Work: Currently a Design Manager at Meta.
Education: Currently a Ph.D. student in Design at Carnegie Mellon University. I earned a Master's in Strategic Design & Management from Parsons School of Design. I also earned a BS in Entrepreneurship and a BA in International Studies from the University of Utah.
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How might we use Human-centered Design practices to improve the lives of people living In Africa?
My research is divided into three sections. The "hear" section shows the process of listening to stakeholders by using HCD methodologies, while the "create" section involves translating insights from stakeholders into possible interventions. The "deliver" section outlines prototype solutions that were implemented through continued iteration.
Designed and prototyped solar-powered lighting solutions using the IDEO Human-Centered Design Toolkit. Raised $90,000 for R&D and coordinated with government chiefs in 4 villages to implement prototypes.
March 2018 - February 2019
By 2050, Africa’s population will double, reaching 2.5 billion people. With such a drastic increase, the African population will be slightly less than the population of India and China combined. Hence, the process of bringing innovation to the bases of Maslow’s hierarchy-of-needs pyramid can be challenging--not because of the people, as Africans have proven to be resourceful innovators even with limited resources--but because of limitations in infrastructure. There has been a tremendous success in the application of human-centered design processes in Africa that have yielded effective solutions for some larger corporations. Ideas like heart start defibrillator, CleanWell natural antibacterial products, and the Blood Donor System of the Red Cross have improved the lives of millions living below $1.25 a day.
In the early stages of my life growing up in Sierra Leone, Africa, I experienced the consequences of limited infrastructures and resources which have crippled some of Africa’s ability for industrial growth. I believe design is a quintessential characteristic of an industrialized nation. Challenges in Africa have played a role in its underdevelopment; for example: limited or no electricity in cities, long-distance cell phone transmissions with serious infrastructure deficiencies, and ineffective road networks that prevent rural areas from bringing goods to the market.
Challenges in Africa, including limited or no electricities in cities, long distance cell phone transmissions with major infrastructure deficiencies, and ineffective road networks that affect rural areas from bringing goods to the market, all play roles in its underdevelopment.
I will take you through the human-centered design (HCD) toolkit used during my ethnographic research studies in Sierra Leone, Africa. It includes my process of discovering user needs, evaluating those needs, and extracting key indicators to find possible design solutions by using three major HCD methods.
Listen to the needs of the people- they are the experts.
Create minimum viable prototype solutions that meet those needs
Deliver sustainable minimum viable product solutions that satisfy their needs.
The African continent currently has one of the youngest overall populations worldwide. Responding to high rates of youth unemployment and limited infrastructure, design (specifically human-centered design) can play a key role in building infrastructures that will create jobs and empower the youth to learn and eventually become designers of their communities. The human-centered design process has played a crucial role in design thinking and has enabled organizations that have adopted its process to grow more organic, agile, and citizen-centric products to meet the needs of their customers. The designers it has inspired have all demonstrated the inherent capability to listen to and understand challenges and their contexts, and then use an instinctive iterative process of prototyping through an impact-directed discovery process until solutions are found.
Human-centered design will meet Africa at the intersection of innovation and entrepreneurship as the right investments are made on the continent. We have already seen many examples as Africans having little or no resources continue to be creative in almost every aspect of their lives in order to survive. These stories bring out a picture of a thriving entrepreneurial spirit among Africans. As more Africans gain internet access, we will see that enhancing more minds to creatively use HCD methods that will propel Africa’s growth and lead it to serve as a global hub for innovations and groundbreaking discoveries.
How might we reimagine new environments to achieve higher education in rural areas in Sierra Leone, West Africa?
How might we reimagine new environments to achieve higher education in rural areas in Sierra Leone, West Africa?
My team involved a photographer, videographer, engineer and me as design lead. Throughout my design experiences, I have come to put an immeasurable value on the problem-solving approach of multidisciplinary teams. Understanding who needs to be in the team to solve the problem through inclusive participation and collaborations is crucial in my process. what the desired outcome is has continued to be crucial in my process, even before framing the problem and long before arriving at the solution.
I was born in Sierra Leone, West Africa, in the capital of Freetown. Back when I lived in Africa, poverty was life, and the civil war in Sierra Leone made this reality profoundly apparent.
My love for design continued to grow immensely in my college years at the University of Utah. I have evolved as a designer and I believe the experiences I've had in former endeavors will help me effectively learn and co-create with my stakeholders in Africa.
Identifying the right people to speak with was something I was fortunate to have help with. As Sierra Leone is the country of my birth, I had local extended family members who pointed me in the right direction to interview a diverse range of people. We talked to the speaker of the town, families who strongly believe in education as well as those that don’t, and leaders such as the paramount chief of the town and his district officials. The diversity of people helped gave the team a good range of behaviors, beliefs, and perspectives.
These questions receive no shortage of answers, as almost every person we interviewed has had personal setbacks in their lives due to one of these questions.
We met at the village town center with the paramount chief, chiefdom speaker, teachers, fathers, and elders of the town. I was able to learn about the community quickly: their lives, dynamics, and issues that they face. This group interview allowed us to hear different perspectives and views. My presence there as a native-born gave us some level of credibility that came with trust towards me and my team’s intentions.
At the group interview, I noticed there were no women present even when I requested both men and women. This raised an assumption of gender inequality and how I might design ways to reach out to the women of the town to hear their perspectives. After the meeting, I arranged a separate interview session with women in the village to hear their needs and concerns regarding their children's opportunities to receive education and perhaps even their own.
Though group interviews were key, I realized it wasn’t enough to uncover what the villagers really think. By applying contextual immersion through interviews at villager's homes, I was able to uncover more problems.
Meeting mothers and students helped reveal new insights and a better understanding of their needs. This echoed a fundamental belief in my design ethnography process-- what people say can be different from what they actually do. By experiencing their daily activities first hand, extracting raw insights kick off the right dust and opens new spaces for me to understand their actual needs.
To increase our awareness of the needs of the students, my team stayed in Kono for an extra week where we visited Vision Preparatory school. There we saw overcrowded classrooms in an unfinished building with fewer chairs than students and little to no classroom supplies. In spite of all these limitations, there was a clear magnitude of commitment from the teachers in helping the students who rarely get any payment for their work as teachers.
At the end of our visits that week, we saw the apparent need for fixing the building and its overcrowding problems. After our field experience at Vision school, we set together some objectives before we began our design process:
To increase our awareness of the needs of the students, my team stayed in Kono for an extra week where we visited Vision Preparatory school. There we saw overcrowded classrooms in an unfinished building with fewer chairs than students and little to no classroom supplies. In spite of all these limitations, there was a clear magnitude of commitment from the teachers in helping the students who rarely get any payment for their work as teachers.
At the end of our visits that week, we saw the apparent need for fixing the building and its overcrowding problems. After our field experience at Vision school, we set together some objectives before we began our design process:
We continued to interview many parents of the village. Most of the husbands were farmers. They mentioned their concerns about wanting to continue working late to harvest their crops but with no source of light, they are forced to go home, leaving farms susceptible to animals who often eat their fresh crops.
Even though we seemed to be getting good insights, it became evident that interviewing locals was not enough and we had to rely on experts in towns and cities. I talked with the older generation who have played a key role in keeping their ancestors’ traditions alive to give authentic and resourceful indegineous knowledge of the environment and the town’s heritage. We also visited the ministry of education which gave us access to a larger amount of information on rural Africa in a short period of time.
Going back to Freetown, the capital city of Sierra Leone, I realized a vast difference between urban cities and rural cities in Africa. 80% of foreign help is directed towards urban cities like Freetown due to how far behind the urban cities already are; however, little is done for the rural areas like Kono District. I realized we needed to aggressively find ways for solutions to be more equitable across regions.
It has been 17 years since I immigrated from Sierra Leone and returning to a country that is still healing from a devastating war brought me some faded memories of my early years. However the sound of poverty is real among the Kono people, and as the need for help continues to grow, a sense of responsibility grows within me.
By putting aside all that I know from the news and family members about Sierra Leone, I had an open mind towards the country and its people. During my immersion experience, I was able to have personal experiences with the locals that stripped me of biases and approach my design challenge with an open mind.
By putting aside all that I know from the news and family members about Sierra Leone, I had an open mind towards the country and its people. During my immersion experience, I was able to have personal experiences with the locals that stripped me of biases and approach my design challenge with an open mind.
After my field visits, taking pictures and writing in a personal journal, helped me ask questions like:
There is an unfinished building that has been left for decay for over three years now.
What is the reason for this behavior?The building is left incomplete due to a lack of resources and a shift in focus to the community’s needs. The poverty line has gotten so low that the villagers are more focused on providing their basic needs like food before worrying about educational needs.
In finding out some results and background information, I asked more questions like
The evening becoming steadily darker starting at 5 pm evening in Denyadu.
Why does the town stay dark all night even in homes?No light source power. There is little or no infrastructure in place that provides electricity for rural cities.
How would I find out the real answer?The evening becoming steadily darker starting at 5 pm evening in Denyadu.
Why does the town stay dark all night even in homes?No light source power. There is little or no infrastructure in place that provides electricity for rural cities.
How would I find out the real answer?
How might we reimagine a new environment for learning by using local resources from the village?
Hypothesis 2How might we make affordable lighting solutions that are easy to use and accessible for farmers and students?
How might we reimagine a new environment for learning by using local resources from the village?
Hypothesis 2How might we make affordable lighting solutions that are easy to use and accessible for farmers and students?
After our field immersion research, our task was to come up with real-world product solutions for the rural villagers that can fulfill their needs. We generated and brainstormed possible solutions for a minimum viable prototype (MVP) and minimum viable product (MVP).
Through sense making for change making techniques, we spent several weeks synthesizing all the pieces of information gathered during my “hear phase”. This process helped me bridge the chasm from inspiration to ideas, and finally from ideas to strategic directions that they can identify new opportunities for innovation.
My brainstorming process started by working with local experts (teachers, farmers, and town clerks). Implementations of rules like “Defer Judgment” and “Build on the Ideas of Others” took me in unexpected possible design solutions for my two hypotheses.
With changes in design direction, I facilitated a co-design workshop bringing about 16 people from the community together to help discover possible design interventions through the process of “directed discovery”. I mentioned some of the problems seen during my stay at the village – problems like overcrowded classrooms, unfinished educational facilities, lack of electricity and many villagers using kerosene for their lamps that are expensive to buy.
I then generalized these stories and asked statements like:
By choosing to brainstorm and including the villagers to participate we unintentionally discovered avenues of design solutions and create a cooperative environment. They became their own architects for their environment while at the same time improving our chances of solutioning that will fit for their needs.
The experiences I’ve had while in Sierra Leone have created a concrete understanding in building an empathy map as my team and I started to create low-fidelity design solutions. Though there was a great deal of research needed for product solutions, our field experiences (walking in their shoes) played a key role in creating appropriate emphatic design solutions that lead to further breakthroughs.
A story of Mohamed a farmer
The problem was little or no source of electricity to work late and protect their crops from animals
A design solution with Lanterns can improve productivity in the farms. Mohammed can work later and in turn produce more harvested crops. He can then sell more crops to provide for his family’s needs. The lanterns will also help the villagers have some form of light when it is evening and night.
Kumba Senesi’s story
Her daughter faces challenges during school due to the lack of educational resources. After school, she spends long hours on the farm and is unable to do homework at night because her family cannot afford to buy kerosene for their lamps.
A design solution can include a plan to improve educational resources by improving learning facilities. There is an unfinished building already, so a design solution might reimagine ways to complete the building to accommodate all the villagers' children for learning. Leaning on design solution 1, the facility should have means to bring light to their homes at night.
The team looked over the information from the story sharing and participatory design exercise which extracted some key insights:
Creating our framework allows us to put our stories from low fidelity mockups into a larger context. Our framework of rural Africa based on my field research allows us to see issues in much clearer and holistic ways.
Our team made two different frameworks: one from the perspective of students and their supportive family members in the community and another from the perspectives of men who are often the providers of the community through farming.
remove this section in design . This is for Fas. Mark you can leave this
Our iterative process narrowed the focus to two product solutions that were identified as interventions to help resolve some of these villagers' needs. If implemented, our hypothesis is that it will satisfy the mother’s needs, the father’s needs, and more importantly the student's needs.
A sustainable form of green agriculture building Solar Panel LanternDecide on a specific product and improve its features and ease of use
The figure above shows our process and our framework regarding the parties involved.
Save Money. Most of the focus on rough & cheap model
More Expense, Close to the final product
We developed a beneficiary persona that is specifically geared towards the people in the village to build a value-of-the-product, market-environment-fit. We asked questions to get a better sense of them. After discussing these answers to our questions, our “deliver” process began.
We spent months designing and prototyping our first solution with the villagers in Kono District. Our insights led us to working on a Solar Panel Lantern to provide a source of light to the people in the Rural Kono District. This will allow farmers to work even at evening time and night time if needed to harvest crops, homes will have a source of light at night without buying kerosene for their lamps if they can afford it. Most importantly, students have a means to work on homework at night. There are over 500 million Africans who live without electricity. Rural areas like Kono get the majority of their light sources from a kerosene lamp which is expensive and toxic.
This image shows Denyadu village. This image was shot by our photographer Zach. it portrays the town slowly going dark with no source of light. The houses and streets turn to complete darkness and navigating your way through the town can be a challenge without torch lights or a portable source of light.
Before starting the making stage, my team at the University of Utah set out to meet with experts, including professors and managers in the sustainability department regarding our proposed solution, while also doing intensive research and co-creating with locals in the country.
After 2 weeks of product research with a team of engineers and designers, we concluded that the right approach was to provide a source of light to farmers, students, and parents by using solar panel technology.
We discovered other solar panel lanterns that are already in the industry. However, many had design flaws, so we concluded that we will have to design our own product to satisfy the needs of the Kono people. As a result, we developed the - Salone Lantern.
12 Hours on High
20 Hours on Low
Solar energy
Ease of use
Portable
Clean and sleek design
Adaptability
After our low fidelity sketches, our team decided that the initial design with an independent solar panel board was not portable enough because one will have to carry both the lantern and the solar panelboard in order to charge it.
We then asked the question, “What if we can attach the solar panel on the lantern to create ease of use, mobility, and simplicity?” This evolved our product development to a better solution – an all-in-one solar panel lantern.
The solar panel is located on the back of the simple design. The lantern also features adaptable handles that users can use in a series of different situations, whether it’s hung by a nail, hanging from a branch, or placed by a rock.
As our prototype for the lantern was being developed, we set sights on one of our biggest tasks yet-- reimagining school facilities in the villages. With much time spent on learning about solar panel technology, we enlisted an architect on our team to help us explore ideas with solar panel technology with regards to buildings. We set a goal to pursue solutions to finish the school building using local, and easily renewable resources in the bamboo and timber economies in Kono, Sierra Leone to build the school. We would also solve the problem of overcrowding in the classrooms.
With a month's worth of research, we began creating a net-positive building model, meaning that the school building will produce more electricity than it uses via solar panels. These solar panels will be used to change the lanterns that will be given to members of the surrounding community.
We propose to use concrete, stucco, and bricks formed from local resources. The flooring of the school building is going to be concrete. It will act as a thermal mass and keep cool in the summertime. It is also easy to keep clean.
We proposed using masonry techniques that allow for passive airflow into the classroom space. We will create common spaces between the entrances of the classrooms to reduce the footprint of the building and the number of materials used.
The building has an angled roof for effective placement of solar panels, and a greater openness on the northern ends of the classrooms. This will allow for hot air to escape as well as ambient light from the north to enter the space.
We will use local labor and tools in order to reduce our secondary energy use.
The plans for the buildings are identical to reduce the difficulty in erecting them. There are equal dimensions for spacing in columns and beams. Windows and door sizes will also be standard size.
The orthogonal lines and grid geometry will allow for the simple and easy construction of these buildings. Window sills and door frames are deep to prevent large amounts of direct sunlight from entering them. There will be a reduction of use in windows to allow for lower cost and ease of construction
Our solar panel building will power the educational facilities while at the same time providing a place for students to attain higher education.
There are over 600 million Africans who live without electricity and rural areas like the Kono district which get a majority of their lights from Kerosene lamp. Though it’s dependable, it has many challenges.
Kerosene is expensive. Buying kerosene every day can be hard for people living below $1 a day. In 2012, the World Bank report found that rural households in five Sub-Saharan countries paid on average 35 percent more for kerosene than their urban counterparts. It also fills homes with toxic fumes that could potentially cause serious health issues on a continual basis. Solar panels have proven to be cost-effective, sustainable, and environmentally friendly.
