Design Research — Collaborative Problem Solving and Innovation
Partnership and Co-creation between organizations to meet user needs and business requirements.
Co-creation is at the heart of what we do at Qhala. How we work is built on close collaboration and partnerships with other organizations to achieve a common goal. When businesses collaborate, they leverage their strengths to tackle a common problem, complement each other in skill sets, learn, and build upon each other’s knowledge and expertise. In the last 5 months, we have witnessed a lot of partnerships as a result of COVID, could this be the trend going forward?
COVID-19 as a partnership catalyst
COVID-19 has catalyzed the most unlikely of partnerships, case in point, Apple, and Google working together on contact tracing technology, Sanofi and GSK partnership to work on a COVID-19 vaccine, Chinese and American research collaborations. China for instance had collaboration between edtech companies and the government to build an e-learning platform. WHO received pro bono help from different organizations, including with TikTok to drive awareness.
In Kenya, we have seen an increase in collaborations for instance: Jumia/Twiga, NMG e-papers partnerships with KNUT and frontline workers, Bolt partnerships to offer free rides to expectant women, Visa connects to M-Pesa, telcos partners with some universities to offer internet connectivity for learning (UoN, Strathmore, USIU) and many more.
The case of the digital divide
With all the successful collaborations comes the case of the digital divide. Most of these partnerships use one or more forms of digital technology to foster conversations and craft solutions. Digital technology is a facilitator, it’s importance is more prevalent now, unfortunately, as more technology is developed, a large number of people are still left behind. Kenya’s digital landscape looks promising, mobile penetration at 93%, 3G coverage at 88%, and 41% broadband connection. However, Kenya’s access is rather low due to unaffordability (the high cost of the internet) and accessibility (medium of access). As a result, the digital divide is increasing with the odds largely against the lower-income citizens.
Affordability goes hand in hand with pricing, availability of broadband, and end-user devices. High-income citizens can have access to new/modern devices, broadband and can afford to pay for the connection, juxtaposing with low-income citizens, who may have the older digital tech, have little or no internet connectivity, and barely afford daily access to the internet. This inequality is not limited just to connectivity, but also access to educational content. One group for instance is still learning online, while the other group is reliant on the government directive. With the government’s announcement on the postponement of exams, how things will be when schools are open is still an open question.
As this gap further increases, we have been exploring how digital transformation can be inclusive for all. Digital exclusion is something we need to be cognizant of as we build.
Research is at the center in leveraging successful collaboration
Research helps organizations uncover insights and prevent repeat mistakes or reinventing the wheel. With this, we ask questions from the past to build for a better future. For instance, what has been done before, by who, and where? Who was the target? Why was it not successful? Has anyone collated these learnings?
The second most important reason is to bring the voice of the user at every stage, ensure that all groups of people are included, and prevent teams from building one-sided products. Some of the questions we ask are: Who are you building for? What is her/his context? What opportunity exists in their context?
We have done numerous collaborative projects with different organizations to understand the experiences of different stakeholders. Some of our projects have been on the gig economy, MSMEs, family bonding (between parents and children), and data modeling on COVID-19. Through this, we offered support to different stakeholders to enable them to adopt new digital tools to advance their work. This has been through collaborative design research projects, strategy and advisory, engineering, and product development. We will be sharing bits of this work as soon as the work goes live.
Innovation is a collaborative effort and needs an interdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder lens, remember, kidole kimoja hakivunji chawa (one finger cannot kill a louse). Should you want more information on how to take your organization to the next level digitally, reach out to us at LinkedIn and Twitter. We are always looking for more ways to create together.
