural India. HCD Connect Page: http://tinyurl.com/ groundwatermeter

Designing a groundwater meter

Knowledge Transfer
It has been an incredible three months! Ive learned an extraordinary amount through the HCD process. One of the most pleasant surprises from this experience has been the feedback that Ive received from the larger HCD community. Many of the A-Ha moments that have come in the past three months have been from comments, suggestions, and personal stories from other HCD Connect users.
by Melissa Rohde

One of the most fantastic things about the HCD Connect platform is that it has facilitated knowledge transfer in the HCD community enabling me to leverage off a plethora of existing knowledge. So, thanks again to everyone who has been in touch and to IDEO.org for giving us this opportunity to share, learn, and grow! In the context of the HCD process, the main lesson that Ive learned is how valuable the Hear component is in design thinking. Building empathy for your end-user is an invaluable key stepping stone for building a strong foundation to tackle your design challenge, and should not be overlooked. When I reflect back on each of the trips Ive made back to India over the past 4 years, Ive seen how more and more empathy work has given me additional observations and subsequent insights that have reframed my original challenge towards something tangible and desired by the people we are trying to actually design for. Although, Ive been working on my design challenge for three years now, the HCD process has provided me with focus, insight, and a path for moving forward! One of the biggest insights gained from the HCD process is how important farmer-to-farmer knowledge transfer will be in tackling our design challenge. This key insight was a product of many observations I made during my deep dive trips to India and the discussions that Ive had with many users on the HCD platform. Moving forward with this insight, we now have a multitude of How Might We statements to brainstorm around to find potential solutions to our original challenge: How can rural communities manage scarce water resources such that food security can be achieved? Building off our key insights, brainstorming, themes, and frameworks that weve developed in the past three months, well continue to journey deeper into the Create portion of the HCD process in the upcoming months. In March-April, Ill be returning to India to conduct a brainstorming session with our NGO partners and para-hydrologists (local farmers who have been trained to use the Paani Meter) to create new frameworks, brainstorm new solutions, and begin prototyping and testing. I invite you all to keep following us on our venture and continue to share your invaluable suggestions and comments!!

School food gardens in nicaragua

This project received Microgrant funding to conduct humancentered design research exploring sustainable ways to create school garden programs that meet the dietary needs of students in rural Nicaragua. HCD Connect Page: http://tinyurl.com/foodgardens

School food gardens in nicaragua

takeaways from the HCD Process

The HCD connect storytelling and Microgrant process was particularly rewarding as it allowed our team to make connections and see the bigger picture. Our participants were able to identify the challenges to food security and nutrition
by Jeannette Rowland

Over the past three months, our team has engaged in the humancentered design process, challenging assumptions and attempting to collect stories to better understand the place of food security and nutrition in the Nicaraguan culture, and how school gardens mapped onto those perceptions. Through HCD methods such as Individual Interviews, Group Interviews, Beginners Mindset, and In-Context Immersion, we were able to glean a wealth of information. Furthermore, my Nicaraguan design team has developed a new knowledge of the HCD methods, which they hope to continue using in future Fabretto initiatives. Following this research phase, we met again as a team to synthesize our data, reconstruct peoples stories, discuss lessons learned, and ways we can move forward into future pilot projects. After mapping out some key interviews, we began to group our observations by stakeholder, so as to understand all the different perspectives and themes observed. Overall not many participants, especially parents, knew very much about food security and nutrition. School gardens, while successful, do not function perfectly; their success depends on a variety of factors, such as the attitude of students and parents, teacher dedication, parent participation, and good technical assistance. Our next step was to discuss the idea of community gardens, as both interviews and team insights helped us understand that implementing community gardens would be extremely difficult. The cultural climate of Nicaragua lacks collective sentiment because people often do not trust each other, partially due to the unresolved conflicting political ideologies from the civil war. My team indicated that if we found a community where there was confianza (trust) and good communication, perhaps a community garden could work. Our design team then brainstormed some next steps that emerged from our Hear process. First off, parents need to be more integrated into the food security and nutrition efforts that occur within schools. Also, the culture of nutrition needs to be enhanced for both parents and students. Additionally, we began to think of ways in which we could make gardens more useful and productive, such as utilizing organic fertilizer, recycled goods, or establishing markets to link student produce to value chains. Many teachers suggested that this would motivate the community to work more with the current school gardens. We leave the Hear phase with some How Might We statements, which really get at the heart of a prototype towards which Fabretto hopes to continue working. How might we use school gardens to educate rural communities about nutrition? How might we incorporate nutrition programs more fully into schools, leveraging potential partnerships? How might we further engage parents in school garden and nutrition efforts? We look forward to continuing the HCD process to create prototypes and solutions to these challenges.

Increasing farm produce values

Nitin Sisodia, a Stanford trained bio designer, leads a team using human-centered design to identify new methods for increasing crop productivity and processing effectiveness in rural India.

HCD Connect Page: http://tinyurl.com/farmproduce

Our experience with HCD in Central India

Three months using the HCD process brought us through the Hear and Create phases to find 56 unique insights. Alongside the biodesign process, we used HCD tools to make observations, analyze stakeholder priorities, find insights, and phrase needs.
by Nitin Sisodia

Increasing farm produce values

Realizing that the real insight to problems lies within the community, we used the HCD process to ensure that the end users served as our inspiration. We interacted closely with and engaged farmers, their families, policy makers, traders, officials, and urban consumers. Among our favorite HCD Hear methods, we used In-context Immersion, Sacrificial Concepts and Expert Interviews to establish a connection with the farming community and gather local knowledge. We went through the entire HCD Toolkit with a local farmer who is also a part of our team to help us refine and use the tools in a manner that is appropriate to the local culture. During the Create phase, Extracting Key Insights and Creating Frameworks were key methods used to identify opportunities. Having a multidisciplinary team helped us interpret the needs, synthesize potential solutions, and bring clarity to many aspects of the project. Because the market plays such a critical role in deciding how sustainable the business solution might be, our mentor suggested that we get input from local traders, marketing professionals, and the end consumer. These conversations took our project in a whole new direction, and helped us screen our needs for market feasibility. Our findings have led us to identify 56 needs and opportunities in a variety of fields from service and infrastructure to awareness and resource availability. We then prioritized these needs based on feasibility in central India, sustainability, impact, reducing wastage, and increasing livelihood. One of the biggest challenges that we have identified during the HCD Microgrant process is the potential difficulty of implementation, and therefore we see that implementation of our solutions will need additional resources and expertise. We will be looking for some funding support as well as talented and passionate people to join our team. To address this challenge, we are seeking collaboration with research institutes, government bodies, MP minor forest produce cooperative, cooperative societies and NGOs which are closely working with farmers. When brainstorming final solutions, we went for quantity first, along with maximum impact. We then evaluated these for human, manufacturing, financial, and technological capabilities. On the whole, it has been a rewarding experience for all of us and we are already getting set for the next phase, where we will conduct pilots with the prototypes of our solution.

Getting value from waste

This team from MIT used their HCD Connect Microgrant to fund their project in Kenya exploring new ways to create charcoal briquettes from various types of agricultural waste. HCD Connect Page: http://tinyurl.com/takachar

Getting value from waste

Lessons from the field

In the past intense six weeks, the months of Hear research and design prototyping finally came to fruition. Our team moved to Kenya and implemented the designs together with our community partners. Throughout this experience, we learned as much from our community partners as from ourselves.
by Kevin Kung

Using the HCD methodology, we have worked on various aspects of the charcoal process, ranging from effective drying, to smoke scrubbing, to optimal briquetting. Indeed, there are many stories to be told. I have selected two stories that illustrate the poignant points in the design process. The first story relates to smoke scrubbing. The need to reduce smoke led us from testing various scrubbers to a new kiln design called TLUD. Before we left for Kenya, we made sure that we were familiar with all the underlying theories of TLUD, and built and tested some small-scale prototypes. However, all our pre-trip preparation did not actually prepare us all that much. Once we tested prototypes in the field, our first full scale models and trials were not successful and had to be stopped prematurely. But these trials taught us what important changes needed to be made in the process. In fact, there is a certain rhythm and instinct about the charcoal process that only comes with practicing many times and learning from errors. This is something that our community partners and us learned together slowly over time. In a sense, this discovery process is human-centered design at its prime, in which we were learning as much about the TLUD process as our community partners were. Ultimately, with all the learning, we were able to drastically reduce the carbonization time to about 20 minutes, from the original 2 hours. The second story is about the design of a more efficient briquette press. While this is something that our community partners have always expressed a need, before we came to Kenya, we had been rather at a loss regarding how best to approach the design process. In particular, our gut feeling told us that there are so many different designs out there that our task was more about searching and adapting a promising design, rather than about trying to design something from scratch. With so many different parameters to consider, we were often paralyzed in the design process. Finally, it was a member of the local community who first came up with the design of a manual ten-briquette press. In this case, we were merely the facilitators of a design process that originated from within the community. All in all, we are proud to be able to develop a modular TLUD design that not only dramatically reduces the carbonization time, but also increases the waste-to-charcoal conversion efficiency. We demonstrated the products at different sub-locations surrounding the forest in Kenya, and now after discussion with our community partners, there are definite plans to scale up this production commercially. Therefore, this human-centered co-design process with our community partners is just the beginning of a journey, and we remain excited to see what development may come out of this ongoing dialogue.

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Community centers for farmers

After observing poor communication and information exchange among farmers in the jungle region of eastern Peru, this team used their HCD Connect Microgrant to explore designs for new platforms connecting farmers in the region. HCD Connect Page: http://tinyurl.com/centersforfarmers

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Community Centers for farmers

moving forward
Based upon what we learned during the HCD Microgrant cycle as well as a year of research, analysis, and collaborative brainstorming, our service will address the needs of small-scale buyers and suppliers for assistance in connecting, learning, and coordinating.
by Nancy Zamierowski and Michael Kuntz

Following the microgrant period, we are working on the first trial of our registry and platform, SousSource.com, due to go live later this month. This initial phase will focus on testing intermediary functions (i.e. translation) as well as the types of information required by each category of buyer. In the next stage we will leverage crowd-sourced resources for logistics and resource sharing by facilitating an online community. While our energies are focused very much on the future, we wanted to briefly reflect on our learnings thus far. With a desire for maximum impact and an acknowledgement that the system is highly interdependent, our initial tendency was to think big. It is difficult to isolate and solve for one component (be it financing, capacity-building, or transportation) in isolation. For example, it is not helpful to find buyers if there are no means of getting the product to market. Yet, as our understanding of the system deepened, we were able to reduce the design challenge scope and thereby define a specific area of impact to test. What started as a broad question has been filtered down from how to create an economic development solution that incorporates environmental sustainability to a narrow design challenge, how to facilitate connections between small- and medium-sized producers and sustainable suppliers. By connections we mean three generic steps in initiating an engagement: 1) Finding a potential trading partner, 2) Learning about their offering and capabilities, and 3) Initiating the conversation. Our hypothesis is that buyers seek direct trade relationships to ensure both quality inputs AND social and environmental responsibility. We noted in one of our first posts on HCD Connect that designing a solution to address a social challenge is distinct from a logistics or engineering problem. Understanding the system requires an understanding of history, perceptions, incentives, and fears, as well as the many objective factors. Similarly, as the HCD Toolkit aptly notes, the interview and observation techniques used to gain that understanding must be as nuanced as the subjects and context. Indeed, success of the solution is contingent upon the methodology and care used to design it. In the process of interviewing, diagramming, and collaborating, we have developed rich relationships with many individuals and communities that will ultimately be influencers and stakeholders in the solution. In the coming weeks, we will be sharing our supply-sourcing prototype with stakeholders and potential users. Their reactions will direct where we go next, along the lines of the Learning Loop method outlined in the HCD Toolkit. Because many of our users are new (both in buying and selling), our strength lies in our ability to leverage our shared resources to solve these varied design challenges. More than a service or marketplace, we are a community of learners, designers, and creators, wanting to use our unique skills to

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The pepper shredder

The Pepper Eater team used their HCD Connect Microgrant in Ethiopia to perform user testing for their device, which efficiently and cost-effectively processes peppers. HCD Connect Page: http://tinyurl.com/peppershredder

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The Pepper Shredder

Counting down to pilot production

We successfully closed another Learning Loop through user testing, where the pepper shredder prototypes were received enthusiastically by users and performed well during field testing. Now, we prepare for pilot production with new manufacturing partners.
by Scott Sadlon

Project leader Roger Wilson returned from his six-week trip to Ethiopia with plenty of insights and new connections. One resounding positive result has been that the prototypes have exceeded one of the projects original goals of improving the health and comfort of users. Unlike manual processing, the shredder does not produce irritating pepper powder that could escape into the environment. Consequently, the operator is exposed to a very small amount of the berbere effect (the negative health consequences resulting from exposure to the hot pepper oils and dust) compared to the discomfort associated with even walking through the berbere area of local markets. We feel lucky to have connected with two fantastic manufacturing partners, Selam Awassa Business Group (SABG) and Selam Childrens Village. Along with input from users in the field, the relationship with these organizations allows true Participatory Co-Design driven by organizations that have in-depth knowledge of local markets. For example, we were concerned about finding a supplier of main bearings for the pepper shredder; the general manager of SABG knew that the pre-assembled bearing units on our US-built prototypes would be prohibitively expensive. It is far cheaper to import bearing components separately and assemble them in Ethiopia. This type of knowledge of local markets and importing logistics could result in an estimated 50% cost reduction for a shredder made in Ethiopia rather than in the US, even without including savings on import duties. SABG will also be working on a design for the input hopper on the top of the device to deal with a problem that Roger encountered: the unit shreds pepper so fast that one person is continually busy filling the hopper of the machine, and there is too much spillage! A higher-volume hopper will allow for easier operation for a single user and improve the safety of the device by providing a larger barrier between the users fingers and the cutting disks. With another Learning Loop behind us, were looking forward to the next steps in the Deliver phase of the project. Launching a pilot production run with SABG will place the pepper shredder with extreme and mainstream users in the farming communities around Awassa. Longer-term monitoring during the pilot will give insights into questions that could not be answered with short-term user testing. One concern is that a highly efficient tool like the pepper shredder will disrupt local markets and have unintended community impacts. If an entrepreneur or group with a pepper shredder can process as many peppers as eight women who previously used a mortar and pestle, what is the net effect on the community? Furthermore, during village testing, men were attracted to this new technology and frequently volunteered to crank the device. With widespread availability of the shredder, will men begin to take over this traditionally womens-only occupation? Regular visits from Selams field workers during the pilot will provide servicing for the devices

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Microloans for farmers

This team used their HCD Connect Microgrant to conduct human-centered design research in Uganda with farmers and other community stakeholders to better understand how they might best structure an agricultural-specific micro lending program. HCD Connect Page: http://tinyurl.com/microloansforfarmers

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Microloans for farmers

Reflections on the hear phase

Looking back at the progress made during the past several months, I cannot imagine doing this project without human-centered design. By having such an increased level of concentration on the community that we are designing for, I believe that our research was better focused to create a successful and longstanding solution.
by Jacqui Watts

Using the HCD methodology has proven to be invaluable towards researching potential loan program structures. A final product is only as good as its usability, and an amazing solution means nothing if it is not feasible or well-suited to the people it is intending to help, as it will not be well-adopted. I am excited at the prospect of continuing to use the HCD Toolkit to help this project move forward into the Create and Deliver phases. Among the most important methods used, we relied heavily on Group Interviews, Community-Driven Discovery, Expert Interviews, and Sacrificial Concepts. Group interviewing not only gave us feedback about desirability and feasibility, but also sparked new innovative ideas. Community-driven discovery was crucial in that the community knows the problem the best and can highlight what solutions have been tried and what does and does not work. Learning from organizations that have tackled similar problems was crucial in pinpointing what needed to be addressed. We found that there is a fine balance between taking the word and advice of the experts and applying it to your own community to fit their needs and wants (each community is different!). What was most helpful about expert interviews were comparing and integrating them with the feedback we got from group interviews. Sacrificial concepts proved incredibly useful to get more concrete, measurable (and therefore more useable) answers from community members. Before developing questions as hypothetical models, potential loan participants had difficulty comparing the importance of certain program aspects. What I found to be a wonderful secondary effect of the HCD process was community empowerment. Making the community part of the process and an inclusive part of the decision making, empowers them and gives them a greater sense of ownership in the program itself. Having the community involved means there will be a higher likelihood of adopting the program and keeping it running long after Im gone. Furthermore, the HCD Connect and microgrant process proved helpful in getting good big picture feedback. After a lengthy time being so fully engrossed in detail, its incredibly hard to step back and see larger thematic components that could be addressed in a way different from how youve been going about it. Having the HCD Connect community there to point things out and ask constructive questions forces you to think about directions or problems beyond what youve been addressing. Some Create steps and prototype testing have already begun. In addition to brainstorming project specifics with the potential loan program staff of URCSF, we addressed some larger scale thematic questions based on our group, individual, and expert feedback. Overall, Im excited to move forward integrating all of our Hear feedback and ideas into prototypes of loan structure agreements, schedules, and additional, innovative services in the upcoming months!

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M-FARM: text messages for farmers

The M-Farm Team has developed a mobile pricing platform for rural farmers in Kenya and used their HCD Connect Microgrant to fund human-centered design research allowing them to better understand how they might attract additional buyers to their mobile platform.

HCD Connect Page: http://tinyurl.com/mfarmkenya

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M-Farm: Text messages for farmers

Middleman affair
When we started our IDEO.org funded human-centered design research, our aim was to better understand how to convert the M-Farm Selling Together model from a manual process to an automatic one, with a focus on buyers as users of the M-Farm platform.
by Linda Kwamboka

Learning quickly that interviews with buyers would not be easy, we looked to our next target group, middlemen (aka brokers). Our individual interviews touched upon how they trade, their greatest challenges, and what their experience with technology is like. Our plan is to work with brokers to increase the transparency of the agribusiness value chain so as to create direct markets for farmers. To get the best and most adequate feedback, weve worked with brokers from many different regions in Kenya. Interestingly enough, what our human-centered design Hear research uncovered was that technologies differed between middlemen and buyers. The most widely used technologies for the middlemen were radio while the buyers tended to prefer email. Phone calls were cited by both. For M-Farm, this means that the tools developed for middlemen and buyers should probably be customized to account for the difference in technology usage patterns. This project continued to focus on mobile phones due to monetary transaction convenience. Some of the middlemen had used M-Pesa and enjoyed it because it was step-by-step and met an immediate need for them - cash on hand. One of the major challenges cited by middlemen was trust. As they usually do not have formalized agreements with farmers from whom they are sourcing, an ongoing problem is that they often go to a farm and find that the produce they were expecting to find had already been sold to another. Most middlemen stated that the farmers have an established relationship with certain middlemen whom they trust to pay them, an unwritten understanding. Another middleman explained that in order to make sure he fulfills his promise to the farmers who trust him, he will even take out a loan to pay them back for their produce within the stated timeframe. Based on our research, it appears that the middlemen are a more uniform group with similar needs and challenges. Since M-Farm has been working successfully on an agency model for a while now, our next step in scaling is to create awareness amongst people in the value chain, like these middlemen, so that they can have a formalized relationship with farmers. This will require us to refine our model accordingly. Our aim is that the more the agents use the M-Farm platform, the more we shall increase transparency for both the farmers and the buyers in order to meet their unique and specific needs.

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