How Are You?

I arrived in Nairobi approximately one week ago. The weather has been mild and getting used to the time difference has been challenging.
I came to Nairobi with my research partner Joe Giovannetti (two other team members from our team including Macy Parker and Chris Piech did not travel with us) and four others representing three research teams total, to do some need finding on three "Mobile for Development" designs we have been working on in a course at Stanford University, titled Designing Liberation Technologies. The course focused on creating long term design projects that would take advantage of the design process structures and methods that have been developed by the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford.
The country focus for this course was Kenya and the community focus was Kibera, described as one of the largest slums in the world.

Walking around the Kibera area has been interesting. It appears that the area is quite often frequented by many NGOs and organizations who are interested in development projects. Waling around the community, we were constantly greeted with "How are You?" in a sing-song sort of way by children who followed us. Below is a scene from Kibera showing one part of the community.


These projects were conceived in collaboration with the University of Nairobi, particularly with students from the department of computer science. The focus on human-centered design, which is emphasized at the d.School as part of their design thinking model, sought that need finding would be conducted before hand. Since we were not privy to being in Nairobi for the course, our collaboration with the UNO students helped tremendously in this stage.

"Pill Check" or Kifaa Cha Tembe is our project. It uses standard Nokia mobile phones to connect malaria patients to up to date information about drug availability and pricing. By texting a short code, a patient can receive a menu of local pharmacies that have malaria drugs in stock, as well as prices and directions to each pharmacy. The other two teams represent the project MMaji and BabyBank.

Our aim for being in Nairobi for the two week duration is to deepen the need findings that have been prior conducted. My research partner and I have been visiting pharmacies and clinics in Kibera and out of Kibera to get a better sense of how our conceived design would function in Kibera or outside Kibera.

<--(AL drug Coartem, used for treating Malaria) In conducting research this past week, it has proved challenging to access the kind of information we need, as it turns out, information and access to mediation and drugs is a very sensitive topic. In a community where medications may actually be counterfeits or placebos, and where people have little knowledge of the effects of wrong diagnosis, it proves to be very difficult to assess and evaluate the reasoning and rationale behind providing such information to patients. Scenes from Kibera Next up, we plan on visiting higher up distributors in Kibera and in Nairobi in general to get a better understanding of the drug supply chain.