Based on your life experience, skills and interests, what would a design process that is both uniquely yours and effective look like?
We feel that for something to be uniquely ours is something that hasn’t been done before, and for it to be effective it has to treat the problem properly. For example, we are working on different recipes, all created by people in our group, making them unique to us. They are affordable and nutrient-dense foods that mothers can purchase for their children, making them as effective as they are unique.
-One design process would be to create a study that works toward research in our project of addressing malnutrition in children under the age of five years old. These research designs would contribute to background, purpose of research, questions and hypothesis; our design would provide information on reliability and validity on each measure based on data. In addition, our project would contribute to taste-testing, sampling or recruiting participants, and making sure we have the right supplements/ingredients for our recipes.
Identify your three most important stakeholders and list five UNIQUE attributes for each one of them.
- Mothers and their kids:
- Will be the ones using our product the most, even though it’s available to everyone in Sierra Leone
- Their feedback will be most important
- Greatest need for product
- Their feedback will help us make ingredient choices and create successful business and marketing plans
- Main drive/motivation behind our entire project
- Mothers with children will be approached and asked if they are interested in participating in our research
- Children are critical to our research because they are the target audience of the products
- Vendors:
- Will be selling our product and getting it out into the market
- Will be our partners in this venture
- Are going to help a lot in marketing the product
- The vendors will be those who are responsible for integrating our product into the village’s culture
- They will be the image of our product when mothers buy them
- Bakers:
- Will be making our product before it goes to be sold
- Partnership with them is one of the most valuable because without them, we can’t move forward in our venture at all
- Provide them with our ingredients/recipes/preservatives
- Our best insight on local
- Interact with mothers and other members of families who may play a factor in the decision of purchasing our products
Identify three ways in which you will validate your project concept, technology, usability, and business model.
Three ways in which we will validate our project concept is through the usage of human subjects research– provide information on the reliability and validity of each measure; we will have references or results prior to each measure; and we will work towards stating the details of the statistical or qualitative analysis that we will use to analyze this data
The purpose of our research is to nutrient-dense foods to alleviate malnutrition in Sierra Leone in children 6 months to 5 years. We want to see if women and children in Sierra Leone like our products and if they would be successful as a treatment for chronic malnutrition in children. Their feedback will help us make ingredient choices and create successful business and marketing plans.
Furthermore, we will have a questionnaire that we will use for mothers in Sierra Leone that will be used to get a better understanding of their family’s daily lives and whether they would buy our products. The questionnaire will give us feedback on the recipes and cost needs to answer our two main questions of our research.
Taste-Testing: During each interview, we will ask participants’ children to try our three products. For the children, we will observe their facial expression and reaction to each food. For children 18 months and younger, we will rely on behavioral observations and the help of their mothers to gauge whether or not they like each food they try. Children that are a little older can make decisive ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers, but we will most likely still need to observe their behavior to understand if they like or dislike our recipes. Children are critical to our research because they are the target audience of the products. Our recipes are designed to treat micronutrient deficiencies in children between six months and five years old. It is essential that we have a better understanding of whether or not children in Sierra Leone like our products before we finalize our recipes. Mothers will be asked to consent to the children’s taste-testing.
Our plan is to recruit participants through the help of World Hope International (WHI), a non profit organization located in Makeni, Sierra Leone. We have worked most closely with Allieu Bangura, Global Director of Health and Nutrition at WHI. The pre-established relationship will help us build trust with members of the community. WHI and previous student researchers in Sierra Leone have recommended that this be our plan for recruiting participants, and they have explained that this is the most effective way to interact with people in Makeni.
Give three examples of something very interesting you learned from a friend that was a completely alien concept to you.
One of the first things I learned at Lehigh is the idea the possibility of exploring multidisciplinary pathways, which I am practicing through my pre-medical track and art major. I have learned that there is value to having diverse academic interests because it allows one to look at new ideas through different perspectives. Something else I learned was that American culture is truthfully extremely different from cultures around the world. I went to Switzerland for winter break, and although we had the same privileges as we do in America, the culture is different, especially around the purpose of life and responsibility as a citizen. Finally, I learned the importance of any experience abroad as a tourist and a citizen. Both experiences are completely different, and having an experience abroad as a citizen with friends from such a country are integral to truly learning the country’s different culture and traditions
- List the top 20 questions your team needs to answer to advance the venture forward. Categorize the questions if necessary.
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- What is the project about?
- Why is the project important?
-
- Who is impacted by the project?
- What is the main objective/goal?
- What steps will be taken to reach the objective?
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- Where will we execute our project?
- Who says those people need help?
- Why can’t they help themselves?
- Why can’t someone else help them?
- Why do you think your project will be successful?
- What are some of the nutrients used for the project?
- How much culinary experience is needed for the project?
- Why do you think people will buy your product?
- How do you intend to keep the project running after you leave?
- What is the timeframe for your project?
- How will you use your time wisely?
- How are you qualified for this project?
- How do you think the community will react to your project?
- How will you incorporate the project into their culture?
- Will your community’s culture accept the project?
- Develop and Visualize the Theory of Change (Logic Model) for your venture.
| Inputs |
Activities |
Outputs |
Outcomes |
Goal Alignment |
- Time
- Research
- Ingredients
- Environmental Conditions
- Preservatives
- Funding
- Materials (packaging)
|
- Recipe experimentation
- Communication with local businesses
- Experimenting with packaging
- Contact packaging professionals
|
- Developed recipes and packaging for products
- Maintain partnerships with vendors
- Continued feedback from community
|
- Healthier, well-nourished kids
- Reduced growth stunting
- Affordable and accessible nutrient dense foods
|
- Goal: reduce malnutrition and stunting
- Outcome: achieves that 🙂
|
3. 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
| |
INDICATOR |
DEFINITION
How is it calculated? |
BASELINE
What is the current value? |
TARGET
What is the target value? |
DATA SOURCE
How will it be measured? |
FREQUENCY
How often will it be measured? |
RESPONSIBLE
Who will measure it? |
REPORTING
Where will it be reported? |
| Goal |
Reduce malnutrition and stunting in children under the age of 5 |
Research: https://www.pih.org/article/stopping-severe-malnutrition-sierra-leone |
40% of children are malnourished/have suffered from stunting |
Ideally 0%, but very difficult to achieve, so any progress is valuable |
Measured through developing communication with community/possible evaluation technique |
Monthly |
Lehigh student team |
Blog posts, papers |
| Outcomes (problems solved) |
Healthier, well-nourished kids
Reduced growth and stunting
Affordable and accessible nutrient dense foods |
Calculated through research |
N/A – Read above regarding current malnutrition |
Ideally 0% of malnourished kids, but very difficult to achieve, so any progress is valuable |
Analyzing sales, health of children (specifics on how to do this decided once product is finalized) |
Monthly |
Lehigh student team |
Blog posts, papers |
| Outputs (what we ultimately want and get out of our research) |
Developed recipes – products we can sell |
Analyzing nutritional value of recipes |
1 |
At least 4, going to experiment with other recipes (ST- throughout semester) |
Analyzing sales, consumption, etc. once introduced in marketplace (LT) |
Monthly |
Lehigh student team staying in SL |
Blog posts, papers |
Spring outcomes/GOALS: 3+ new recipes (muffin,pudding, bouillon cubes/pb balls), developed packaging for recipes, analyzing the costs and taking them into consideration, make sure we use products that are accessible to the community in our recipes
Summer outcomes/GOALS: feedback on recipes, even if negative, progress based on feedback, continue work we’ve been doing; 100 of each product a day sold by end of fieldwork