Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Seattle Interactive Conference 2016: Design Swarm

How I came across the Design Swarm
I lead three teams in Nintendo: Program Management, Communications and UX teams. Over the past year or so, we made tremendous progress in each team. However this progress came with a personal cost: not able to spend time on other activities that interest me, especially thinking through problems and coming up with potential solutions that impact human life, something useful for the society. Even though this was nagging at the back of the mind, I didn't realize how much it bothered me until I took a four day unplugged vacation to South East Asia. I am amazed by how much introspection went into those four days (that story for another post..).
When I got back, I started looking into meetups around Seattle that weave technology into daily lives, may it be art, working with artists, NGOs, companies struggling to get their footings. Through one of such meet ups I came across this invitation to participate in a design swarm happening at Seattle Interactive Conference. It will be a day long mentored activity to solve a key social issue in Africa. I was excited at the opportunity and jumped on it. If not anything else, it would be such a good experience. And boy was it or what?

Design Swarm Challenge
Over 1 billion people lack access to clean water and 3.4 million people die each year from water-borne diseases. Women and children walk 1/3rd of their day just to fetch clean water. A breakthrough technology created in the Seattle has the potential to make a big difference. We have just six hours together to build on this technology and come up with an innovative approach to place this technology accessible to all the remote places, in particular Kenya.

Teams
Teams were randomly assigned. We had two UX designers/researchers, two communication students, one front end designer, one copy writer and one program manager, business developer. Each one brought a unique set of talents to the table. Just the sheer experience and varied backgrounds helped smash some ideas together.

Surya Vanka lead the design swarm. He lead us through a few exercises to get us started. I learnt about saw-tooth approach to the design challenge

What I learnt
Many a times I've seen people jump to solutions without properly understanding the problem at hand. This was the case when the problem was given to us. My team members were already providing solutions without exploring the problem space. Surya lead everyone back to exploring the problem space. Who are the stakeholders? What challenges did the company face to introduce the devices? What challenges do the users face? Who are we trying to solve the problem for? Etc..
While going through these questions, we quickly realized the original set of problems we conjured up were not the true problems. We thought the usage and the maintenance of the product will be a challenge. However that's not the case. We thought people would love to jump onto such a solution if given for free. Nope, there are social factors that are affecting proper deployment of the devices. Each time we conjecture something and check with people who were in the field, we learnt something new. This process went on for a couple of hours.
     " Spend as much time as possible to understand all the factors effecting the problem, before jumping to solving them."
That is the most important lesson that was reiterated today.
After the initial exploration, we chose a fictitious character by name Naeku, who is a single mom of 3 kids, has to work, clean, cook, wash, and fetch water for her kids, who wants to break out of this constant rat race as our primary person for who we are solving this problem.

Why did we chose Naeku?
During the problem exploration phase, it was clear we need to address three things:
1. Education: We were surprised to know that there is no inclination for these people in remote parts to seek out clean water. What we take for granted in developed world doesn't translate to rural areas. Point noted. So we have to put some efforts into educating the need for clean water.
2. Find a good distribution channel: Since one kit can work for 5 years for a small village, the problem is not on going distribution. Even a one time distribution with minimal maintenance schedule should work. Given these places are in remote parts, need to find a good way distribute
3. Empower: the village citizens should be responsible for on going usage of the device. For variety reasons, one of which is that these places don't like external people to come tell them what they should do. Another is, we cannot have external people constantly travel to these remote places. It is not sustainable.
These points lead us to believe that the proper way for us to approach will be to foster entrepreneurship around this device that can self sustain the efforts going forward. Naeku, naturally inclined to break out, was our first target. Through her we will make the device available to the rest of the villages.

Challenges for Naeku
Education in using the device, advantages of clean water, and running a business are Naeku's main challenges. Another challenge is the initial cost ($250/device)

Solution Elements
We chose to leverage health workers who go to these villages are our main resources to empower people like Naeku. For education purposes, we will prepare videos, that are preloaded onto tablets, that can be taken along with the health worker to show in the villages. These videos are necessary since most people are uneducated and cant read. These videos are in local languages. They showcase an entrepreneur who succeeded in creating a good business model around chlorination device. They also show how to use the device, and how to get microfunding for purchasing the device.

Story board
After working through these elements, we came up with the following story board.
"This story is about Naeku, a single mom, early 20s, who is sick of walking miles and miles everyday to fetch clean water. The time she should be investing in taking care of her young children. She is motivated to create a small business for herself, so that she can feed her family well. She heard of chlorination device from a health worker, approached her for more details, got all the details. She then utilized the local village chit fund to fund the device. She knows that it takes approximately 220 days for her to recoup all the money back, and still has about 4 years of total profit going to herself. She uses her influence, being a local member, to educate others of the need for clean water. She makes chlorine everyday and distributes the chlorine to her neighbors for a small fee. This way she made money and can leverage the open water sources around her village, instead of walking 20 miles each day for clean water. The time she uses to spend with her kids, and take care of them. With the additional money she made, she uses local events, like soccer matches to expand her business to neighboring villages too. She educates local women to take on the franchise model, while she distributes the devices to them, and takes a small commission. She was able to put her kids in a school, who learn about clean water, and educate others, there by creating a viral butterfly effect. This way she was able to influence all the villages around hers and got famous as 'Clean Water Queen'. "

Result
There were 7 teams, and one other team had similar approach. They combined the above idea, with a vile, that can be like a jewelry which people can wear around their necks, kind of serves as reminder. They also combined the upcoming features phones availability in these areas to message availability of the chlorine. A smart combination of art and technology. They won the design. Hey not bad to come second in such a challenge. eh?

So that's how I spent my day, learning, meeting, talking with new people, new ideas, new areas in the brain that were untapped in the past. I come out a day shorter at office and a lot more richer in life :)

As Garrison Keillor says, "Stay well, do good and keep in touch."

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