Expert Conversations On-Screen
2020 has not been short of surprises — both pleasant and difficult . Be it conducting remote primary research across different locations or remote synthesis, ideation and prototyping. Uncertainty became an opportunity for innovation and what enabled us was our mantra of Smart Experimentation.
Were webinars as common before the Covid19 era as they are today? However, by March-end, every other organisation had hopped on the bandwagon of organising webinars. Conversations earlier happened in person, learnings happened through classroom or boardroom discussions, seminars or conclaves, meet-ups or gatherings. With the pandemic limiting these avenues, virtual learning has picked up, and with it the concept of webinars.
TinkerLabs has collaborated with KHPT as the HCD partner for a USAID funded project — Breaking the Barriers. The project aims to implement a community engagement initiative that will empower vulnerable groups such as urban poor, tribal , tribal communities, migrants, and mining/industrial workers to access quality TB services thereby accelerating TB elimination in India.
KHPT decided to leverage webinar in order to encourage conversations around the vulnerable populations with a special focus on health and TB.
The objective of the webinar series was to access in-depth knowledge and gain an expert perspective on health-seeking behaviour, with a focus on TB, thereby contributing to an evidence-based approach for the Breaking the Barriers project.
With this objective guiding us, we evolved the idea of ‘Experts Conversations on Vulnerable Groups’ — a webinar series for individuals and organisations working towards improved health outcomes, with a focus on tuberculosis.
Questions. Panellists. Audience.
We wanted to do it a little differently — adding a ‘Tinkering’ element to it.
For many of our projects, we have conducted expert interviews. Expert interviews are driven by the experts, and by the end of the interview we are left with information that either validates what we have been reading or surprises us, since they are backed by anecdotes and in-depth research which you can’t always ‘Google Away’. These Expert conversations were built on the model of Expert Interviews- from identifying questions to experts.
Questions
The project team had already kicked off with the research phase of the project — starting with secondary research. Secondary research provides a rich set of findings, learnings that evoke curiosity. Why not take secondary research findings and learn about them further from experts themselves?
We used our secondary research findings as Conversation starters for our experts, to tap into their research and field experiences. After all, Google is great but not human.
Panellists
To get a macro yet holistic perspective on each of the vulnerable groups under discussion, we looked at 3 types of experts for each panel: Behaviour, Health and Community.
Behaviour — Any human-centred design approach requires a thorough understanding of the user, her ecosystem and the barriers as well as enablers that are driving a certain behaviour. Getting an expert who can focus the discussions from the behavioural perspective would help us understand the belief systems of the vulnerable group.
Community — For designing any intervention, it is crucial to understand the community — the main ecosystem the user would be interacting with and getting influenced as well.
Several times solutions and interventions are implemented without understanding the real problem, thereby reducing their relevance and probability of adoption. Social challenges often require systemic solutions that are grounded in the user’s needs. At TinkerLabs, the goal is to focus first on the people being served, enabling us to find a solution that’s better. We wanted to learn from the experts about what policies have worked and what haven’t. What are the challenges faced, and the successes seen in the implementation of various programs?
Health — The project focuses on the health-seeking behaviour and patterns to adherence to treatment. The project has a special focus on TB, but it is equally important to learn about the overall health of these people. The idea was to delve deep into the behaviours and approaches taken by the vulnerable population towards every minor or major ailment, because this would help connect the dots to understand how an individual will behave when it comes to TB.
Audience
We had realised that webinars are attended by a mix of people — some who are experts in the particular field, some who are passionate about the field, some who have been working in this field for long and some who are learners, wanting to understand the field. Why not make the most of this rich set of audience?
We designed audience questions that would trigger thoughts and responses from the audience before the panel discussion kicks off. By registering their responses beforehand, the listeners got to experience the evolution of their knowledge and opinions on the topic.
The experts responded to anything unanimous or unique in the audience response at the end of the panel.
Key takeaways
- Experimentation with a new format: making it more engaging and conversation oriented
- Pivoting on behaviour, health and community : 3 of the most crucial aspects that helps in shaping relevant interventions
- Leveraging on the participation of the attendees
- Webinars may last only for 90 minutes, it takes longer hours planning and teamwork that can help pull off the show
And to sum up our learnings from the expert conversations, I’ll leave you with something one of our experts, Dr Reuben , Chief, Infectious Diseases Division, USAID said about TB.
“TB is not just a medical condition, it is a socio-psychological condition.”
_____
