Background

New product development (NPD) efforts as part of the Safe Water Project at PATH, Seattle, picked up the threads from where the Extended User Testing concluded (for more information on the preceding phases of research and design strategy executed by Quicksand, please refer to User Experience Research for Safe Water Strategies in BoP Markets).

As part of the NPD phase, Quicksand was given the mandate to design and develop a water treatment device for low-income consumer markets that would set new benchmarks for its category. The target specifications for the product were:

• a new price benchmark that was less than half the costs of existing products in the market
• a far superior usability from the point of view of product ergonomics, durability and robustness
• a comparable treatment efficacy but more stringent safe water criteria
• a product system that would make customization possible for different demographics and geographies

Quicksand collaborated with industrial design, engineering, technology and project management partners in the United States & India to steer product design and development. Our responsibilities as the product design partner included:

1. Guide the product development efforts from our position as the custodian of user experience data
2. Provide product design skills that leveraged our understanding of user experience with the constraints imposed by other aspects of the product strategy (namely engineering, technology, commercials, marketing and manufacturing)
3. Provide resources and research expertise in testing concepts developed by the product team with users and other stakeholders directly involved in the successful adoption of the product

Project Process

The project process that followed comprised the following four phases:

Phase 0: Discovery and Project Planning

Phase 1: Product concept development and evaluation

Phase 2: Alpha & beta concept design, development, prototyping & evaluation

Phase 3: Beta unit evaluation

Research Snapshots

Phase 0 & Phase 1 culminated in multiple reference design concepts in conformance with user experience, engineering, technology, commercial and manufacturability guidelines. The concepts went through an iterative cycle of prototyping, user testing & evaluation and subsequent redesigning to eventually culminate in a single beta concept.

From concept to functional beta prototypes, the project was successfully completed in 6 months navigating complex, multi-stakeholder collaborations across different time zones. The project team was able to meet all COGS (cost of goods sold) and UX (user experience) targets specified at the beginning of the project.

The field testing of beta units is pending and will follow the format of  the Extended User Testing study carried out earlier by Quicksand. PATH intends to foster commercial partnerships to introduce the products in emerging markets of India, Africa and South Asia.

PATH is an international, nonprofit organization that creates sustainable, culturally relevant solutions, enabling communities worldwide to break longstanding cycles of poor health. By collaborating with diverse public and private-sector partners, PATH helps provide appropriate health technologies and vital strategies that change the way people think and act. With headquarters in Seattle, USA, PATH has 28 offices in 18 countries and is funded by private foundations, the U.S. and foreign governments, multilateral agencies, corporations, and individuals.

Quicksand was commissioned by PATH, Seattle to conduct an Extended User Testing (EUT) study (funded in turn by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation under the Safe Water Project), over ten months – between March to December 2009 – across rural, peri-urban and urban settlements in Andhra Pradesh, India. The purpose of the EUT Study was to inform the Safe Water Project team at PATH about user experiences that are key to a successful and relevant product strategy for low cost household water treatment and storage (HWTS) products targeted at base of the pyramid markets. By studying how participants interacted with and used selected products in their home over 6 months, Quicksand helped the Safe Water Project team in integrating these findings into product commercialization and product design.

Quicksand was subsequently brought in to lead the product development phase to convert the research findings into tangible proof-of-concepts for a low cost, gravity fed, multi-stage water treatment device. The project involved collaboration between Quicksand, as industrial design and user experience experts, and engineering, manufacturing and project management teams based in Seattle. More detailed description on the new product development activity can be found in a follow-up post titled “Product Innovation for Base of Pyramid”.

Extended User Testing

As part of the User Experience (UX) study, five commercially available, multi stage gravity filters were placed in 20 low-income households as surrogates to understand users’ expectations and interactions with HWTS products.

The Quicksand study team employed a wide variety of UX research methods to document the everyday lives of users and understand the usage of these filters as time progressed. The methods used were:

• Video ethnography & shadowing sessions (by following users at work and home over several days)
• In-depth and in-context interviews and discussions with household and community members
• Role plays
• Participatory design workshops (focus groups and co-design workshops)
• Feature preference exercises (to elicit users’ aesthetic preferences, comparative evaluation of products & hypothesized responses to scenarios)
• Self administered probes (through disposable cameras handed out to participants)

The key stages of the study were as follows:

• Location reconnaissance (March 2009) to understand the use context and identify suitable locations for the research. The locations were selected on the basis of water availability or scarcity in that region, water quality, incidence of water related problems and the economic status of residents of that region.
• Establishing the baseline context (April 2009) with respect to the water ecosystems (water sources, public utilities and government or civil society interventions if any), individual awareness and adoption of water treatment practices, consumer behavior towards durable products and their lifestyle aspirations and ambitions.
• Product placement (May 2009) of selected water filters in each household and observing initial interactions of users with the products, device setup, assembly & problems faced therein.
• Codesign workshops (June 2009) to involve potential users in creating their ideal filter concepts.
• Revisiting households (July-September 2009) to study changes in use behavior, product breakdowns, adaptations & user workarounds after one, two, four and six months of product use.
• Assimilating research findings into top level insights, product concepts & systems (October-November 2009) to help extended teams understand implications of observed user behavior and to kick-start preliminary product development
• Detailed synthesis and documentation (January 2010) to create report formats that make the study findings accessible to a larger community of commercial partners, academics, public health experts and health practitioners. The deliverables consisted of a narrative report formatted in web and print medium.

While the EUT study conducted by Quicksand provided critical findings & recommendations that facilitated a holistic HWTS product strategy for BoP markets, it also provided a framework for an insightful process of research and design pertinent to product development for low-income populations.

Film on Codesign Workshop

Product Placement Observations

Film on product placement

The project involved -

• identifying issues with the current mechanical composter model
• establishing the constituent factors that needed to be tested
• identifying vendors
• conceptualizing, developing and testing various components and multiple prototypes
• documenting the testing phase and working towards a complete working prototype

Further efforts will attempt to build the context of the composter within urban homes and production / retail opportunities.

(further details are withheld as this falls under an NDA)

Quicksand designed and prototyped the visual strategy and all launch collaterals thereof including a premium packaging inspired from cigar boxes.

Click image to download case study (1.5 mb, 5 pages)

Preliminary packaging concept

Quicksand managed the entire design process – from research to final prototype development. Download the complete process document here (14.2 mb, 112 pages) which is also the graduating thesis of one of our lead designers, Neha.

User study (a short film we made on product usage & perceptions)

The product was later spun off as an independent company by the name of Kritikal Secure Scan. Quicksand was called in to design the brand identity and initial marketing collaterals for the formal product launch.

We were also called in to help visualise a patent owned by Dr. Patnaik, another renowned eye surgeon and collaborating closely with Dr.S.C.Gupta. The patent would aid a more efficient & reliable retinal detachment surgery.

1. Tonometer

An early determinant of the onset of blindness is an increase in ocular pressure. Tonometers are medical instruments used to ascertain the ocular pressure. Traditionally these devices have been bulky and as a result largely immobile. And therefore patients have to come to the clinics where these equipments are typically located. Dr.Gupta saw the opportunity in making a portable device that would be able to screen out patients whose ocular pressure is reaching a threshold value. Portability would allow for doctors to do this screening in remote locations and borderline cases could then be referred to city clinics.

2. Retinal Detachment

Retinal Detachment occurs due to the contraction of vitreous, a fluid that fills the void inside the eye. As a result the retina gets pulled off the inside surface of the eye and develops minute tears in its surface. Leakage of vitreous through these micro-tears can cause a permanent loss of vision. Scenario 1 below demonstrates how the problem develops.To neutralise the force that results from contraction of the vitreous, the eye is compressed along the equator with the help of a silicon band.

To absorb the resultant slack in the retina and block the tears, small silicon rods are placed along points of tearing and a silicon tape is tightened around them from the outside. This method is more archaic and requires extreme precision by the surgeon.

A common alternative used is to place sections of cut silicon tape along the equator of the eye. However, the likelihood of the tears re-appearing after some time remains.

The patent developed by Dr.Patnaik consisted of a ribbed silicon tape. The ribs served the same purpose as the rods in scenario 2 but reduced the dependence on the precision with which a surgeon was earlier required to perform the surgery. The patent therefore would enable a larger number of eye surgeries to be performed by relatively less experienced surgeons as well.