10 days to make a difference

5 takeaways from a tactical service design intervention in Metro Manila

Last Friday marked the end of my participation in the 2017 Metro Manila Civic Innovation Fellowship. And now, as I reflect, it is time for some conclusions.

The fellowship lasted two weeks, with technically only ten days of actual time for solution building. My teammate and I had the mission of finding ways to improve the delivery of medical care to mothers and infants in 17 healthcare centers in Marikina City. After a week of intensive research, field visits and user interviews, we created the Alaga Kit. The Alaga Kit is an open source project, designed and tested to specifically address the key issues identified during our research.

The road to get to the Alaga Kit was not one without speed bumps. My teammate and I were frequently recalibrating our thinking, approach and solution. I guess you can say that we learned some lessons the hard way. But, I think the lessons we learned are applicable for any type of user-centered design project.

Here are my 5 key takeaways:

Know your stakeholders

Your stakeholders are users, too. You need to learn from them and, more importantly, understand where they are coming from. What are their challenges? What motivates them? By knowing your stakeholders, you will be able to devise a project strategy that everyone can agree upon, but also in which they can become personally invested. This is vital to the success of any project, and was especially true during the fellowship. Our stakeholders (“Solution Partners”) were our mentors, equals and confidants throughout the fellowship. Many of them would be tasked, after the fellowship, with implementing our project and vision. Having our Solution Partners on board was crucial to the long-term success of our project.

Understand the context

From an almost organizational perspective, you will have to identify how your project will fit into the big picture. Who are your main sponsors (and detractors)? What are their motivations? From the start, learn quickly what has been attempted, tested to solve the problem. What has worked? What has failed, and why? Is there any kind of aversion towards a given approach? Remember: you are not a technocrat. Empathy is not something reserved for your users. Be empathetic with your stakeholders. User-centered design practitioners might sometimes develop a certain aversion to the limitations imposed by the organizations that require our help. Don’t be that guy. The best services have a positive impact on users and on the organizations delivering them.

Respect your users

It’s common knowledge that being respectful of your users is a crucial aspect of any user-centered practice. But, it is especially important when dealing with individuals from radically different cultural and social backgrounds. There will be a learning curve during your research, but patience and being open to iteration on your research methodologies will pay off in the end. It took me several interviews to learn which questions and phrasings worked best with the people I was interviewing. If you have access to local partners or allies, be sure to ask them for help in understanding how to best approach sensitive topics.M

Embrace your limitations

The fellowship immersed me and my teammate into an unfamiliar environment. Be humble and cognizant that the best practices you have learned, developed or refined may not be applicable in every situation. This is especially true when you begin prototyping and testing. You may find that the materials or techniques you have defined as the best methods back home are no longer relevant in your new setting. Make sure you allocate some buffer time to reevaluate your prototyping decisions. Don’t simply assume that you fill find the materials or tools that you will need in the same ways that you would back home. And, one lesson we learned very quickly in the Philippines, don’t expect reliable internet is a given.

Think ahead

In the context of a two-week fellowship, we knew that the final implementation of our project would be outside of our direct control. We made a point to think about implementation early into the project. And by doing so, we were able to include our stakeholders in the design process, which is always one of the best ways to prepare for successful implementation.

Remember to also be aware of the technological and methodological constraints of everyone who will be involved during implementation. There are always different levels of interest in or technical knowledge around your solution; maneuver your documentation accordingly (especially when sharing documentation).

Thanks to Fivebyfive.io and the Office of the Mayor of Marikina City for making all of this possible.