Half the internship has already gone by!! I honestly cannot believe it! I feel like we’ve just gotten started and we’re still riding in on so much momentum.

In this week, we have really built upon the foundation of our problem context. The entire premise is that we want for the decontamination unit and hand sanitizer dispenser to be effective and easy sources by which Malawians can maintain sanitation to fend off COVID-19. We want to provide solutions that can improve the current availability of these resources. In order to do that, we have to also understand how much people understand the efficacy of hand washing and other decontamination methods. It seems like the greatest challenge regarding implementing these units will come down to how approachable they are, how easy they are to use, and ensuring people understand how to use them. So from here, where do we go to achieve all of this?

To find some answers to this question, we’re embarking on around a week and a half of interviews.  We kicked off this phase by approaching health and technology in Malawi, through speaking to Wayne Decker, president of The Flame Tree Initiative, and Dumisani Kaliati, founder of MicroMek.

Speaking with Dr. Decker, we received very insightful perspective on how energy or lack thereof in Malawi is a great barrier. At least 80% of the entire country remains off-grid. For those of us with technologies that will require a power source, this is an extremely important piece for us to address in our designs. Dr. Decker leads a start-up that has been working on how to sustainably develop energy sources and partnerships over the last decade. This means not only creating opportunities to harness energy and create various grids throughout Malawi, but also to ensure that the way that these sources are developed expands out to create a network of occupations and educational options to Malawians in the surrounding area.

 

Malawi Power Africa. Retrieved from USAID.gov

Before this, I was generally aware of how resources create a network and subsequent opportunities available to a community, but I did not fully understand the scope of just how broadly this influences Malawian operations. The resources provide a base to develop infrastructure to support communities. The locations of the broadest networks of existing infrastructure used by industries taking advantage of the natural resources Malawi has to offer. Outside of urban areas and communities nearby these industrial grids, there is a large gap to narrow in order to improve equity for citizens of Malawi.

Mr. Kaliati further expanded on how the lack of grid structure contributes to how he started his company. Micromek aims to decrease the gap in diagnostic care in order to provide Malawians with the ability to have their basic medical needs met. Under normal circumstances it requires 11 days to get testing kits to and from members of remote villages. After this, it could take 4 weeks for the results to be received. This is valuable time when looking at providing medical treatment. Micromek is working to close this gap by working with villages and communities to provide proper testing via drone operations. This cuts the travel time down to a few hours and speeds up the process of transporting kits, results, and treatments. Particularly with COVID-19 looming on the horizon, these provisions will become more necessary to combat the deadly effects of the virus.

COVID-19 cases by region as of Tue. Jun 30 2020. Retrieved from the Ministry of Health Malawi COVID-19 Dashboard.

In these conversations, my team and I realized just which areas we would need to strongly consider working on outside of prototype development itself. Through Dr. Decker’s insight, we would need to understand how much of a grid network we could possibly tap into depending on where our decontamination unit or hand sanitizer dispenser would be implemented. In an ideal situation, these units could be connected directly to grid power, but that likely won’t be feasible in every space. Particularly if we are seeking to expand usability of these devices to rural communities, a self-sustaining power source will be required. Having this perspective, we have started to look at the potential to incorporate solar power to the devices. We want these devices to be effective and if it can’t be operated due to power limitations then we would have missed the point of creating a usable device, and our users would be stuck with a useless electronic device.

Additionally, establishing relationships with the village leaders and members themselves will be critical to implementing these technologies. Through Mr. Kaliati’s advice, we realized how much making a device approachable and trustworthy hinges on establishing the trust of village leaders. In fact, establishing and valuing these connections are important not only for our technology, but any technology developers desiring to create for the citizens of Malawi. Working with village leaders allows creators an avenue to observe what a village’s ultimate needs are. It also establishes trust throughout the village community which enables us as creators to really connect with our users more personally to continue designing to fit their expressed needs.

Of course, during this pandemic, it is difficult to perform these evaluations and make these connections. However, this situation provides us with the time to really step back and evaluate and collect information on how to best approach implementation moving forward. It also allows me to really reflect on how I can apply techniques toward future projects and goals I have in health promotions both locally and abroad. All of these principles apply regardless of who we are working with. Working with a community means investing in building relationships with the members. Without speaking and seeking the members’ perspective on their needs, sustainable empowerment cannot be established.

I look forward to continuing to really connect to stakeholders as we move into next week. From having conversations with two stakeholders, we have already learned so much. I cannot even begin to imagine how much more we’ll learn in another week of interviews.

 

–Krystal

Can you believe it has been three weeks already? We’re halfway through our internship! I have learned so much through our morning workshops, team meetings, and reflection, but I just wish there was more time. More time to think, create, and implement our prototypes in the field. More time to talk to our mentors and friends to learn more about who they are and what inspired them to do the work that they do. More time to reflect on how life (resources, culture, environment, etc.) is different between the U.S. and Malawi. There’s always so much more to learn but so little time. In the coming weeks, I hope to continue taking in all the different ideas from the program and reflecting on how these lessons can impact my perspective.

On Monday, our team reflected on who would impact or be impacted by our product and created a stakeholder map. As we went through each step of the engineering design process from the initial research to the final product, we realized that many stakeholders could contribute to a wide assortment of steps and surprisingly interact with each other based on their different priorities. For example, a hospital may be interested in the clinical functions and ease of use of our device, while a manufacturer may only consider how easy it is to mass-produce or if a specific component would be resource-efficient. With all these different inputs and priorities, it’s hard to prioritize which should take precedence in our design, but I’m slowly working through the reasoning with our teammates to be intentional with our final product. What do we want our device to do? Which should be more of a priority: cost or function? Why? And so forth.

Stakeholder Map

On Tuesday, it was Election Day in Malawi, so our internship took a day off.

On Wednesday, Dr. Wayne Decker talked to us about the Productive Use of Energy like sustainable energy production in rural areas. I wasn’t too familiar with the topic, so it was interesting to hear an expert in the field and feel how passionate he was for his work. I hope to share the same energy for my future career, but for now think about what I do as a living, a hobby, or just for fun.

On Thursday, we had a workshop on Needs Finding, where we learned about different strategies such as observation, interviewing, research, etc. to identify and contextualize an existing need in a scenario. It was an important segway for our coming week when we will interview stakeholders and get their input on our design proposals as well as understand what their prioritized needs are.

On Friday, Dumisani Kaliati talked about his company MicroMek that uses drones to deliver medical supplies to rural communities where access may be limited. It was incredible to hear how he continued to persist through challenges such as initial funding, employee recruitment and training, and finding community partners (village chiefs). Some resistance came because his method (drones) were so unconventional in Malawi, and he was also a very young graduate so there wasn’t much credibility or title established to his name. But even then, he persisted and aligned himself with recognized organizations, applied to grants/business competitions, and ultimately became 2018 YALI Mandela Washington Fellow and Goalkeepers Youth Action Accelerator Advocate. It’s amazing to hear a success story, and I hope to become as resilient as he is.

Signing off,

Austin

At the halfway point in the internship, there are varying versions of a similar thought floating in my head: it’s only been three weeks, it’s already been three weeks, there are still three weeks left, but there are only three weeks left. It seems like just yesterday I was writing my first blog about my excitements and reservations as the internship began. Had just met my teammates and we were just beginning to gel. We had only scratched the tip of the iceberg that is the engineering design process (that’s still probably the case), and we looked forward to the journey to come. Three weeks in, we have done so much that it’s hard to believe that it’s only been three short weeks. We have heard from some incredible people during our workshops, and we have had great team meetings in which we really worked through certain aspects of our projects. Going into the final three weeks, I’m confident that I couldn’t have a better team, that I are doing meaningful work, and that I am learning so much from this experience.

On Monday we learned from our TAs Aubry and Hannah about ways to effectively present on and write about a project. They gave us some incredible advice and showed us some of the tools that will allow us to effectively and efficiently display our ideas to stakeholders who may want to get involved in our project. This workshop also helped me to identify ways that we had not considered interacting with stakeholders. We realized as a group that we needed to further refine the groupings that we had assigned to our stakeholders. Each stakeholder is going to be connected to our project in a different way and is therefore going to be especially interested in unique aspects of our project. A clinician may care mainly on a face shield’s comfort of use, while the hospital administration cares about how many times they can be used and how much they cost. The workshop helped us to realize this and we were able to come up with a more clear and defined stakeholder map as seen below.

Tuesday was Election Day in Malawi, so we did not have a workshop. However, we did meet as a team. Not all of our group members were present for last weekend’s team bonding exercise, so we did it again with all four of us plus Hope (our TA). We had a great time playing the game and spent a lot of time laughing. We must have talked about Marvel superheroes for at least half an hour. It was great to get to know my teammates better and to laugh and enjoy the virtual equivalent of hanging out with them.

On Wednesday, Dr. Wayne Decker joined us for an impassioned workshop on Energy Poverty. He inspired me with his drive, vision, and knowledge on a subject that he desperately wanted to improve. While the bulk of his presentation was on Productive Use of Energy, he also taught us quite a bit on sustainability and supplying energy, jobs, industry, etc. to rural areas. His energy and his work were an example to us that working on projects that we are passionate about has the potential to significantly improve the quality of life for many people. Finally, he gave us advice on tips for being happy and successful in the future. This stuck with me, as it showed that he not only cared about our projects, but that he cared about us and our happiness as people. I will be trying to implement his pieces of advice as best I can in the future.

Dr. Bond and Professor Million lead the way in a workshop about Needs Finding on Thursday. I learned that there is more to a need than meets the eye. There are multiple dimensions behind a need, and incorporating all of these dimensions into a solution usually provides the most effective and long lasting results. We went over the techniques of needs finding which center around background research, interviews, and observation. While this internship is heavily focused on the research and interviews portion of needs finding, we are unfortunately not able to conduct observations given the current situation. It is difficult because observation is likely the most “pure” form of needs finding, but we are making do with what we’ve got (and looking forward to possibly conducting observations of our own next summer). On Thursday we also had a team meeting with Dr. Taylor. It was great to talk to her about our progress through the internship and about our team dynamic.

On Friday, we had a workshop by Dumisani Kaliati in which he gave us great insight on what it means to meet the user/customer where they are. He is doing great work with his company to find the specific needs of their target users and to educate them on exactly how his intervention would function to help them. We were also able to ask him about the face shields that his company has been working on which was extremely helpful.

During the weekend, our wonderful TAs put on yet another fantastic team bonding activity. It was a virtual scavenger hunt. We had to first solve a riddle to which the answer was a household item. We then had to sprint to that item in our house, take a picture of it or with it, and send it to the group with the name of the item before the other teams did. Let me tell you, this was a high stress and intense game. For much of the competition, my teammates were the brains and I was the legs as my track training paid off and allowed us to send in our answers quickly. We all had such a great time, again filled with laughs and great memories. I can’t wait to see what the next half of this wonderful internship holds!

Till next time,

 

Andrew Abikhaled

Hello!

This week, we have been diving into the concept of localized needs findings and innovation opportunities in preparation for our stakeholder interviews next week. It’s hard to believe that we are already halfway through the internship. It is so exciting to reflect on some of the personal and professional growth I have had thus far—while I have already learned an incredible amount, I still have so much to explore.

Monday started off with a workshop from our lovely TA’s Aubrey & Hannah on presentations and technical communication. This workshop really emphasized that regardless of how amazing a design or innovation may be, there are still many skills such as communication that are essential to the success of a device. We also had some time in the second half of the workshop to meet as a team and catch up on some of the deliverables we started last week. We continued stakeholder mapping by connecting that various ways in which there are not only differing levels of stakeholder in our devices, but their interconnectedness with each other and the various nuances that exist in each level.

Tuesday was National Election Day in Malawi, so we did not meet as a group. It’s great to hear that my teammates exercised their civic duty. I wish we had a national election holiday here in the U.S!

On Wednesday, we had a guest speaker, Dr. Wayne Decker from the Flame Tree Initiative, an organization that focuses on fostering entrepreneurship among local communities in Malawi to tackle social problems. Dr. Decker was an engaging and witty presenter who imparted a lot of wisdom to us. I found the focus on energy poverty and rural contexts to be extremely informative. Especially as an American, this is an area that I may fail to sufficiently pay critical attention to. Afterwards, we brainstormed some ways that our own devices could incorporate the productive use of energy for mutual success in Malawi. We are now further looking into the existing supply chains, the use of sustainable, locally sourced manufacturing material, solar energy, potentially scaling into rural areas, and creating economic opportunities for local communities. This further reinforces that so much of global health design goes beyond the devices that we iterate. It is truly about forging sustainable relationships with local communities for mutual benefit. Dr. Decker also left us with some life advice that has been continuously on my mind over the past week. As a rising senior, I have a lot of anxiety about post-graduate plans, especially because there are so many potential options and paths to take. Dr. Decker imparted on us that in the future, we should “find a big problem that keeps you up at night” and work to tackle it through listening, forging multi-disciplinary partnerships, and incorporating feedback.

On Thursday, we had a workshop led by Dr. Megan Bond on identifying opportunities for innovation. Professor Million also provided an informative presentation on some of the concrete, tangible steps we can take to engage in effective project scoping. This was a great build-up of some of the concepts I learned in GLHT 360 with Dr. Bond last year, supplemented with interesting case studies I encourage you to read. While needs-finding has been critical component of internships in the past, given the virtual nature of our internship and our limited observation capacity, we will have to rely on the strength of our stakeholder interviews to really dive into needs finding. While this presents a challenge, I think this also provides an interesting opportunity to try and creatively engage. It also highlights how critical the skills of communication and listening are.

On Friday, we met Dumisani Kaliati, a Malawian innovator who created MicroMek, a company that uses low-cost drones to deliver medical diagnostics to young children and pregnant women. I previously worked on cervical models in LUCIA and I am interested in women and maternal health, so it was great to hear Dumisani presenting on the work that he is doing in digital health innovation, as well as some of the recent COVID-19 relief efforts. I found his advice on some of the common challenges we might run into, such as a lack of trust from early adopters and a heavy dependency on imported raw materials, particularly relevant, as Dumisani is a young entrepreneur who has successfully dealt with many of these challenges. As we move forward, we will have to critically address these challenges by aligning ourselves in partnerships to enhance our credibility, identifying the sustainable development goal our project aligns to, incorporating feedback on our minimal viable product, finding local alternatives to imported materials, and researching policies that may affect our device.

We ended off this week with a scavenger hunt our lovely TA’s created based on some riddles of common household objects. Everyone was “zoom”-ing by frantically scrambling to take pictures of eggs, toothbrushes, showers, pencils and just about anything found in a home. I got some pretty strange looks from my family as the competition really heated up (even though there was no prize), but in the end team PPE had a very well-deserved victory.

This week, we explored how to adapt our devices to become more sustainable and learned strategies to engage in localized needs findings. It was great to learn about how we can further ground our technologies in the local communities and ecosystems they will inhabit. I am excited to apply these concepts to our stakeholder interviews next week and further iterate on our device and needs recommendations.

Signing off,

Sana

 

Another fantastic week comes to an end! This week of the internship has been beneficial in further broadening my group’s understanding of the problem we are trying to address by introducing us to different assessment strategies. The first tool was introduced to us by workshop leader Wayne Decker, from the Flametree Initiative. He discussed the importance of identifying innovative methods that are appropriate to the productive use of energy (PUE). During this workshop, our team was tasked with finding realistic ways in which mutual success could be yielded from the need for PUE and the need for production and distribution of our prototype. This seemingly broad and challenging task brought to light some important considerations as we move forwards with our prototypes including (i) utilizing the local supply chain, (ii) methods of ‘marketing’ the device, (iii) challenges resulting from transportation and languages, and (iv) the finding of suppliers and partners. There were three main findings from this analysis for our Walk-Through. First, the set-up and maintenance of the structure should tie in economic opportunities for people within the communities. Secondly, the materials used to build the structure should ideally be sustainable materials sourced locally in Malawi. Lastly, consideration of energy availability within these contexts. In this regard, we should consider the utilization of our prototype beyond the clinical settings, particularly with regards to how the energy requirements would change in that regard. For example, most Malawi devices use two power sources, solar and back-up battery, so that they can still be used during power outages. As a result of these varying power needs, our prototype needs to be capable of sourcing energy across various location types.

 

The second assessment strategy, problem definition, and needs finding was introduced by Dr. Bond, Professor Mafuta, and Professor Kumcheza. I was somewhat familiar with this strategy from my Global Health design class last spring, and having found it very helpful at that time, was excited to learn more. When faced with a broad problem statement, it can be challenging to determine which path to take to solve it. However, when the problem is well-defined, solutions start to take shape, and it’s easier to consider what needs the device has to address. There are three main components of a need: (i) the core problem, (ii) the population affected, and (iii) the design outcome. Once you have defined what these are for your overall problem, you have, in theory, what you need to appropriately solve the issue at hand. However, due to the restrictions resulting from the current global pandemic, some of the techniques for defining these needs are not entirely possible; thus, making other components all that more important. For example, observation is not possible, but background research is all the more so. With good background research, you can aim to ask the questions that you would typically answer during observation. We were read in on the importance of gaining a broad perspective of the issue at hand. For example, a patient may have a different point of view of a problem from a surgeon who might have a different perspective from that of a nurse. Therefore, to truly solve the issue at hand, you need to consider the viewpoints of all those involved. Additionally, it is essential to phrase a question in many different ways to ensure that all the necessary information has been obtained, as the method of framing questions affects the answer received.

 

To end out the week, our awesome TAs hosted another team bonding activity. This time, it was a scavenger hunt. Each team (based on technologies) was placed into a breakout room to solve the riddles sent in the group chat. The first team to send a picture of the object with a caption labeling what the object was, received the points. For example, one riddle was: “I make marks wherever I go, I shrink as your ideas grow!” to which the answer was a pencil. This activity was a lot of fun as it worked on strengthening our team problem-solving skills while also getting to know each other better. The rest of my family may have given me some strange looks as I sped around the house searching for the objects, but I had a great time!

 

Looking forward to the week ahead when we will start doing our Stakeholder interviews. I’m especially excited about this, as it will allow us to gain crucial viewpoints from our devices’ different stakeholders and users and help us define our problem even better.

 

Signing off,

Kaitlyn

We spent the week preparing for stakeholder interviews, which has filled me with anticipation — I’m excited to delve into not only technical but also interpersonal and communication skills and really make some of our ideas manifest in real life. Hannah and Aubrey led a workshop on Monday about presentation and writing tips, which forced me to reflect on my own communication style and its strengths and weaknesses. In all honesty, I expected the workshop to cover information I already knew, because I’ve gotten lots of advice on how to properly present from experiences in high school and college. But my communication skills have evolved over time, so it’s nice to get a mental check-in about how I can be better. As an example, while I know in theory that topic sentences should be extremely informative, I realized that I still have a tendency to make these sentences vague without realizing. 

Later that day, our team had a Zoom meeting to discuss our stakeholder maps. We had brainstormed a list of general stakeholders, but we wanted to go into more detail and organize them based on how much each would interact with our design. To do this, we split them into three groups: core, direct, and indirect stakeholders. The core stakeholders are the people who are directly involved in the creation of the device (clinicians, the design studio leaders, the Rice 360 intern teams, etc.). Direct stakeholders were then classified as people who would have an interest in the design, but would not play a huge role in the creation of the device (investors, manufacturers, government organizations, regulatory bodies). Finally, indirect stakeholders were classified as people who would be important in the implementation of the device, but played no role in the design process (suppliers, COVID-19 patients, competitors, etc.). This mapping helped us immensely in visualizing the types of people we would need to talk to in order to ensure that our devices were both useful and could be completed to fruition. 

On Wednesday, we had a workshop on sustainability led by Wayne Decker, the founder of the Flame Tree Initiative, an organization that fosters sustainable social enterprises that combat extreme poverty in East Africa. This was really insightful, and encouraged our team to have a deeper discussion on the power and energy sources we were using for these devices. Although the hospital I had been familiarized with was the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Blantyre, I hadn’t truly focused on the majority rural setting of Malawi. The UVC disinfection system that we are working on currently relies on electrical power, and this workshop made us consider the cost of switching to solar — is the increase in price justified to switching to a sustainable energy source? Perhaps there isn’t a “one size fits all” solution — maybe the two separate settings necessitate wholly different systems. 

After intense conversation and deliberation on how to best proceed, our team is now considering a two-system approach — one that is a smaller disinfection box that can be solar powered and can only hold around 10 masks for rural settings, and another that has a larger capacity and is grid or battery powered for urban settings. With this idea, our team documented some a lot of questions that were necessary to ask stakeholders, such as the number of masks they would want cleaned, and how much space in the hospital they could sacrifice for this sort of system. 

Focusing on sustainability with our second prototype, the face shields, we mainly focused our discussion on using locally available resources. Based on this, we are trying to research local suppliers and manufacturers for the shield materials. By using local suppliers and manufacturers without outsourcing, the shields’ price will be significantly lowered. In looking for a replacement for the foam piece of the face shield, narrowing our search to local suppliers will be helpful in finding materials that we are sure are readily available. 

On Friday, we had a presentation from Mr. Dumi Kaliati, which was incredibly inspiring. Dumi founded MicroMek, a startup that works to create drones to transport sterile medicine from the clinic to the laboratory, improving both diagnostics and reliability. He talked about his motivation for the project, and said that he was already developing prototypes and ideas for his company in his second year of undergrad. Here I am, having completed my second year of undergrad, still navigating college and figuring out what I want to do in life. Listening to his presentation, I gained so much respect and admiration for his drive and passion for his designs and his company. I’m grateful for just the opportunity to hear him speak. Dumi also was kind enough to give us feedback on our UVC disinfection device, where he mainly asked us to really hone in on who our target audience was. Based on that, he said that our design would have a more cohesive solution. 

Reflecting on all we had learned earlier in the week, our team came together Friday afternoon to come up with a final list of questions for stakeholders in preparation for our interviews that start tomorrow. I’m so excited to get more feedback from our stakeholders, but I definitely feel a little nervous! Hopefully everything will go well, and by the end of next week we will not only have an idea of what we want the prototypes to look like, but also what the stakeholders would like out of these prototypes. Rice has given me both a theoretical and practical education, but I now need to take these skills and conduct interviews with thought leaders in the field– that requires something that’s harder to teach: confidence. 

I wouldn’t be able to complete this blog without mentioning Team PPE’s win at the team scavenger hunt on Saturday! The TAs organized this really, really fun virtual scavenger hunt for the interns, and each team was playing against each other. The TAs gave each intern team a riddle for a common household item, and the teams would have to solve the riddle, take a selfie with the answer to the riddle, and then send it to the intern group chat. Let me be clear: Team PPE was determined. There was a lot of shouting, a lot of running around the house (shoutout to Andrew, Team PPE’s star runner), a lot of anxiety spikes, but a lot of fun! We were told we are going to get a “virtual prize” of some sort, but we are still waiting for an announcement of what the prize is. 

Looking forward to next week, with a little nervousness but a lot of excitement. I can’t wait to dive into this project more in detail in this next half of the internship! 

-Bhavya 🙂 

It’s our second week into Rice360’s Internship Program, and I’m feeling good about the lessons that I have learned so far. A huge take-away for me this week was the importance of understanding context in our proposed solutions.

One of the many challenges that my team encountered with the contactless temperature monitor was detecting a signal (temperature being converted into an electrical signal). As someone who has lived in the Silicon Valley filled with tech giants and relied (almost embarrassingly too much) on Amazon Prime’s 2-day shipping, I thought we could do some background research on the sensors in current models and easily select/purchase one with similar specifications. However, upon further discussion with my Malawian teammates, I realized that shipping these components to Malawi could be delayed 2-3 weeks, and on top of that, the manufacturer’s inventory may run out before mass production can be achieved. As we talked more about the resources available in Malawi, I learned that many electrical components are often sourced outside of the country, causing very limited access for IR sensors during this period of high demand. In the face of this challenge, I began asking a few questions: What product(s) does the country predominant produce? What are some common challenges in Malawi when designing technologies? And, how can I be better informed of their context without falling prey to the dangers of a one-sided story? But, at the end of the day, what surprises me is just how drastically different life can be when specific resources are not available. It’s led to some ingenuity and unconventional thinking in our discussions, and I look forward to hearing what could come next.

Another powerful lesson from this week was a strategy to provide constrictive feedback using “I like… I wish…” (from Dr. Wettergreen’s workshop). During this workshop on Zoom, we presented our prototypes and current ideas for improvement before receiving some additional suggestions from our peers. The feedback usually followed: “I like that your hand-sanitizing station dispenses sanitizer without requiring contact, but I wish there was some way to know when it was empty.” I think by keeping the “I wish” part broad, the receiver can approach an identified issue with an open mind. I also appreciate how “I like… I wish” starts with a positive affirmation, as it can be hard to accept a fault/critique on something that you’ve worked so hard on. Thank you for this lesson!

Who is our user? How are they using this device? Why would the device be helpful to them?

I would say that this week has largely centered around these questions. We’ve really dug into the “nitty-gritty” so to speak as we assess just what can be done to create a prototype that is approachable and feasible for use. It has also been a week where we connected back to why we focus innovation at Rice 360 in the places that we partner with.

To define and scope out what these devices mean for our end user, we engaged in a lot of reflection as a team. We first started by evaluating what stage of our design we were at. Within this, we had to hone in on what the critical components of these devices were. We also had to determine the critical functions we intended for these devices to perform. Dr. Wettergreen from the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen was a very insightful guide to us through this process. In this engagement with our devices, we came to realize how far we could take these designs through the duration of this internship. We also came to understand the limitations that certain aspects of our design would be constrained by. Just to put it in context of our prototypes, for our decontamination unit, there is a lot of room for a structural re-imagining and a need to really create a structure that people don’t need to stop or go out of their way to use. For our hand sanitizer dispenser, we have a goal to cut down the power demand required to operate the unit while sourcing appropriate materials might require some innovation.

 

After this evaluation, we spent the next few days really working on the context of the problems we are attempting to address. The core issue that both of these devices are intending to face is how to provide easily accessible sanitation to mitigate COVID-19. The ultimate goal is to create devices that can be scaled up for use throughout Malawi. Framing our design goals helped to put us in a mindset to brainstorm the possible avenues through which we could take our design. If you can tell by the array of orange cards, there are plenty of different concepts we could incorporate in our decontamination unit from the operating system to the actual structure. In fact, this image only captures my ideas. My teammates have their own sets too. By examining all of these potentials with each other, we’ll definitely be contemplating which pieces are optimal to our users, collect feedback on how each piece can work in tandem, and evaluate which components to bring together as we get closer to a finalized design.

 

As important as it is to flush out operational components for these devices, we have to remember the broader reasons for why we are even working on them in the first place. Coincidentally, this week ended with Juneteenth, a valuable day to reflect on the disparities and inequities that are both systemic and systematic. The existence of these disparities are what brought me to Rice 360 in the first place. Although Juneteenth is an American holiday, the core values of what we honor apply just as much to the mission we are on. We focus on decreasing the health disparities that people should not have to face. There are so many gaps to people’s “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” and health is just one of the outcomes of these disparities.  Nobody should be denied the desire to good health, but there is so much that needs to be done both locally and globally to achieve this. Rice 360’s tireless focus on the technological gaps in health is a testament to just how far we have to go.

To cap this on a fun note, my team got together for a moment over the weekend to play a game. It was a lot of fun and we shared a bunch of laughs, my favorite way to get to know people. I learned that Chisomo has an insatiable love for Doritos, Kaitlyn has a crazy-good memory, Sana can rap a good beat (she still has to demonstrate it), Aubrey has been working on music production, Mwayi can sew like nobody’s business, and Brenald is a motivational speaker. I had an amazing time hanging out with them and cannot wait for more of these get togethers in the future.

–Krystal