Month: March 2019

1. List ten non-obvious assumptions about your target customers (or organizations) that you need to validate.

a. One assumption we have made so far, is that the children in Sierra Leone will be drawn to sweet potato cakes over other snack products.

b. We assume that at least for now we will be able to get sweet potatoes when we are in Sierra Leone along with the other ingredients we need for our recipes.

c. The group is also under the assumptions we will be able to find a local bakery to work at and use to practice our recipes. If we dont have access to workspace, working on the project will be difficult.

d. Another assumption is that the children will actually be able to eat our cakes. We currently believe that their shouldn’t be an issue, but we have to validate that.

e. The next assumption is that the children are willing to try a new idea and a brand new food product. We aren’t entirely sure they will accept our proposed solutions so validating that will be key.

f. The group is also currently assuming that street vendors will be willing and able to sell our products to a wild variety of children in order for the business to work.

g. Another assumption is that the food will be at a similar cost it is projected to be. We only have a small amount of data on the costs of food, so we will need to validate our estimates.

h. The next assumption is the shelf-life of the food. Currently we believe that the cake will last for a few days in a cardboard packaging, but we still need to test this.

i.We are also assuming that the mothers will approve of one of our recipes and will endorse us to other mothers and children to help the product take off.

j. Lastly, we are assuming that introducing this product will have a positive impact on the children and the country of Sierra Leone. We will still need to test whatever tangible results we can find to prove the impact we made.

2. List ten hypotheses about your project that you need to test during fieldwork.

a. One hypothesis is that the food won’t hurt the kids stomachs. Using high levels of Iron can be upsetting to one’s stomach so we must check for this side-effect.

b. Another hypothesis this that the food can have a shelf-life of 3 days in order to be sold to a wider radius. We have to test this idea.

c. Our third hypothesis is that we can find locally sourced foods for cheap. We believe this to be true but again, we need to test this on a large scale to determine if there is room for our product to grow.

d. Another hypothesis is that we are able to develop a program that can model Vitamin A. I plan on building a code using AMPL to model Vitamin A degradation to ensure our product maintains high levels of Vitamin A, as it’s the most needed micronutrient.

e. Our next hypothesis is that we can find a way to dry sweet potatoes at temperatures below 150 degrees Fahrenheit, in our to avoid Vitamin A degradation to sweet potatoes. We believe this to be possible, but given the small set of resources in Sierra Leone we may have to source from outside Sierra Leone to get that equipment.

f. Another hypothesis is that we can develop a process to mill the sweet potato into a powder so that it can be stored for long periods of time. If we can’t figure this out, our product will only be available for part of the year.

g. The next hypothesis is that the supplemented micronutrients will be bioavailable enough to be absorbed by the kids. We have to ensure the product is doing what it’s intended for.

h. Another hypothesis to test is that our packaging will be biodegradable and cheap enough. We haven’t decided on what product is best, but once we do we can choose a packaging that will be biodegradable and cost-effective.

i. The next hypothesis is that the mother’s will approve of our product. Sierra Leone is a country that follows a matriarchy, so the mothers approval for the product is crucial.

j. Our last hypothesis is that we can actually produce 500 cakes a day. We have to make sure we can get enough food and have a kitchen large enough to bake that much.

3. What do you think you bring to your team? How has your perception of your own strengths and weaknesses changed over the course of the class? Please be specific

I think that I bring strong leadership and diverse skills to the team. I’ve had many leadership opportunities in my days in the Boy Scouts and gathered valuable teamwork skills. I also bring diverse skills in my ability to code which is rare for a Bioenginner. I also have valuable past research experiences in Dr.Brown’s and Dr. Liu’s labs working on building codes to identify pollen samples under a microscope.

1) a. We will use less background information, as the panel has now heard that information and doesn’t need to hear it again.

b. We will practice the presentation more. Our group only did 1 or 2 practice runs of the presentation, but it could have been a lot better if we had run through it more.

c. Add more back-up slides. A lot of questions that were asked during the presentation, we had answers to, but it would have been better if we had a slide to turn to.

d. Add more continuity. The feedback we received, was that the flow of the presentation needed work. I believe more transition slides would help the presentation flow

e. Add more visual appeal. Some of the feedback we received was that the slides were somewhat boring and hard to follow. In the future make the slides simpler and easier to understand.

f. Have everyone talk more during the presentation. The reviewers felt that I spoke too much, and didn’t allow the other members to contribute.

g. Have the presentation be more solution-based. A lot of our feedback told us that we didn’t cover our solution to the issue enough. In the future, cutting out background info will help with this.

h. Stop reading off slides. It was noticed that a lot of the information we talked about was already written, and thus didn’t need to be said again. We will take this into account next time.

i. Use more figures. A lot of the comments that were given to us involved not having justification for our work. This is something we can simply do by adding sources on the slides and mentioning where we got our information from.

j. Finally, using fewer filler words would help our presentation a lot. Our group had to say “um” and “like” frequently which takes away from our presentation as a whole.

2)Our work will not require IRB approval for the first trip to Sierra Leone, as we will just do some basic sensory testing, and will be focusing on survey mothers about what they do and don’t like. In no way will be testing a “product” or “solution” in Sierra Leone. Instead, we will be gathering data. From my understanding of IRB, we would have to be testing a product in hope for a result and conducting some sort of an experiment. In no way will we be conducting experiments for the first time we visit Makeni. In the next round of visiting Sierra Leone, we will need to get IRB approval. The second time the team visits Sierra Leone, the process will require IRB, as at that stage of the project, we will be testing our product on human beings. We would hope to have a full product at that time and can begin to test whether or not the product has a positive effect on malnutrition in the children. I personally won’t be involved with the project at that time, but we would submit our paperwork for approval as soon as our product is finished so we know what is being used and what is being tested for.

3) Our inputs will include, money, employees, expertise from people on the ground and at Lehigh, a bakery and materials to bake the muffins, food ingredients from local vendors and markets, partners to help fund the project, and time from our team and myself to work on the project. Some outputs we are striving for are, a final muffin product, new consumers, new jobs, new training for the workers, more income for street vendors, and a final paper to publish our results. The expected outcomes of the project are much greater. We hope to embellish a culture of healthy eating, and just hope to get people to begin eating more sweet potatoes. We also are looking to address malnutrition, so ultimately, we need to fix that issue. Our team is hoping that our product can reduce the high levels of malnutrition in the country. More than this, our product can save lives, and help the children that are growing into adults to develop more properly and hopefully can grow to make changes that impact their country as well. We hope to impact every life in Sierra Leone, and eventually we can bring our concept to other countries as well.