Three Markets 🇬🇭 🇰🇪 🇧🇩
Many Cultures
Wicked Problems
Human Centered Designer, Prototyping Specialist
2014-2015
Kisumu 🚻
Kenya 🇰🇪
Kisumu is one of Kenya’s oldest settlements, a port city with stunning sunset views over the world’s second largest lake.
It’s home to 600,000 people, who are mostly trilingual, yet 60% of them lack access to proper sanitation.
I spent over 4 months there during a year long engagement. We joined the local business lead to carry out research & pilot concepts for a social enterprise.
small insights go a long way…
“A foreign charity came here and spent millions building these beautiful new toilets. Each came with a container to be emptied into compost.
“They didn’t think that in our culture, nobody will touch it if they have tenants from outside their family. If only they’d provided an emptying service, we’d be happy to pay for it.” — Kisumu Landlord
Kumasi 🚽
Ghana 🇬🇭
Uncover bottlenecks
to turn hundreds of customers into thousands.
As CleanTeam broke ground on their new waste processing site, I came in to help them scale the facility and processes across the business.
We mapped out and timed their systems and processes from beginning to end, looking for bottlenecks and prioritising areas to address.
Prototypes and experiments allowed the team to shortlist approaches and technologies to deal with each challenge.
Panorama taken on night time walks through Chittagong with my colleague Shankar.
Chittagong,
Bangladesh 🇧🇩
In a country where 80% of the land is regularly flooded, these cities are suffering the worst from the climate crisis.
Bangladesh’s second-largest city is a major port that houses over 4 million people.
I served as the prototyping lead within a team of 7, on an intense 5 week immersion to develop prototype businesses.
We spent our nights meeting ‘sweepers’. They use buckets and sticks to empty concrete pit latrines at 4am, with kerosene, cigarettes and alcohol as their only companions.
A ‘sweeper colony’ in Chittagong. The locals are told not to go there, and our female team members didn’t join us. The moment Shankar and I stepped inside the compound at night, all the lights went off.It turned out to be one of the friendliest and most vibrant places we visited.
Follow the process
Observe
We spoke to potential customers, elders, entrepreneurs and waste management experts to understand the sanitation landscape, mapping out user journeys, plots of land and even the city’s topography.
Ideate
Local participants were engaged in workshops, collaborative exercises and co-creation of ideas to address each aspect of the value chain.
Prototype
Multiple product and service prototypes were created in collaboration with users. These included existing products and low-fidelity concepts which could be easily adapted according to user feedback and needs.
Test
An extensive test lasting months was carried out with selected customers. Participants took a diary of their experiences and documented challenges, as well as the impact the services had on their lives. Experiences were planned out to mimic real life customer experiences.
Replace consultants
Build in-house capacity.
Kate and I were brought in as internal consultants to help WSUP keep information, talent and budget in-house, and to build on what the teams had already achieved.
We spent our last three months creating a structure to make this team permanent for the first time.