GSIF Post #5

  1. List ten things that make you feel human.

 

  1. Ability to show empathy
  2. Being able to make calculated and individualistic decisions
  3. Ability to overcome my fears
  4. Sense of morality and values
  5. Ability to think philosophical questions
  6. Ability to think about long-term goals and aspirations
  7. Ability to design man-made creations and use them effectively
  8. Ability to understand others’ feelings through their spoken and body language
  9. Ability to grow as a person and try to become a better person
  10. Ability to define who I am and my preferences as well as wear personalized clothes and other items to distinguish myself from others

 

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

 

Specifically discuss

  1. Why should I engage?
  2. How must I engage?
  3. With whom must I engage?
  4. What kinds of challenges, opportunities, and approaches should I care about?
  1. What might my epitaph read?

 

I should engage because the copra method that exists as of now is inefficient and is withholding the farmers from making more money than they would with a faster and less time consuming product, which is also a great way to tackle female empowerment in the workforce as most farmers are women. I must engage by researching in depth through reading and analysing various scientific and cultural articles as well as engaging in interviews in order to gain more information about their challenges and how we can efficiently help them. Once I get to the Philippines, I prepare and organize my questions and interview many farmers, specifically female farmers, and the market around copra to see how we can design a culturally appropriate copra machine for the farmers and a business model to help them sell more for their valuable cost. In order for this project to be successful, I need to focus on the challenge of how to convince the farmers to use this new technique instead of the traditional one as well as look for opportunities to be able to improve the new device and for it to be culturally appropriate to their traditions. I hope for my epitaph to read that I was a hard working person who was determined to achieve her goals and was able to achieve them.

GSIF Post #4

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

 

A design process that is both uniquely ours and effective would look like first doing a thorough and deep research about the needs of the patients and making sure that they are culturally appropriate according to Philippine culture and then going to do fieldwork in the Philippines to do interviews of our stakeholders and making sure that we are fulfilling the appropriate needs and wants of the patients and healthcare staff that are involved in the process of birthing. Afterwards, we will be coming back to create a business model for our product since the other birthing team in the Philippines will be creating the design for the birthing chairs this year. 

 

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

Mothers

  • Region of Country
  • Social Class
  • Health
  • Religion
  • Income

Healthcare Network

  • Money
  • Region of Country
  • Partnerships
  • Need for new birthing chairs
  • Amount/number of staff in hospital (under/over staffed)

Doctors/ Physicians 

  • Education Level
  • Region of Country
  • Skill
  • Understanding of different cultures
  • Teamwork

 

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

Concept

  • Help decrease maternal and infant mortality
  • A durable and comfortable birthing table
  • Affordable

Technology

  • Technology/ product platform
  • Technology is not usable in our product however infrastructure is
  • Sizing ability (ability to change to different sizes for the mothers)

Usability

  • Durability
  • Comfortability
  • Sizable (able to withhold mothers of different sizes and adjust accordingly)

Business Model

  • Helps alleviate potential risks when women give birth
  • The Philippines is a developing country so the birthing chair will have to be an affordable cost
  • A culturally appropriate birthing table design
  1. Give three examples of something very interesting you learned from a friend that was a completely alien concept to you.
  • That some African tribes would style and design their hair in a way that would describe their age, marital status, tribe that they are a part of, etc all in just one style of hair.
  • That the way that an Indian woman would wrap their garment and its design can show what village they are from and their status, similar way to what the African tribes would do
  • That Americans hold and eat their forks differently from other parts of the world. In the US, people will cut their food with a knife and fork and then set them down before picking the fork again to eat it with their dominant hand, whereas in other parts of the world you cut and eat with the same hands and you do not set them down until you have finished your meal.

GSIF Post #3

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

 

Cultural:  Financial:  Aftermath:  General Impact 
  1. Will this impact affect religious or cultural beliefs? 
  2. Do they want to be impacted? 
  3. Will the government accept this impact? 
  4. Will there be backlash on our impact? 
  5. Will others adapt to this impact? 
  6. In what ways does in impact benefit people and communities? 
  7. Will this impact indigenous cultures? 
  1. Will this impact be costly? 
  2. Where will we get funding for this impact? 
  3. How will we continue to get funding after we leave the site of impact? 
  1. Will this impact change birthing practices directly? 
  2. Will this impact benefit people besides mothers and children? 
  3. Will this impact be world wide? 
  4. Will others be inspired to create more impact? 
  1. Will making this impact be 
  2. difficult? 
  3. In what ways can we impact? 
  4. How can we measure this impact? 
  5. Can this impact be negative? 
  6. How can we look at this impact in a broader sense? 
  7. In what ways does our help impact? 

 

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

 

Stakeholders Inputs Outputs Outcomes
  • Mothers/Children
  • Healthcare workers
  • Healthcare Network
  • Money
  • Product
  • Hospital/Vendor partnerships
  • Work and Time that the team puts into the project
  • Decrease in number of non-violent births
  • Mortality rate of mothers and infants at the time of childbirth
  • Number of birthing chairs bought and successfully used
  • Better connections with field professionals and mothers who are willing to participate.
  • More knowledgeable about birthing practices and how they are different within the US. 
  • Less birthing complications
  • Less suffering for the mother and faster recovery time
  • More comfortable births that are aligned with cultural norms

Our Stakeholders will be the mothers and newborns, healthcare workers, and the overall healthcare network, who we will try to satisfy all of them in terms of our birthing chairs being culturally appropriate and comfortable for the mothers, easy access for the healthcare workers, and a greater value of material and patient satisfaction that is worth the investment of the healthcare network.

Our Inputs are the money invested in this project, our birthing chair product, hospital and other vendor partnerships, as well as the time and effort put in by the birthing chair design team.

Our Outputs are the amount of non-violent births, decrease in mortality rate of both mothers and children, and the number of birthing chairs bought and successfully used by the patients and healthcare centers.

Our Outcomes are the overall increase in success of non-violent births, less suffering for the mothers and faster recovery time after giving birth, and more comfortable as well as culturally appropriate births provided by our birthing chairs.

 

  1. Develop a M&E plan for your venture. – Clearly list all assumptions. – Identify short-term and long-term success metrics. – (Optional) identify specific methods to measure the metrics.

Long Term Metrics

  • An decrease in complications while birthing
  • Spreading our birthing chairs to other East Asian countries
  • Our birthing chairs being available in most hospitals and health centers
  • A great decrease in infant and mother mortality

 

Short Term Metrics

  • A deep understanding of current birthing methods / practices in different areas of the Philippines (ex: rural, suburban, urban) 
  • Connections made to the people for the Philippines (doctors/ nurses/ physicians/ mothers)
  • A better understanding of the religion such as is there any restrictions that do not allow people to do certain thing

We will measure our metrics by doing surveys of one asking the mothers on how culturally appropriate and comfortable the birthing chairs were for them and the other survey will be asking hospitals and other health clinics on how many mothers preferred using our birthing chairs instead of the regular ones or other traditional and cultural birthing chairs (like the bamboo-made birthing chairs of the Austronesian people in the Philippines). Other forms of measurement would be gathering statistics on how much less birthing complications were able to occur because of more comfort and easier access that our birthing chairs provide. Then we can gather data on how much birthing chairs we have sold as well as in how many hospitals and health centers they are provided.

GSIF Post #2

  1. Give three compelling examples of how cultural issues affect your project.

Three cultural issues that can affect our project are:

  • Cultural priorities and dimensions
  • Communication
  • Trust and negotiations

 

Each culture or religion has their own specific rituals or practices that our birthing chairs might not be able to respect all of them, which can be problematic since we are trying to create a more comfortable and culturally appropriate birthing chair. Each culture prioritizes different things, so we cannot be sure that the American culture of viewing our priorities will be exactly the same as Philippines’ culture until we do a more thorough research and interview the residents there when we visit the Philippines. Furthermore, we need to understand their cultural dimensions such as hierarchy, directness, and more, in order to have impactful communications and negotiations with the people we are collaborating with in the Philippines as well as the negotiations we will have with the buyers of our product.

 

Communication is very important because if misspoken words are said or the misunderstanding happens because of cultural differences and misunderstandings, then it can be very problematic and can be possibly the termination of our project. Therefore, the correct form of communication is needed to be understood in order to not cause any cultural issues and misunderstandings that could have been easily avoided. 

 

Lastly, in order for our products to be able to be sold, then we need to be able to gain the trust of our buyers and consumers through our negotiations since it is often harder for foreigners to trust each other if they come from different cultures. For this reason, it is very important for us to be able to learn about how to properly create and sell our products during our projects, in order to be able to have a more effective result at our negotiations.

 

  1. Have you experienced or observed any of these social situations at home? Describe at least three such situations. 

As someone who immigrated from Iran to the United States, I have experienced some of these social situations in America because of cultural misunderstandings like:

  •  Being spoken to with words that would be considered rude in my culture that were considered normal in the United States
  • Not being able to effectively negotiate with others because of language and cultural barriers
  • Having different cultural priorities from Americans

 

Firstly, communication differences between natives of a country and foreigners happens frequently, however, as a foreigner, I was taught by my family and through observance of the culture, that I should be as careful as I can be with my attitude and bad communication skills in English, in order to not offend others. However, my experience with natives of the U.S. turned out to show that natives have not been taught to be careful of their tone of language when speaking to foreigners, which almost caused a big misunderstanding between my classmates and I, with what they thought to be a helpful order and what I conceived as a condescending command. This was most;y because of their tone and choice of words, that I later learned can have many meanings, which is why communication is an important aspect of understanding other cultures. 

Another example is when I was given a role of a bank teller at my elementary school’s Happy State Bank shop, which students routinely rotated in schedule, so when it was finally my turn to sell something from our school’s shop to the kid’s parents, it was much more difficult for me to be able to explain to them the products that we were selling because I could not speak English fluently and was not skilled enough to understand what kinds of marketing strategies and negotiations work on Americans, due to that difficulty I was not able to sell as many products as my peers.

Finally, as I continued living in the U.S., I became surprised when I found out that family is not considered the first priority in American culture. Although money is important, my Iranian culture believes in prioritising family before anything because they are the ones that you will have for the rest of your life. However, I can understand how this might not apply to Americans as it is common in their culture to move out of their family’s home by the time they reach the age of eighteen, which does not exist in Iranian culture. 

 

  1. Give three examples of cultural practices that can be leveraged to address community / market problems.

 

Three examples of cultural practices that can be leveraged to address community and/ or market problems could be childcare practices, medical treatment practices, and religious practices. If childcare practices in middle or lower income countries are not on par with childcare practices in high income countries, then they can be used as leverage to address community/ marketing issues, which can also be applied to the medical treatment practices. Religious practices could be used to address community if only one religion is dominating a country and restricting more minor religions to be persecuted or simply given more attention than the rest of the religions, which can signify that all of the community is not treated as they should be treated, which causes many problems and can be used as leverage as well.