Based on my personal life experiences and skills, a design process for our product that is unique and effective would look like
- Identify a problem that needs to be addressed
- Talk to the locals and listen to their concerns
- Start brainstorming solutions
- Prototype the design
- Get feedback from the intended users
- Design and implement the product
- Teach them how to use it
- Collect and analyze data
- Improve, Improve, Improve
This design process is definitely something that I am passionate about because it incorporates the creativity of developing new products to help benefit a group of people, but it also takes into account their opinion and their culture. Something that I have learned from CINQ 396 and Global Citizenship is that often times we, humanitarians, go into an area that we have identified a problem in and fix it according to how we believe it should be fixed. This generally creates more issues rather than fixing the problem. For example, the TOM’s buy a shoe – give a shoe business model completely destroyed the economy of the places they send shoes. It also makes that area very dependent on the importation of the shoes and because they rely so heavily on that resource, they won’t be encouraged to find ways to sustain themselves. Additionally, there was an Italian humanitarian who went to a country in Africa to help their agriculture. The humanitarian and his team began to plant Italian tomatoes in a field full of rich nutrient soil. But after they did, the hippos in the adjacent river came and ate all the plants. When the humanitarian asked why the locals didn’t tell them about the hippos, their response was, “because you didn’t ask.”
That is why I think it should be one of the first steps one takes before even beginning to design or brainstorm a product. Go to the locals and get THEIR input on the issue that you think is such a big deal. Ask them why they haven’t tried to change it themselves and ask them how they would like it to be changed. Someone could make the greatest product in the world, but if the locals won’t use it, or don’t know how to use it, the product becomes useless. So as the developers come up with the product, they should constantly get feedback from the people who are going to use it the most. Also, it’s important to always always always improve the product using the data collected and analyzed. If there’s no way to measure the success and efficiency of the product, there’s no way to tell how to make it better.
Our group plans to validate our product and business model by talking to experts. We know that we aren’t the most knowledgable in nutrition, health systems, or business. For this very reason, we will continue to talk to nutritionists, native nurses in Sierra Leone, sensory scientists, pediatric doctors, and others to ensure that our product is the most beneficial that it can be. We also are creating a system to measure the effectiveness of the product and measure the levels of vitamins being absorbed by the children from the product we create to ensure it’s actually working. We are also aware that we don’t know if the kids will like the muffins, so we’re creating a few backup plans so we have more than one option for them; however each plan will provide the same amount of nutrients. For the business side, we will utilize our team members who are more equip to know how business plans work and we will talk to investors and business owners to get their advice on how they did it and how we can improve our own model. The validity of our project completely relies on how we find and use resources that are more knowledgeable and experienced than we are.
My philosophy of engagement was touched on in the design process. I think it is important to establish a positive relationship with those who are working with; whether it is the potential customers, the partners, and/or the communities. The reason this is so important is because generally when a new product is being introduced into a community, if nobody knows anything about it, they won’t integrate it into their daily lives. But since it’s new and there is no real, tangible data proving it’s better than the competition, the success relies on the engagement. If we go into Sierra Leone without establishing the right partnerships or without engaging and getting to know the community, we won’t (1) be able to tell if this product will integrate well within the community and (2) the community won’t trust it. However, if we go in and talk to the locals and get to know them, we might find better and more effective ways of introducing our product and they might be more willing and accepting of our product.
As you may be able to tell, I think one of the most important things in creating any business or product that is supposed to help others relies on the mutual relationship and equal communication with those people. We can’t help them if we don’t know them.