by quicksand | Sep 26, 2016 |
Newsletter || 3Q 2016 A Conversation on Innovation in the Humanitarian Sector Ayush Chauhan Keywords: Design Research, Human-Centered Design, Innovation, Humanitarian Aid Quicksand co-founder Ayush Chauhan sat down recently with Ravi Gurumurthy, head of the International Rescue Committee’s strategy and innovation cell Airbel, to discuss the role of design thinking and innovation in the humanitarian sector. This post shares some of the highlights from that conversation. ******* Ayush leading research activities at a healthcare center in rural Mali Ayush: Thank you for agreeing to be a part of this interview. Before we start, could you introduce yourself and the innovation mandate that you are leading at the IRC. Ravi: My name is Ravi Gurumurthy and I am the Vice President of Strategy and Innovation at the International Rescue Committee. The IRC has been around for about 80 years and works in crisis affected contexts in about 30 countries. Recently we’ve been setting up an R&D center, called the Airbel Center, which we formally launched last month. A: Could you speak on the need for innovation both within the IRC and the wider humanitarian sector and what might have been the triggers for it? R: This focus on innovation emerged out of the strategy that we developed three years ago. We looked at the evidence base for interventions in education, health, safety; all the outcomes that we tend to work on, and what became clear was that if you look across all the work that we and other organizations do, it falls into perhaps three categories. One category is where there is very little evidence of good, rigorously proven practice. For instance we know relatively...
by quicksand | Sep 21, 2016 |
Newsletter || 3Q 2016 Design Innovation for Refugee Contexts Sara Legg Keywords: Design Research, Human-Centered Design, Innovation, Refugees Beginning in early 2016, Quicksand engaged in its second project with the International Rescue Committee: working together to understand and design for education in emergency contexts. The first phase of our project began in February with an innovation in education landscape review. We conducted desk research to assimilate information across a wide range of applications of ICT programs and tools in education in conflict settings. This research resulted in the identification of a list of key microtrends in the sector. The microtrends identify technology and media innovations that have already been implemented in education programs or can potentially be incorporated in such programs to impact learning outcomes — from interactive distance learning that takes into account both formal and non-formal learning spaces, to new and transmedia blended learning that mediates the learning process and facilitates teacher instruction. These trends were one foundational method for our team to gain knowledge of how certain programs and tools catalyze impact and have positive effects on education interventions. We examined the microtrends through expert interviews to further understand the nuances that underpin each. The second phase began in March with the more focused objective of exploring the potential for implementing Social Emotional Learning (SEL) techniques within emergency contexts. The contexts we focused on were countries in Africa where the IRC had already implemented education programs with refugee populations. Most of the research on the implementation and impact of SEL programs has shown promising results, though these have come from stable and high-income contexts in the western world; thorough longitudinal reports...
by quicksand | Sep 20, 2016 |
Newsletter || 3Q 2016 Human-Centered Design in Malnutrition Amey Bansod Keywords: Design Research, Human-Centered Design, Malnutrition, Innovation In October 2015, Quicksand was commissioned by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), one of the world’s leading humanitarian relief agencies, to provide training to its staff in design thinking and in applying design principles and approaches in developing programs. The IRC identified a need for taking a more user-centered approach and to build internal capacity in fostering innovative thinking within its ranks to achieve greater impact. Quicksand engaged with the IRC in order to address this need. The UN estimates that nearly 3 million South Sudanese are facing “acute” food and nutrition insecurity. That translates to more than one-third of the entire country being trapped between poverty and famine on one side and debilitating internal conflict on the other. This has served to only exacerbate an already catastrophic problem. Amey interviewing a healthcare worker at an Anganwadi in Bhopal, India A web of factors underlying chronically high levels of acute malnutrition across the country continue to persist, with no end in sight. With nearly 40 percent of the national population in need of emergency food assistance, rates of acute malnutrition continue to rise with children at the greatest risk followed by pregnant and lactating women. Meeting the needs of these children and women has already taken concerted and considerable effort by humanitarian and development actors, with an estimated 140 NGOs preventing wider suffering through their efforts.
From personal experience, simply moving about the country is extremely challenging and hazardous. People lack the means to so much as survive, let alone avail medical facilities and treatment centers,...
by quicksand | Aug 1, 2016 |
Newsletter || August 2016 Q&A with Rikta on Excess Baggage Sara Legg & Rikta Krishnaswamy Keywords: Design Research, Human-Centered Design, Plastics, Innovation Sara: I’m with Rikta, a design researcher at Quicksand, and today we are going to talk about the “Excess Baggage” project Quicksand is doing in Cambodia with ACRA. Rikta can you introduce yourself and talk about your role on the project? Rikta: I’ve been working on this project for the past year and it’s about reducing plastic bag waste in three major cities in Cambodia (Phnom Penh, Sihanoukville, and Siem Reap). Quicksand’s role on the project was to find a viable, sustainable, and affordable alternative to plastic bags in a chosen focus area. S: Awesome. You previously mentioned that when you first arrived in Cambodia plastic bags were pervasive: they were just everywhere and you weren’t sure where to start with the research. So what did you do when you came across this challenge? R: We tried to get clarity by living the local life. In the beginning it was the best way to prioritize or de-prioritize certain areas. The project was really interesting because we couldn’t make a cut-throat decision on a focus area to chose, we had to create a framework to judge and prioritize what we would eventually end up solving for, but it all started with living really local. A typical local market, where a majority of the urban population shop regularly. S: Could you talk about how one of the main users you focused on were house wives as both distributors and consumers of plastic bags. You also mentioned auto-ethnography or self-ethnography as an exploratory method....
by quicksand | Jul 4, 2016 |
Newsletter || July 2016 Active Learning Through Design Tools Sara Legg Keywords: Workshops, Tools, Design Research, Design Workshops are design events in which research is input to stimulate ideations sessions. But workshops are not limited to this interpretation and research does not simply function in this linear fashion. Workshops are their own kind of research where making happens in tandem with learning and new knowledge is circulated amongst participants. The workshop provides a simulated environment where people can experiment and make prototypes — a way of learning how to be in the world and how to engage with others. The emphasis on practical learning-by-doing is it’s own form of research, exemplified by prototyping and testing. The value of tools are to bring together very different forms of knowledge, research, ways of thinking, and understand them in relation to one another. This isn’t easy to do and the results are not always meaningful to every participant. There are varieties of knowing, and they do not always exist on the same register. For example, research evidence on scalable interventions is not the same sort of data as insights gained from witnessing interactions between an end-user and an internal stakeholder. Both are important but they are different categories of information. In each instance, the goal of using a tool should be to structure disparate information in such a way as to create frameworks that yield sensible, contextual results. This is not a simple process to articulate, and the tools need a skillful facilitator to help make sense of their process for others and guide the creation of outputs. Contrary to popular practice, the facilitator doesn’t need to...
