Weekly Blog Post 6


Does your work require IRB approvals? If Yes, articulate your detailed IRB strategy. If No, explain why you don’t need IRB approval and identify situations when you might need IRB approval. 

 

We decided that our project needs IRB approval (exempt status). Specifically, our project falls into Exempt Category 2: Surveys, interviews, educational tests, and public observations.

Our project meets the definition of research; we are performing a systematic investigation which will include testing and evaluating copra dryers. While researching, we will indeed further generalizable knowledge pertaining to the coconut industry. 

In order to get a better sense of what our design really needs to be, we will be talking to and questioning human subjects. Most of the information that we will be collecting will not be personal or private; we want to know about their agricultural practices. Essentially, we want to know how they conduct their work so we can better fit our design to their needs. In order to gauge the success of our project, we may need to gather information regarding income, to measure how much additional income our processing technique is generating. We might interview Filippino family households, therefore, we might need to get informed consent. We will have to consider whether our informed consents will be conducted in Filippino instead of English and how the process of obtaining signed informed consent looks like in the Philippines.

The research we are conducting on human subjects involves little to no risk at all. The product we are designing is to be used by the people we are researching, not on them. The product causes no physical injuries or mental distress to stakeholders. 

We’ll also need to apply for Philippines Ethics Board if necessary: http://www.ethics.healthresearch.ph/index.php/phoca-downloads/category/4-neg

 

Develop an outline for your mid-semester presentations. What supporting evidence will you provide for each point? How will you boost your credibility every step of the way?

 

Time: 5 minutes → Number of slides to present: <10. Number of slides to back-up for questions part: 10-15? 

Strategy: simple story, go to product quickly, make sure to build up credibility as well.

Introduction

“How long does it take to dry your hair in the morning? We can all agree that the faster you can dry your hair the better. Incidentally, the same is true for drying coconut meat into copra.”

  • Connect drying coconuts with a process people do daily

[Slide 1]: Define the overall problem using facts (3.5 million coconut farmers, earn less than $2/day) – small landowner farmers aren’t making enough money

  • Explain problems with current drying techniques and how it is hurting farmers
    • The dryers being take multiple days, are susceptible to molds and bacterial growth, and produce inconsistently dried copra (facts here)
  • Explain problems with the copra/coconut market and how that is hurting farmers
    • Lack of consistency in the moisture content of copra produced by small landowner farmers is causing a lot of pricing issues, thus causing market problems (facts here)

[Slide 2]: Discuss and display potential designs/solutions – explain how our product is avoiding problems found in current drying techniques

  • Target specifications – potential prototypes that we have

[Slide 3]: Discuss partners / Stakeholders that are involved with the project: list stakeholders and emphasize on our connection with UPD (credibility boost).

  • Explain how UPD has already been doing research for half a year and has connections on the ground over there with valuable stakeholders (farmers)

[Slide 4]: Explain the potential scalability – Whatever we make in the Philippines has a high likelihood of being replicable in other coconut producing countries (fact here)

[Slide 5]: We are working closely with a group of students from UPD to design/prototype a device that processes and produces higher quality copra in the Philippines 

[Slide 6]: Introduce the team, major, name, connect experience with project 

Weekly Blog Post 5

List ten things that make you feel human.

  1. Family/friends
  2. Compassion
  3. Money
  4. Stress
  5. Communication (language)
  6. Abstract Thought
  7. Technology
  8. Happiness/Sadness
  9. Cooking
  10. Pain

 

Articulate your philosophy of engagement as it pertains to your work with the GSIF.

Over the past winter break I participated in the Lehigh in Costa Rica program, where we got to meet and interact with many small landowner farmers practicing sustainable agriculture. I think that the people we will be dealing with in the Philippines will be very similar to the farmers in Costa Rica. The way we engaged with the farmers in Costa Rica was through listening to what they had to say and asking educated questions. These farmers already had systems in place that allowed them to practice sustainable agriculture in order to achieve economic sustainability, so all we could do was observe and learn from what they told us. In the Philippines, I expect us to engage in a similar manner: we will learn from the way they farm and conduct their business and ask respectful questions to understand their reasoning. I think where engaging the Filipino farmers will vary is gauging their interest in change, and their desire to generate more income. In Costa Rica, all we could do was learn; we weren’t there to make suggestions to improve their system. In the Philippines, through respectful inquiry, we will attempt to educate and engage farmers’ interests in our potentially helpful device/technique. 

  • Why should I engage?

We need to engage with the people who will actually be using our future design to discover and understand what exactly their needs are.  It wouldn’t make sense to create some device or technique that has no use in Filipino society. By engaging, we can learn a lot about our design’s requirements, its necessary functions, and ultimately how much of an impact it will have on its potential users.

  • How must I engage?

I think our best strategy will be genuine curiosity. We need to avoid taking charge and telling these people what to do, and instead ask them whether they would be open to our ideas. Coming from America, it will be important that we don’t come off as arrogant American students who have all the solutions, because we don’t; ultimately, we are there to learn from them.

  • With whom must I engage?

We’re primarily going to have to engage with the farmers. Additionally, we’ve already reached out to the UPD student team working on this project and plan to acquire knowledge from them. Our plan is to learn from and collaborate with these students in order to gain a better understanding of what it is we’re trying to accomplish?

  • What kinds of challenges, opportunities and approaches should I care about?

Undoubtedly, we are going to encounter individuals who are stubborn and set in their ways, who will be opposed to hear anything we have to say just because that’s the way they are, and they’re happy with the way they’ve been doing things.  I think we are going to have to take a very cautious and civil approach when talking to people.

  • What might my epitaph read?

Beloved son and brother, devoted friend, adventurous and compassionate spirit.

 

Weekly Blog Post 4

Based on your life experience, skills and interests, what would a design process that is both uniquely yours and effective look like?

Our group will look to learn from and build off of other projects that have already attempted to improve the processing of copra. It has already been shown by other research groups that there is a way to improve the system that is currently being used. Where our design process will differ from these groups, however, is in the approach of the problem. Our goal is to improve the livelihood and income of small landowner coconut farmers in the Philippines. Simply designing a cutting edge, all-weather drying technique to generate more consistent quality copra (based on moisture percentage) is a major step in the right direction. However, to truly achieve our goal our product needs to do more than just produce better copra. It needs to be easy to use, affordable, and durable. Additionally, our design process will look to, in any way we can, give the smallholder farmers the ability to generate additional income other than just coconuts. We’ve looked into ways to add value to waste copra, such as copra snacks. We’re exploring ways to allow coconut farmers to add value to their finished product as well; smallholder coconut farmers usually sell raw copra, which sells for much less than refined coconut oil itself. If our product in some way enabled farmers to process their copra into a finished coconut oil product, they could feasibly earn much more for their product. 

This design process will follow a cradle-to-cradle strategy in which our goal will be for all outputs to enter into another system as inputs. In order to do so, we must change the way we view sustainable systems. In nature, the fallen blossoms of a cherry tree can be seen as waste/output or they can be seen as input for the next generation of cherry blossom trees. By applying this analogy to our project, we will plan a design process that creates economic growth rather than restricts it. Instead of minimizing consumption to create a cradle-to-grave design process, we will work to improve methods that will allow for increased consumption of coconut products while also creating a system that is sustainable. 

 

Identify your three most important stakeholders and list five UNIQUE attributes for each one of them. 

  1. Copra Farmers
    1. Directly using copra processing techniques
    2. Feels the effects of their business(efficient/non-efficient process)??
    3. Major Coconut producers?
    4. Will feel the direct impact of our work
    5. People that we will be working with the closest
  2. Philippine Coconut Authority
    1. In charge of developing the coconut industry to its full potential
    2. Has a say in the regulations of copra farming
    3. Is researching and trying to develop ways to increase copra quality
    4. Working to develop and expand foreign markets
    5. Works to ensure the socio-economic welfare of coconut farmers
  3. Coconut Consumers
    1. The consumption of the product keeps the farmers in business
    2. Consuming coconut products puts money back into the economy?
    3. Their needs are working to be met  
    4. Their demand quantifies the amount of copra that needs to be produced
    5. Consumerism has a major effect on the pricing of coconut goods

 

Identify three ways in which you will validate your project concept, technology, usability, and business model. 

“Are we building the right product…with valid requirements, features & performance?” This is the question that we should ask ourselves as we validate our project design and model. Three possible validation pathways that we come up with are:

 

  • Write down our basic assumptions and test: Who are our customers/consumers? Who are the stakeholders?  What problems are we solving? What is the economic problem? What is the engineering problem? Does addressing the engineering problem solves the economic problem? How does our product/design/approach solve the problem(s)? What are the key features of the products?

 

  • Reach out and interview our networks, including friends, mentors, investors, partners, and others for feedback. The interview questions should be (1) open-ended, (2) help uncover pain, value, or motivation, and (3) challenge our previously held assumptions. Come to the interview with a curious mindset about the stakeholder’s problems and needs instead of a sense of cursory will help us gain valuable insight.

 

  • Find the value(s) proposition of our product/design/approach. A value proposition is the expected gains that our customer/consumer will gain from using our product/design/approach. Values can be both quantitative and qualitative, and by thoroughly understanding and documenting these quantitative and qualitative values through the fieldwork and stakeholders interviews, we can push our design closer to the correct features, performance, functionality, and other requirements.

 

Give three examples of something very interesting you learned from a friend that was a completely alien concept to you.

My friend Ami made me aware of the fact that a lot of towns in Japan have public baths. Evidently they have community bathing sites open to the public.

My friend Jack told me that in China any shows or films that feature time travel are censored. I was aware that China censored their media, however I did not realize it was so specific.

Tri told us in our group meeting that the number of people killed by coconuts falling on their head is greater than those killed by shark attacks. 

Weekly Blog Post 3

List the top 20 questions your team needs to answer to advance the venture forward. Categorize the questions if necessary.

  1. What are we impacting?
  2. How are we impacting?
  3. Where/why are we impacting?
  4. What makes copra so important?
  5. How many lives can we impact?
  6. How will our work have an impact outside of the Philippines?
  7. What are the different ways we can have an impact?
  8. How do we make our impact sustainable?
  9. How do we quantify impact?
  10. Can we generate a negative impact as well?
  11. Will the people in the Philippines be open to our ideas?
  12. What we be the obstacles that prevent us from making an impact?
  13. How long until we are able to deliver impact?
  14. How will we adopt their cultural habits?
  15. What are people doing to create an impact now?
  16. Who are these people?
  17. How personal is the process to them?
  18. How do adjust our solution to their culture?
  19. How can we make people happy?
  20. How can we improve ourselves through this project?

Develop and Visualize the Theory of Change (Logic Model) for your venture.

Inputs Activities Output Outcomes
  • Money
  • Time
  • Knowledge
  • Expertise
  • Materials
  • Equipment
  • Partners
  • Research
  • Prototyping
  • Designing
  • Networking
  • Field work (visiting farms)
  • Educate
  • Propose Ideas
  • Consistency in quality of copra
  • Maximized use of the entire coconut
  • Value-added products from coconuts
  • Increased nutritional value in copra
  • Reduced coconut waste
  • Social venture focused on introducing and implementing sustainable, state-of-the-art copra processing methods to copra farmers
  • (Short term) – Knowledge and awareness of current drying processes and their shortcomings
  • (Intermediate) – Reduced used of popular sun-drying and smoke-drying methods
  • (Long term) – Elevate the livelihoods and increase income for copra farmers

– Clearly list all assumptions.

  • Assume our project will be successful
  • Assume we will finish the research by this spring semester
  • Assume that we will have a design/prototype by the end of the summer
  • Assume that we can collaborate well with the UPD partners 
  • Assume that we can interview copra farmers
  • Assume that we can adapt to a different culture and time zone
  • Assume that we have four potential pathways to address the problem

– Identify short-term and long-term success metrics.

Short term: Reduced inconsistency in copra quality (overall quality increase).

Long term: Economic growth. Increased income for copra farmers.

– (Optional) identify specific methods to measure the metrics.

  1. Design, energy efficiency, and sustainability of the processing technique
  2. Amount of high-quality copra that can be produced using new methods
  3. Amount of additional income that can be generated for copra farmers