A new perspective, new design changes

The last two weeks have been all about design changes for myself and the a'port team.
One of the most exciting results from the Ghana research was how it changed our perspective on the design, and gave us the user research we needed to get back to the drawing board.Fortunately, the feedback I got from users was a lot more pointed than I'd been expecting. Comments tended to focus on a few main things:

1. Interlocking: It's great because it causes the portlets to stay in place when rolling. It's not great because users find the portlets hard to fit together, especially over rough terrain

2. Grip: Many people immediately tried to grip the rubber covering when picking up the portlets, which is a pretty big sanitation concern for our NGO partners.

3. Size: Ok, maybe reactions to this weren't so pointed! One group of users, women who are the sole water collectors for their families, wanted to see the size of the portlets increased. On the other hand, children and older women liked that the units were light enough for them to pick up, and didn't want to see a change. So are we leaning toward efficency tool or aide tool on this one?

To answer some of these questions, we sat down with IDEO for an hour-long brainstorming session last week. We had a lot of fun-As a designer, it was hard to not completely geek out watching a team of design and engineering pros brainstorm for our product. As usually happens at these sorts of this things there were a lot of very blue sky concepts, but also some that we can certainly build upon.

I'm posting a montage of video footage from Ghana, which helped us identify some of the design challenges, and some of the best IDEO concepts.

Cart + portlets = it's raised off the ground and still easy to roll

cap and axle combination

Changing the shape of the portlets so their easier to clean
adding "ribs" so they roll easier, and are easier to pour

Media Update

Now that I've updated everyone on some of our research, it's high time for a media update as well. Throughout this process, the team has been pleasantly surprised to find Aqua Port featured on various design and educational blogs.

We are one of the projects featured on the MIT TechTV website (check out the embedded video below!) and most recently Dapo was profiled in the MIT magazine Spectrum



If anyone comes across the project elsewhere, please let me know in the comments section. It's awesome to see A'port popping up on different sites, but we're having a bit of a hard time keeping track of where we are in the webiverse. Thanks!

Hi all,
I came across this video segment that the New York times did for International Women's Day. It profiles the "women's work" of carrying things on the head with a group of women in the Congo. It's good to see this issue getting attention, especially with relation to women's rights!

Also take a look at my own attempt at journalism, an interview with a woman from the village Kukiniele after she tested the a'port.

User Reactions

While I had no idea what to expect or how people would react to the product, I was pretty blown away by the positive response and enthusiasm we received.

Many women told me that they are the sole water collectors for their families, which means they often go to the water source as many as 10 times per day. Children, too, complained that collecting water often cut into the time they can spend on school work, and felt that our product could allow them to collect more water in less time. Some responses came from pretty unexpected places...some of our greatest supporters, for example, were elderly women, many of whom experienced chronic back, neck, and chest pain from collecting. Because of these health problems, old women said they sometimes collect less water than they need in a day and hated having to burden young women to collect for them

I was most surprised by the response Aqua Port received from men in the villages. Since water collection is mainly a task set aside for women and children, I expected most of our responses to come from them. However, men were equally eager to chime in, and talked about how they sometimes need to collect water for agricultural use. some suggested ways to modify Aqua Port so that it could be used for irrigation. While this was not the intention behind the original design, it would be great if we could come up with something that fits this need with the redesign.

First update, post-Tamale

So I apologize in advance for the “blog binging” that’s going to take place on here for the next couple days. I just returned from the trip to Tamale, and with no posts about the trip so far there is so much to get everyone caught up on. J

As I mentioned, I just got back from Aqua Port’s first round of field research in Tamale, Ghana. This involved four weeks of traveling around to villages in Northern Ghana, testing the product with a wide range of villagers, and collecting a dizzying (but thrilling) amount of data, insight, and testimonials. The purpose of the trip was to, in a way, start from square one with the project and look at the process/ main problems with water collection before addressing how Aqua Port could be an appropriate solution.

Overall, this trip was completely different than design research I’d done before, but I was very excited by how everything came together. I knew from the start that this project would be unique in that the result is a product that might lead people to change how they structure their day-to-day activities, so it was essential that I learn as much about the communities and village life as possible. Fortunately, I spoke with a lot of people who were extremely helpful and great interviewees. I even managed to get around 30 volunteers to test the product and provide feedback. In addition to visiting water sources I also visited peoples’ homes and a school, and got to talk with chiefs, elders, and assemblymen in many communities.

Thanks to support from Pure Home Water Solutions and Innovations for Poverty Action, I worked with two fantastic guides throughout the trip. Both did an awesome job of not only translating my questions from English to Dagbani, but helping to link me with local village leaders and potential NGO sponsors in Tamale (they also did an excellent of job taking me around to villages on motorbike…the most reliable form of transportation in Tamale, and a really fun way to get around J )

My guide, Salifu, at a community dam with the portlets

a few interviewees

three boys with their solution to water collection...a collection cart!

Heading to a villager's compound to meet his family

My other wonderful guide, Amuda, and the portlets with our main mode of transportation.

Aqua Port continues to get ready for field testing, but have experienced a change of plans recently. Due to a setback, we were unable to go to Ghana in September as planned.

Fortunately, our setback seems to have a silver lining, as some great opportunities have come up in the meantime.

In one of our most exciting developments, we had a conference call with the founder of Hippo Water Roller, who we are excited to say would like to lend us some assistance with growing Aquaport!

On the design front, we were fortunate enough to meet with two engineers from national design firm IDEO. They will help us brainstorm some important changes to the current design and structure our research.

While the trip is postponed, we have plenty to prepare for, and continue to work on our model.

In the meantime, we have been looking to expand our team, and have been recruiting MIT students to work on the project and potentially come with us to Ghana.

Last week I (Mary) attended the International Development Fair at MIT to get the word out. I met some very qualified students who will make a great addition to the team.

Photos of the aquaport table below!

Back from Maker Faire

Dapo recently returned from the Maker Faire in Accra, and has made some great contacts while there. We are starting to form a valuable network of people in Ghana, which will be extremely helpful when Rebecca and I are in Tamale in September.

Until then, we are working out of a prototyping lab at MIT to create something more robust for testing, and working out some logistics for the trip.

As usual we have all been pretty busy, but steadily making progress and preparing for testing!

check out an interview with Dapo on Core77 here: http://www.core77.com/blog/videos/driveby_video_aquaport_at_maker_faire_africa_2009_14564.asp