Transforming Both the Expert and Community: Human-Centered Design in Action!
by James Bourne
As a Design Engineer working for Kohler in the UK, my role is to develop high-end bathroom products. The Design process is the same for any manufacturing company: Identify the problem to solve, generate ideas, refine these ideas, prototype, test, and iterate until we have a robust design to bring in to production.
The Human-Centered Design process follows these same steps, but with a much bigger emphasis on keeping the end user at the heart of everything you do. I’m getting a very different experience, employing human-centered design in Indonesia. As part of Kohler’s Innovation for Good initiative, I’m working alongside local World Vision staff and community members in the far-flung city of Ende, Flores Island on a problem in need of a creative solution.
Innovation for Good (IfG) is a program that offers Kohler associates the opportunity to understand global challenges through the lens of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Through workshops and immersive experiences, associates identify potential projects that warrant development and are encouraged to develop ideas into early prototypes.
The Challenge: hand washing with soap
During my two months in Indonesia, the challenge for me was ‘To design and assist the construction of a complete hand washing facility with soap’. I arrived in Ende, with preconceptions and some background about hand washing, but fully embracing the ambiguity of not knowing what the final outcome would be. I knew I was in for an adventure.
The first step for me and the local team was to identify the underlying issue we were trying to solve, and then re-define the design challenge to ensure we were tackling the issue at hand: ‘How can we change hygiene behaviour for children at school and at home, and facilitate handwashing with soap at critical times?’. It became clear that our challenge was much bigger than just building a handwashing facility. A combination of physical facilities and advocacy were needed to improve hygiene behaviour.
After identifying our stakeholders and developing interview guidelines, we began to understand the deep issues faced by the two target villages we are working with. We spoke to children, teachers, parents, village heads, and health workers to identify common insights around current practices, challenges and desires.
The stories of the hardships faced by both schools around access to water were moving. In the summer months, water reservoirs run dry, forcing members of the community to travel on rough roads 3 kilometres down to the next village to collect water from a river. In these difficult months, children bring in water from home just so they can keep the latrines in their school clean.
At the other school, the children spend Saturday mornings walking an uphill muddy trek to collect water from the nearest reservoir using jerry cans. Water collected for the latrines will last the following 4 to 5 days, then they will just have to do without until the following Saturday.
Another unexpected challenge is that school funding only covers for only one bottle of soap entire year. Once it’s gone, it’s gone, and they have to do without soap for the rest of the year.
The challenge to increase the frequency of hand washing with soap at the target schools with these constraints were daunting. It made a big difference for me to see and hear their daily life obstacles in person.
Identify the problem to solve and brainstorm ideas
For each insight identified, an individual challenge statement was created. Not too narrow to constrain us to one opportunity, but not too broad to lose focus. In a workshop attended by the World Vision staff and our stakeholders, everybody voted for the top five most important challenge statements to solve.
A few hundred Post-it notes later, the team had brainstormed ideas around water access, education programs, soap, and environmental factors. To help focus our design further, we developed a list of Design Principles to link to our Challenge Statements.
Prototyping and Iteration
Prototyping and iteration is a critical part of the design process to check if the ideas created are accepted by the people we are designing the solution for. During the workshop, we created a rough prototype for a group handwashing facility, and valuable lessons on how to improve it generated a more refined prototype that was taken to one of our target schools for a user interaction trial with the children.
Although we are initially focusing on two primary schools, the desire is to create a scalable framework that can be applied to any school across Indonesia, by constantly learning, iterating and improving the design of the system.
Implementation and Learnings
Now that a design has been detailed for one of the schools, it is time to start implementing! There is a lot to do in the next few weeks and I am excited to see the ideas generated by the team start to come to life.
The Learning Curve
It has been a steep learning curve for me as I have wandered considerably out of my comfort zone of Computer-Aided Design (CAD), defined systems, and familiar end users. Working across language barriers, cultural practices and new technologies has provided me with tough but fascinating tasks.
In our final workshop this week, we will start to focus on how we can implement hand washing facilities supported by the necessary behaviour change at the household level. This will also open up more design opportunities: on how to create an aspirational product that people would want to have in their home, and then the challenge of how to change the behaviour and practices of not just a family, but an entire community. A midwife from one of the villages remarked that ‘both education and physical facilities are needed for hygiene behaviour change.’
Good design and aspirational products & services do not have to be expensive and complicated. Everyone can practice Human-Centered Design. If people trust and follow the process, it is possible to end up with a solution that will be adopted by the people you are designing it for (and with).
Materials and courses on Human-Centered Design are available for free from IDEO https://www.ideo.com/post/design-kit
Check out Part One and Part Three of James’ journey.
This article was written by James Bourne, especially for Asia P3 Hub’s April 2018 newsletter focusing on Human-Centered Design.
James Bourne is a Design Engineer at Kohler Mira in Gloucestershire, UK. He specialises in Product design, design engineering, manufacturing processes, rapid prototyping, and Computer-Aided Design (CAD).
Reach out to him via LinkedIn.
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