IDEO.org Fellows Bring Beautiful Design to Humanitarian Efforts
November 6, 2011
http://www.good.is/post/ideo-org-fellows-bring-beautiful-design-to-humanitarian-efforts/
“In the long run, we hope the fellowship program will inspire the continued sharing and spread of human-centered design,” Martin says. We’re hoping the experiences gained and skills learned will help create the framework for a new cadre of leaders who will create new solutions to the challenges of poverty.”
The global water crisis seems simple enough to solve: Dig wells in communities that don’t have one, and let the water flow. After all, the problem is not that there isn’t enough water on Earth, but more of a logistical challenge about how to move it from point A to point B. But in fact, providing safe drinking water to the 1 billion people who don’t have it presents a tangled knot of complex engineering, political, economic, scientific, and cultural challenges.
That’s exactly why the water issue is such a good fit for the big-picture thinkers that make up a new breed of humanitarians—designers. IDEO.org design fellows are currently working in Nepal and Ethiopia to create systems that can support people’s varied uses of water, from urban gardening in the slums of Addis Ababa to fluoride treatment plants in the Rift Valley. The goal is to take a “holistic and human centered approach to meeting people’s water needs,” organizers explain on the project website.
>>>Human-centered design, the framework through which all IDEO.org fellows operate, guides designers to come in with a “beginner’s mind,” asking lots of questions and observing everyday moments, resisting the instinct to jump to conclusions or try to sound smart. It’s relationships and hunches, not strategic plans and short-term goals, that are the real tools of the human-centered designer. Liz Ogbu, one of the fellows working on the water project, writes, “We are starting to think of available water services and technology as analogous to a set of Lego parts that can be applied and rearranged depending on the needs of the community.”
Taking Design Thinking to the Nonprofit World
October 3, 2011
http://philanthropy.com/blogs/innovation/taking-design-thinking-to-the-nonprofit-world/35
IDEO’s approach to design starts with learning as much as possible about the people who will eventually use the product–their lives, their needs, their aspirations–rather than starting with a hypothesis about what they need, says Patrice Martin, creative director of IDEO.org. Too often, companies and organizations start the process thinking about what’s feasible or viable, but she says that doesn’t matter “unless what you’re creating is actually desired by the people you’re designing it for.”
‘More Dignity’
Last year the design company started working with Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor, a nonprofit in London, and Unilever to develop a business to provide new sanitation products and services for city dwellers in Ghana. During a trip to the West African country, the company’s consultants set up interviews with many types of potential customers, such as women, heads of households, teachers, laborers, the elderly, and people with disabilities.
IDEO helped a nonprofit design an in-home sanitation service in Kumasi, Ghana.
The consultants asked “an incredible array of questions,” says Andy Narracott, program coordinator at Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor.
He says some of the questions were very personal: how much money their household earned, what kind of work they did, how many people lived in their home, did they have a toilet, what sanitation products and services they currently pay for.
One woman they talked to had a question for her interviewers: Why have you come all the way from your country to ask about my toilet?
Mr. Narracott says most nonprofit organizations would have said, “A toilet is good for your health, and we want to help you.”
By contrast, he says, one of the consultants told the woman that they were with Unilever, and they wanted to create a sanitation product people would be happy to buy but that also improves people’s health.
“From my perspective, that provides a lot more dignity than a typical [nonprofit] approach,” says Mr. Narracott.
Testing Ideas
After gaining an understanding of what customers want, IDEO lays out the options and develops prototypes to be tested.
“It doesn’t have to be a solution that’s ready to go to market,” says Ms. Martin, of IDEO.org. “Instead it’s something that acts like or looks like the experience that we’re trying to create. We get people’s reactions. We see what works; we see what doesn’t. And we can build on that.”
The portable toilet IDEO designed for the project
After several iterations, IDEO developed a portable toilet for the project in Ghana. Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor is now running a six-month test of a service that rents the toilets and charges a weekly fee for the waste to be removed. The trial started with 20 customers, who got the first month of service free. Two months into the trial, all 20 customers had agreed to pay for the service, and the nonprofit group is adding more customers.
Mr. Narracott says the pilot project is providing valuable financial information his group is using to develop a business plan for the service.
Nurturing Talent
IDEO.org has created a fellowship program to spread the company’s design approach in the nonprofit world.
For 11 months, the fellows–five from the nonprofit world and three from IDEO–will work with IDEO.org on nonprofit design projects in areas that focus on agriculture, financial services, health, and other areas.
The idea is that the nonprofit fellows will take their new skills back to the charitable world and that the IDEO fellows will bring a new understanding of the problems nonprofits face back to their work at the company.
“We’re bringing design and the social sector together in a big way,” says Ms. Martin. “We’re looking at the people who are working on our most intractable challenges and then we’re taking some of the best creative minds in the world and we’re putting them together.”
