To finalize such a productive and busy fourth week of stakeholder interviews, workshops, and team meetings, I wanted to do something I knew I’d be experiencing if I were to be in Malawi right now as was planned pre-COVID-19 – eating Malawian cuisine. Yesterday, July 6, was also Malawi Independence Day, and in my family celebrating the 4th of July always involves a homemade barbecue cookout and copious amounts of side dishes, so I wanted to do (slightly somewhat) the same for the 6th. My teammates Ruth and Chikumbutso have talked before about nsima (pronounced see-mah), a maize porridge that is a traditional dish in the country. After finding a simple recipe online, I set forth in my cautious attempt to make nsima. To my surprise there are only three ingredients (well, technically two) in the recipe: boiling water, cold water, and cornmeal. I attempted to follow the instructions as best as I could, but I definitely made some mistakes along the way. For anyone interested in recreating this dish, here are the instructions and things I found helpful when making it:
Boil 3 cups of water in a saucepan.
In a bowl, make a paste using part of the cornmeal and all the cold water.
This ended up being about 2/3 of the cornmeal, but I recommend using less since the “paste” I created ended up a little too thick.
Add the paste to the boiling water. Heads up – it may be obvious, but try not to burn yourself during this step.
Stir with a spoon until the mixture has a thick porridge-like texture.
As someone who does not eat porridge, I continued stirring until all the water was mixed in with the paste I had added.
Cover the saucepan and simmer for 15 minutes.
Warning – while setting the saucepan to simmer, the mixture started bubbling and, in my own words, sounded very angry at me. This settled down once it began to simmer.
Turn the heat to the lowest setting, remove the lid, and gradually add the rest of the cornmeal, stirring constantly. Be prepared to use all of your arm muscles in this step as it gets increasingly difficult to stir in the cornmeal. If the mixture appears solid enough and is the texture you’d like, don’t feel the need to keep adding the dry cornmeal.
Continue until the mixture thickens to the desired consistency.
Since I have never made this nor eaten this before, I just continued stirring until it became too difficult and my arms were tired.
Cover and cook on lowest heat for another 5 minutes.
This was the final result out of the saucepan! The block of nsima was very malleable and tasted like cornmeal as expected.
Stir before serving and shape as desired.
Again, since I have never eaten this before and don’t know what shape I should desire it to be, I went with small, circular patties.
I enjoyed the flavor and texture of the nsima I made and I’m looking forward to making it again and improving my technique! One thing I realized halfway through was that I was using yellow cornmeal and I think I was supposed to be using white cornmeal, although I’m not quite sure what difference it may make. The recipe and my overall experience making nsima technically ends here, however once my family tried it, they made a few suggestions to turn it into a dessert with a southern twist. We decided to pan fry them in butter (yes, we know this is very American) to crisp the sides and then we plated them with some powdered sugar, cinnamon, and maple syrup. The result was absolutely delicious, and while my initial intent was to replicate the traditional dish, I had fun playing around with it in the end and trying something new.
The result of my nsima-ish dessert on a “Let Freedom Ring” plate to celebrate Malawi Independence Day!
Overall I enjoyed my experience of trying to make nsima, and I can’t wait for the day when I can finally travel to Malawi and try it there for myself! To my colleagues in Malawi (or other parts of the United States), I challenge you to make southern hush puppies, a popular side dish here in Texas that is also made of cornmeal and usually served with fried fish. If you feel like trying out this recipe or nsima, send me an email at lep7@rice.edu with your final product so we can compare!
If I talked to you last week about reaching out to professionals in the field, I would say I wasn’t terribly confident in relaying my thoughts. After this week, I would say that my confidence has grown, and I realize how much I still have to learn about engaging with stakeholders with all sorts of expertise. This week in particular has taught me what it means to really be engaged with a variety of experts and how to synthesize the feedback with which we are provided.
Overall, this has been an amazing week!! With each passing day, the stakeholders gave us new information to help us make substantial progress on the trajectory of our devices. It also gave us a chance to really understand the scope and areas for which needs-finding can be conducted. While my brain is a little bit overwhelmed with all of this new information, I’m extremely excited about how much more we now understand, and also how much wider the scope of these prototypes can be.
The way that these interviews have really opened both the perspectives and attitudes that we have for how to proceed towards our final recommendations is super cool. These interviews have also really brought attention to our users. As I’ve commented on before, neither the decontamination unit nor the automatic hand sanitizer are common devices in Malawi. There have also been challenges for us in terms of determining the best designs to accommodate available resources. However, with our stakeholders’ advice, multiple new avenues for how we develop these prototypes have come to light.
One of the most intriguing pieces of advice we received was from Dr. Caroline Soyars, from the University of Michigan. She recommended that we really expand our search process to include open source designs and models that can inspire our own concepts. Another amazing piece of advice we received was from Mr. Brian Kamami. He told us how important it is to test our devices with our end users as often as possible. By communicating with these users, we would really be able to understand the benefits and the less friendly aspects of these devices. I think sometimes in the design process, whether it’s in engineering or in developing any plan, we get too engrossed in creating what we think is the most desirable outcome. In actuality, we could never know the best outcome without seeking the feedback of our users. Our users really are the ones who know what is most feasible for them. Having heard this from several seasoned engineers dedicated to serving Malawians, I learned a valuable lesson. An initial product doesn’t need to be perfect because it is crucial that throughout the process, users’ opinions shape the end goal. This has also taught me to be less afraid of the initial mistakes of a work in progress because that is what most projects are: a work in progress.
Marching ahead with refreshed spirit, we’re really looking forward to this final phase of our design proposal. While collecting all of the feedback throughout this week, we have amassed a crazy number of new ideas. Being able to review and process these new ideas really helped us with our direction. I cannot wait to let you all know what we have in store for the decontamination unit and hand sanitizer.
During this past week, we had the opportunity to speak to stakeholders of a wide variety of backgrounds including businessmen, nurses, non-profit heads, professors, engineers, and even other undergraduate students. Each day we presented our technologies to the various stakeholders and then were sent to breakout rooms to ask more device-specific questions and gain the stakeholders’ perspectives on our current device. This opportunity proved to be invaluable as it opened our eyes to some potential solutions to key issues we had presented and also made us aware of a few problems that we had not previously considered.
Some of the advice we collected through this experience for the walk-through decontamination unit is as follows:
Reconsider the problem context and consider all the scenarios in which the device could be used. For example, consider the different positions that people may assume when in the unit, what they might be wearing (hats, masks, etc.), and the different types of people (children, disabled, tall, etc.). Each of these considerations will drastically impact how the device functions, and thus should be contemplated in the design of the device.
The need to possibly readjust some aspects of our current design:
The shape and structure of our device. Could another shape possibly result in a more positive perception of our device and be more accurate in dispensation? How could the materials of our device be altered to increase movability and decrease cost?
The chemical that is aerosolized. Throughout this internship, a major concern of our group has been what chemical to use or how the chemical could be sprayed to limit possible negative effects on the user. To do this we will need to do further research on other disinfection methods and how to adjust the spraying area based on the user to prevent interaction of the chemicals with the mucus membranes.
The function of the drainage system. Should the drainage system just seek to collect the runoff for disposal or should it seek to collect runoff in a manner in which it could be reused? We are currently looking into the feasibility of the latter.
How the device is activated. In high traffic areas, there is a possible issue of false sensing of a user (false positives) that would waste the disinfectant. To prevent this we plan to look into other activation methods that would instead rely on mechanical elements, pressure plates, etc.
Some of the advice we collected through this experience for the handwashing station is
as follows:
Reconsider the end user. How will someone unfamiliar with the device work out how to use it? What would promote them to use it? This would involve some component of education to promote proper hand hygiene procedures.
The need to possibly readjust some aspects of our current design:
The powering of our device. The power source of the device should be sustainable both in lifetime and in the environmental context in which it is placed. We have started to consider solar panels that would recharge the device’s battery both in outdoor and indoor settings (would work with UV and artificial light sources).
The sanitizing agent used. Our stakeholders in Malawi noted that hand sanitizer can be very expensive so often other disinfectant agents are used. Therefore our device should be able to work with liquids of different viscosities.
The overall structure of the device. Some of our stakeholders suggested looking into more mechanical backup options such as the use of a foot pedal. Additionally, they provided advice on how to deal with the manufacturing constraints of this setting and how they will come into play when we look to scale up.
In addition to receiving advice on our current prototypes, we also sought guidance on some possible future areas where technologies could be implemented. These areas include PPE that can be quickly disinfected and reused, quick diagnostic tests, patient room disinfection, and incubators in which procedures can be performed (instead of moving the infant to a secondary location and increasing the risk of infection).
Moving forward into the last two weeks of our internship, we hope to further research these areas that were brought up by our stakeholders and include what we find in our recommendations to the design studio. Overall, this busy week provided us with some great insights into the developmental process of our technology and into the needs of the end-users.
Rather than ending the week with our usual group workshop, some members of my team were able to meet up on Friday for a really fun activity. We played an online game that was reminiscent of charades (see image below). I had a great time and really hope that we will be able to do something like that again as it was a fun way to get to know everyone better and bond more as a team.
This past week has been a whirlwind of new ideas and I can’t wait to see where we go from here.
Throughout this week, we dived into conducting stakeholder interviews. In total, we interviewed 14 people from a wide variety of backgrounds—we talked to businessmen & CEOs, nurses, heads of non-profits, undergraduate and graduate students, engineers, professors, and more. Daily, we accumulated pages and pages of notes based on the invaluable expertise and feedback we received. To conduct these interviews, we drew on the lessons that we previously learned and were able to put into practice the concepts of active listening and effective communication. It truly felt like a culmination of many of the principles we learned—from presentations, human-centered design, brainstorming, documentation, and more.
There were some instances where stakeholders would push us to think of more creative ways to address a facet of our design. It really challenged us to go back to our problem space and think of holistic solutions to address our problem context—solutions which may include our current prototype yet also do not discount the potential of other devices or public health measures to address associated challenges. As we rotated among stakeholder of differing backgrounds, it became evidently clear how critical it is to gather feedback from a diverse group of people. I am very proud to be aligned with an organization that forges these kinds of partnerships and honors the perspectives we all bring.
A snapshot of our notes from the stakeholder interviews–these 5 pages are based on only one day of interviews!
Based on the interviews we conducted, we grouped together some common themes from the stakeholder feedback:
In terms of the walk-through decontamination unit:
Look back to the problem context: Many of our stakeholders encouraged use to think broadly about the problem that the decontamination unit was addressing and think of innovative ways to supplement our current design.
Consider designing by end-user: Rural areas, high-traffic urban areas, and hospitals all have unique considerations that we will need to account for in the design of our device. Ultimately, we hope to have a device that is most appropriate for the local communities that will use them, so we will do further research on how to best do so in different environment.
Adjust some aspects of the design:
Structure: Many of our stakeholder urged us to think critically about the shape of our device, the material it is made of, how we will incorporate instructions into the device, and the aesthetic value of the overall structure.
Chemical: The toxicity of chemicals is a major concern, especially as we hope to limit exposure to vulnerable areas of the body such as the eyes, nose, and mouth. We hope to do further research on both the different kinds of chemicals and on the potential of other non-aerosolized solutions.
Drainage System: Our stakeholders urged us to consider some of the ramifications of collecting disinfectant and how we may have to implement newer additions to the device if we hope to re-use collected disinfectant.
Activation: It will be imperative for us to conduct testing and determine the sensitivity of the activation mechanism. We also received feedback to consider a variety of mechanisms, such as mechanical, push-powered activation systems.
In terms of the hands-free sanitation station:
Consider how to best adjust the device for end-user education: We will have to consider how to best promote hygiene practices and sanitation education in our device, particularly across different environmental contexts.
Adjust some aspects of the design
Power Demand: It is critical that any power source should be sustainable and best suited to the environment it is in. Solar panels, for instance, that are used in indoor spaces, should be able to be powered through artificial lights.
Sanitizer: We learned from many of our Malawian stakeholders who work in healthcare that sanitizer is expensive and often out of stock. Hence, we should also build a device that can accommodate different solutions that may be used, such as bleach or methylated spirits. After our discussions, we also believe it would be best to add an indicator for when the reservoir is nearly empty.
Structure: We will need to critically think about some of the manufacturing constraints of different parts of our device and potentially find more sustainable, locally sourced materials.
In addition to the feedback on our devices, we were able to conduct some needs-finding and identify some areas of opportunity for future innovation. Many of our stakeholder outlined challenges in testing, compliance with public health measures, and manufacturing. We also learned of many technology-related gaps that Rice 360˚ could potentially address, including:
Devices that ensure facilities can respond to treating asymptomatic patients
Disinfection of entire rooms where patients have been
Incubators where procedures (such as breast feeding, replacing of tubes, etc.) can be done without moving the infant
We will be sure to pass along all of this feedback to the Rice 360˚ community!
After a busy week of stakeholder interviews, I have been able to relax quite a bit over a 4-day weekend and spend some much-needed time with my family. On Friday, some members of my team were able to meet up for a game day–we played a virtual drawing game similar to charades and were able to bond over our indecipherable doodles. Coincidentally, the American and Malawian Independence Days are only 2 days apart. I am curious to see how the celebration of these holidays may compare—I will definitely ask my teammates when we regroup. In the traditional American style, my family held a barbeque and grilled up just about every kind of meat available (as a vegetarian, I watched in terror at a distance). It was great to spend some time with my family and recharge before the final two weeks of the program.
This week presented an incredible opportunity to learn more about various nuances in global health and hear the perspectives of a diverse group of leaders and innovators. We were able to practice many of the skills that we have been building towards in previous workshops. The thoughtful feedback from our various stakeholders will be a major input in the direction of our designs. I am incredible grateful for the stakeholders in giving us their time and feedback, as well as the Rice 360 team for arranging and facilitating this opportunity. I am excited to charge forward in the last two weeks of our internship!
This past week has been the most productive yet, full of presentations, interviews, and conversations that has greatly progressed both our understanding of the project and our potential suggestions to the design studios for my team’s two prototypes. Our group workshops Monday through Wednesday consisted of interviews with our stakeholders, which are individuals, groups, or organizations that may be impacted by our project. As we previously identified with our stakeholder maps, this includes suppliers and manufacturers, the Malawian public, hospitals, design studies, the Malawi government, distributors, and more. Prior to presenting the stakeholders with our projects, we found it important to conduct further group and solo brainstorming to give the individuals we were interviewing a better idea of our direction with our project. After going through the process, my team and I selected a few designs that we wanted to present for feedback, and I drew them in a clear way to add to our presentations.
Our brainstormed ideas for the intubation box.
For the intubation box we focused on three design concepts. The first involved a slanted front panel to help with the ergonomics of the intubation such that the physician would not have to crouch in such an awkward position to have adequate visualization and they would rather look down into the box through the slanted front panel. The second idea is the pop-up tent which is made of a wire frame and some form of clear vinyl/plastic sheeting. This would allow the box to fold up for storage so that is could easily be stored in the hospitals in Malawi that often have limited storage closet space or excess rooms in the ORs for a large solid box. The final idea was the “gloves box”, similar to an isolation gloves box used in biology labs. This involves a thick solid ring outside the arm holes of the box where the rim of a glove would be slipped over and then the physician would insert their gloved hands into the box. This would further reduce the spread of aerosol droplets through the arm holes of the intubation box.
Our brainstormed ideas for the contactless temperature monitor.
For the contactless temperature monitor we focused on two design shapes and two design features. The first shape is like a flashlight or torch (fun fact – I learned that a flashlight is called a torch in Malawi, while here in the U.S. torch typically refers to either a blow torch or a stick with a flame on one end) where the sensor receives input on the light-end of device while the display is on the opposite end. The other shape resembles a water hose attachment that has grooves to improve the ergonomics of holding the device. We wanted to avoid a gun-shaped device due to hesitation for use in today’s climate, and while our design uses similar design principles to a gun-shaped monitor, we believe the shape is different enough that it would not be misconstrued. One feature we would like to be included in the monitor is a solar cell as an additional power source so preserve the batteries. We also believe that a color indicator to indicate the severity of the temperature would be helpful for users not familiar with clinical measurements. In this design, the color green would indicate no fever, yellow would indicate a temperature that is not severe but should be watched, and red would indicate a severe fever.
With our project scope and brainstormed ideas in mind, we set out on Monday to begin interviewing our stakeholders. Our first conversations were with Edward Matengele from the MUST Innovation Center, Erin Keaney from Nonspec, Inc., Jade Kissi from the University of Michigan, and Agyen Obeng from the University of Ghana. Our main takeaways from our first day of interviews was that, first, we as a team needed to do further research on the initial background of the prototypes we received so that we could better answer a number of the stakeholder’s questions. We received important feedback for the structure of the intubation box, including suggestions for filleted edges to address safety concerns for sharp corners of the box or the idea of using heat to bend acrylic for a more rounded design. For the temperature sensor, we discussed in depth the cost of the devices components and the balance we must mind of the sensor accuracy and the cost as a more accurate sensor will be 1) more expensive and 2) less likely to be found in Malawi and will thus have greater shipping costs. We also determined from our stakeholder Erin that there is a need for a continuous temperature monitor in hospital settings that does not require human input, which is something that we will further look into as a proposal for a future project.
Our interviews on Tuesday were with Msandeni Chiume from Kamuzu Central Hospital in Malawi, Jackson Coole from Rice University, Prince Mtenthaonga from Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Malawi, Elizabeth Johansen from Spark Health Design, and Caroline Soyars from the University of Michigan Global Health Design Initiative. After feeling slightly unprepared for Monday’s interviews since my team did not know who we were interviewing or what their backgrounds were, we spent time together on Monday researching Tuesday’s stakeholders and drafting questions specific to them based on their background and area of expertise. Going into the second day of interviews, my team and I felt significantly more confident in our ability to make the best use of our limited time with each stakeholder. Our conversations on this day focused largely on the clinical components of our devices. For the intubation box, this meant the cleaning reagents that would be used and whether they would affect the transparency of the box and the types of materials that can be disinfected with UVC versus other methods. For the contactless temperature monitor, feedback from the stakeholders covered input on our color indicator idea, which was taken favorably, an option for the device to not be handheld so as to reduce risk to the person using the device, and cheaper microcontrollers that could possible be found in Malawi. Finally, a key question asked in this day’s interviews is something that is a constant challenge for many global health devices – how can we make the public receptive to the device? We also discovered that a significant challenge in Malawi right now due to COVID-19 is the lack of screening devices or centers, coupled with a lack of proper PPE.
Our final interviews on Wednesday were with Steve Adudans from the Center for Public Health and Development in Kenya, Robert Hauck from GE Healthcare, Dineo Katane-Mkwezalamba from Dzuka Africa, Brian Kamamia from the African Drone and Data Academy in Malawi, and Rhoda Mtegha from Kamuzu Central Hospital in Malawi. While our other interviews were heavily specific-prototype focused, Wednesday’s conversations largely surrounded the bigger picture of designing devices for low resource settings. For example, a key takeaway was that to breakdown the prototypes into their individual components and to determine where every minute part is coming from. This would allow us to analyze how the device is being manufactured and which components could feasibly be locally sourced rather than imported. Additionally, it was reiterated that our devices should be adaptable, affordable, safe, and multi-purpose (if possible). We also discovered that we need to do more research on the rationale behind the current designs when Robert asked us a simple question about the intubation box – Why is it a box? – and we didn’t have an answer.
Our Thursday group workshop consisted of a debrief of our stakeholder interviews and an overview of what we should expect for the remainder of the internship and the internship showcase. Although we began discussing what we learned from our interviews during the workshop, my team felt it necessary to meet again to continue our conversations on Saturday so that we could have more time to debrief with one another and share the feedback that we found most important and critical. After these discussions, my team and I relaxed with a fun fact game that our wonderful TAs had prepared for us.
This was one of the questions from our fun fact game, and it’s also our first team picture!
During this time of laughter, smiling, and goofing around, I realized how much we’ve learned about each other in our four short weeks of purely online interactions, and I absolutely love the close friendships we’ve developed. Majority of the game involved simple questions like “what superpower would you have” or “what’s your favorite snack”, but the final question in the game has become my favorite because our answers clearly show our personalities and who we are, and when it popped up on the screen, we all immediately knew who answered what. Our time together on Saturday was my favorite so far, and I’m excited about where our friendships and work as a team will go (our next virtual meal together is already penciled into the calendar).
This was my favorite question of the game simply because each of our answers somehow directly reflected each team member’s unique personality.
This has been the most productive and busiest week of the internship thus far (although I think I may say that every week), and I’m so excited about the work my team has done on our two prototype projects. I am also incredibly grateful for the opportunities we had this week to speak to so many individuals that are experts in their fields and to get to hear the unique insight and perspective they each bring. No other internship out there provides opportunities and activities like these, and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for us these final two weeks.
This past week can only be described as a whirlwind. After weeks of breaking down the problem at hand, researching, brainstorming, and more, we were finally ready to talk to stakeholders about our prototypes. While we were excited to present our work and to get feedback that could make our prototype and design ideas much better, we also knew that with feedback comes constructive criticism. For the most part, our stakeholders were incredible. They came from a wide variety of fields: from doctors to drone designers to chief engineers. They helped us to consider aspects of of our project that we had previously overlooked. They took a genuine interest in the work we were doing and were excited about helping us to move forward. It really was a whirlwind due to the constant turnover of different stakeholders. We would try to get as much feedback from each stakeholder as we could in the 20 minutes allotted. We met with 14 different stakeholders in three days and took more than 8 pages of notes on the feedback they gave us. This week was also invaluable. We now know where the weak parts of our projects are and we know what people generally like. We are much more comfortable talking about our prototypes, as we had to do it all week long. Finally, we have a strong sense of direction heading into the last two weeks of the program.
Many of the stakeholders we met with had engineering backgrounds. They gave us all types of useful advice. They suggested different materials, they helped us around some of the possible complications, and they pushed us to considered new models. They had just as many questions for us as we had for them, and this discourse allowed for better understanding and feedback than our list of questions could have ever achieved. They were also usually able to answer any of the specific questions we had for them, which helped us compile a list of our most important points. They often pushed us to get back to the why. Why did we choose to do things this way? Why this shape? Why this material? Why this size? After weeks of working on a project, we had focused on an idea for a prototype that we had come up with, and we brainstormed ways to make that idea better. Instead, we were advised not to constrain ourselves to the idea that we had based much of our project on. If there is a way to better incorporate all of the aspects that we were discussing, it is necessary to free ourselves from thinking within our self-constructed box.
It’s very easy to think of engineering design and to only picture the prototyping process. Images come to mind of engineers with safety goggles in a design studio hunched over an evolving project. It’s very easy to forget about the very people that those engineers are trying to serve. This week helped us to once again keep our project rooted in the people we hope to serve and not the prototype we hope to create. It was the non-engineers who possibly helped us the most. They were the ones who pointed out how our prototypes would affect the end user. Doctors and nurses stressed the importance of proving that our disinfection system had decreased the viral load on the N95s. Without proof, clinicians would be very skeptical of reusing the masks, rendering our project useless. Students at the University of Michigan who had previously worked on face shields emphasized the importance of sourcing materials and manufacturing methods so that they were easily available in Malawi. These stakeholders reminded us of the importance of human-centered design. Without carefully considering the end users, even the “perfect” prototype might be a complete failure. We are determined to not let this happen with our project. We are going to work to consider how the end user will be affected by our designs, and we hope to improve them where they fall short.
After this week of stakeholder interviews, my team got together and we condensed all of the feedback we got into a few main bullet points. We now know where to focus our energy. We know what to do in order to get the most out of our prototypes in the time we have left. We have direction and confidence going into the final portion of the internship, and I absolutely cannot wait to see what we are able to do.
This week felt like the culmination of the past three weeks of work — we had prepared, we had researched, we had brainstormed, and finally, we were going to get advice from our stakeholders.
Prototyping and engineering design is something that I felt knowledgeable about, going into this internship. But one of the things that I love about bioengineering and global health is that these particular fields are an intersection of the advancement of these amazing technologies as well as the humanistic component. The design of the face shield and the UVC system, for instance, might be incredible from the perspective of an engineer, but may be wholly useless and uncomfortable for the user. Stakeholder interviews taught me just that — the importance of keeping the problem and the people in the front of your mind, always.
Over three days of stakeholder interviews, our team talked with 14 stakeholders and generated eight pages of useful feedback to help guide our project suggestions. Some of the stakeholders were engineers and designers, experienced in medical device design as well as the complexity of local supply chain management. Their expertise helped us more critically analyze the prototypes we have been given. Why is the UVC system orientation the way that it is? How can we determine a better orientation? Why use long UVC bulbs when we can use smaller strips of UVC lights? Why did the design studio make the face shields using the open-celled foam material? Should we start considering using PET film rather than 3D-printed plastic for the shield? Our team had suggested viable, useful innovations, but we hadn’t critically questioned the prototype we were given, and why it was designed the way that it was. While I didn’t expect the criticism that came from some stakeholders, every single person still provided useful information that our team needed.
Other stakeholders, like clinicians and hospital administration on-site in Malawi, were useful in ensuring that the prototypes we were improving would truly help the people we were trying to help. They gave us critical information on the number of masks that needed to be disinfected per day, as well as the softer materials that they really wanted on the face shields. We learned more about the power and space capacity some of the larger hospitals in Blantyre and Lilongwe have, and we also gained a deeper understanding of the lack of PPE that is available. Right now, in Kamuzu Central Hospital, a nurse told our team that the entire hospital is not provided with N95s — only those that work in intensive care units, or work directly with COVID-19 patients, are provided with the masks. The rest, on the other hand, wear surgical masks. The fact that the mask I wear at home is the same as medical professionals on the frontlines in Malawi is crazy. It saddened me, but it also reinforced the sentiment that the prototypes that the Rice 360 teams are working on will really make a difference. That’s something that is incredibly special.
After debriefing with my teammates, and sorting through the pages upon pages of feedback we had, I was tired, but more excited for the next two weeks. It’s the final stretch, and with all this information, I know my team is ready to dive back into these projects and further develop our final improvements for the design studio.
