课程地址
https://app.novoed.com/#!/courses/design-kit-2017-1/home
简介
这门课的主办方是鼎鼎大名的IDEO.org，IDEO从4A转型成一个类似咨询机构之类的公司之后，就致力于做设计了。这门Human Centered Design（中文暂且翻译成人本设计）已经更新了好几版，应该相对比较成熟了。这套HCD工具箱是其中的干货。虽然这套工具集是为非盈利组织设计的，但其实在任何项目中都可以用到，当成一套方法论来学习，是其价值所在。
这门课以练带学，注重实操，上来就case study，learning by doing，课程学完的同时，项目也做完，直接看成果，挺好。
第一课：组队
NovoED网上提供了一个组队平台，可以自建，也可参加别人的队。组队是开放和动态的，如果队伍和你气场不和，可以重新选。
组队标准
- 为了沟通充分和有效率，队伍一般是4到6个人，最少凑够一桌麻将。
- 成员构成最好来自各行各业，这样取长补短，男女搭配干活不累。
- 成员最好来自同一个城市，这样方便真人PK，当然语聊、视频、直播也可以。
作业是按照小组来交的，个人英雄主义负分滚粗，搭讪女同学不用找其他理由。
第二课：启发阶段 Inspiration Phase
简介
前菜完毕进正餐。
创造有意义的解决方案始于深刻了解用户需求。在启发阶段，你会直接从你的用户那里搜集需求，你需要浸淫在你用户的生活中，并且深入了解他们的需求和强烈的愿望。启发阶段目的是要把你对自己项目的无限可能性激发出来，并且坚信，只要你对自己的项目有欲望，想法就会如同汩汩泉水喷射出来。
Creating meaningful solutions begins with gaining a deep understanding of people's needs. In the Inspiration phase, you'll learn directly from the people you're designing for as you immerse yourself in their lives and come to deeply understand their needs and aspirations. The Inspiration phase is about learning on the fly, opening yourself up to creative possibilities, and trusting that as long as you remain grounded in desires of the people you're designing for, your ideas will evolve into the right solution.
你有2周时间完成第二课。第一周你可以选择项目方向，并且设计你的研究方案和谈话指导手册。第二周和同组同学花些时间沟通，完成研究方向。
You will have two weeks to complete Class 2. Spend the first week's workshop selecting your challenge and building out your research plan and discussion guide. Then, in the second week, set aside some time with your team to head out to your community and complete your field research.
阅读材料
第一步：选择设计挑战
1. 搜集想法 Collect Thoughts
和团队成员交流你的挑战，你的想法。团队成员头脑风暴，来精炼你的想法，避免太宽泛或者太具体。
As a team, your first step will be to talk about the design challenge you choose to work on. You’ll collect and write down thoughts about your challenge. Your team will discuss how you can refine the challenge if it feels too broad, or too specific.
2. 回顾已知信息 Review What You Already Know
如果你的团队中有人对你的项目有经验会是很有帮助的事情。你可以站在巨人的肩膀上，并且更聚焦在那些未知领域上。
Chances are good that members of your team will have some knowledge about the design challenge you choose. It will be important for your team to share what you already know, so you can build upon it and then focus on discovering what you don’t yet k now.
3. 定义未知领域 Define What You Don’t Know
你需要写下并且分享关于这个项目你目前还不知道的东东。写这个东西的好处是，作为人本设计的一部分，你需要拥有初心。对你项目的无知并不是一件坏事。
You’ll also want to write down and share what you don’t know or don’t yet understand about the challenge. And remember, an important part of human-centered design is embracing your beginner’s mind. It’s not a bad thing if there are aspects of the design challenge that you don’t yet grasp.
4. 回顾约束和障碍 Review Constraints or Barriers
团队需要写一个可能会妨碍你项目的的约束和障碍清单，你们也可以头脑风暴出一些方法来化解这些约束和障碍。
Your team will review a list of constraints or barriers that might prevent you from tackling the design challenge. You’ll also brainstorm solutions for overcoming or working around these barriers.
第二步：计划研究方法 Plan Your Research Methods
研究是你的想法的能源。在启发阶段，你将会计划研究活动，以从用户和专家处学习，去探索未知的领域。
Research is the fuel for your ideas. During the Inspiration phase you’ll want to plan research activities to learn from the people you’re designing for and explore unfamiliar contexts. As part of this course, we’ve selected four good starting points—learn from people, learn from experts, immerse yourself in context, and seek analogous inspiration.
1. 从用户处学习 Learn From People
这会给你 This Gives You
深入的了解用户的需求和动机。
In-depth insight into people’s needs and motivations.
注意 Keep in Mind
遍地专家，现在没证的也可以说自己是专家了。
Experts are everywhere - and you don’t need a degree to be one.
像对待一个专家一样对待你的访谈对象，你在采访他们的生活，所以，他们才是专家。保持好奇心，保持尊重。
Treat your interviewee as an expert. You’re interviewing them about their life, and in that, they are the expert. Be curious and always give them the respect they deserve.
人本设计建立在深刻的同理心研究上，这需要花费时间在你的用户上来获取洞见和灵感。但是从用户处学习需要练习和准备。
Human-centered design is built upon deeply empathetic research. It’s spending quality
time with people to gain insight about and inspiration from the people you’re designing for. But learning from people requires practice and preparation. Here’s where to start.
1) 定义受众 Define Your Audience
在做事情之前，先搞清楚为谁做。
Before you dig into your research, it’s critical to know who you’re designing for.
先找出你项目的直接用户或客户，然后再找间接的。这些人是你要访谈的对象。
Think about the people or groups that are directly involved in or reached by your challenge, and then add those who are peripherally relevant. Those are the people you want to talk to.
2) 特例和主流 Extremes and Mainstreams
在设计访谈对象时，要接触主流用户和小众群体。小众群体的需求很可能主流用户也很需要。更重要的是，和小众群体谈话会了解到许多你原本压根没想到的情况或者在你身上永远不可能发生的事情。
When recruiting people to interview, target both the big broad mainstream and those on either extreme of the spectrum. An idea that suits an extreme user will nearly certainly work for the majority too. More importantly, talking to extremes can spark creativity by exposing you to use cases that you’d never have imagined on your own.
3) 设计逻辑架构 Plan Logistics
考虑一下你想让参与者做些什么。在哪和他们见面？花费多长时间？有什么能增进访谈效果的行动？想从他们的回答收获什么？
Think about what exactly you want to do with each participant. Where do you want to meet them? How much time will you spend with them? Is there an activity you can do together to enrich conversation? What will you ask them to show you?
4) 使用招募工具 Recruitment Tools
关于访谈谁、问什么、你想获取什么信息，是需要一个策略的。不要害怕触及你的私人网络：人们很愿意分享他们的经验，特别是当你告诉他们你在学习一个东西的时候。
It’s important to have a strategy around who you talk to, what you ask them, and what pieces of information you need to gather. Don’t be afraid to tap into your personal network: people are generally happy to share what they know, particularly if you tell them that you are learning a new design process for creating positive social change in the community.
5) 创造可信气场 Create a Trusted Atmosphere
在轻松的环境下开始谈话。先说点放松的无关的话题。考虑一下你们所处的空间，确保有一定私密空间。
Start the conversation on a casual note. Talk about a subject that is unrelated to your research first to make the interviewee feel comfortable. Be considerate of the space you are in and make sure you have an appropriate level of privacy.
抓取内容 CAPTURE...
关注周围环境 Pay Attention to the Environment
最好和访谈人在相关环境里，比如他们的家、或者办公室。这会帮助你了解什么对他们重要。访谈中，对环境保持好奇心，询问你感兴趣的事物或空间摆设，如果你觉得访谈人愿意的话，可以请求带你参观一圈。
Try to meet in the person’s context—in their home, office, or workplace. This will help you get a better sense of what’s important to them. During the conversation, be curious about the environment. Ask about objects or spaces you find interesting, and if you sense the person might be willing, ask for a tour.
记录和引用 Capture Quotes
访谈中，直接记录和引用他们说过的话，会比你想象或者加工后的话更有效。回头当你和团队风向时，直接记录他们说过的话更准确。
During your interview, capture important quotes directly rather than interpreting what you think the person is saying. Later, when sharing back with your team, you’ll have a more accurate record of who the person is—on their terms, in their language.
拍照 Take Photographs
照片能帮助你记住你和谁聊了，你看到了什么。在访谈过程中的照片会让你的研究看起来更生动形象、有意义，并且容易回忆。但记得要先取得访谈者的同意，并且记住不要在其他地方使用这些照片。
Photographs help you remember who you talked to and what you saw. Photographs taken during your interviews will make your research more visual, meaningful, and easier to recall and navigate. But make sure to ask interviewees if it’s OK to take photographs, and never use those photographs for anything beyond internal project use.
2. 从专家处学习 Learn From Experts
这会给你 This Gives You
深入了解某一领域的知识
Access to in-depth knowledge in a certain area of expertise.
注意 Keep in Mind
需要在很好的了解当前状态和未来发展的空间中找到平衡。
Find the balance between using experts to get a good understanding of the current situation and preserving space to think beyond the existing models.
专家访谈 Expert Interview
专家总会给你一个系统化的思维，告诉你该领域的最新进展、成败得失，并且会介绍其他资源给你，如银行、政府、非营利组织等等。找不同专家会得到不同的信息。
Experts can often give you a systems-level view of your project area, tell you about recent innovations—successes and failures—and offer the perspectives of organizations like banks, governments, or NGOs. You will want to choose experts based on your objective. Are you looking for someone with a radical opinion, or do you want to gain a more historical overview of what’s worked and what hasn’t? Get a few different perspectives to balance out your information. You might also look to experts for specific technical advice.
准备谈话 Plan For The Conversation
要询问聪明的、已经研究过的问题，计划一下谈话要如何进行。
Ask smart, researched questions and plan how you want the conversation to flow.
即便你期望谈话往你想引导和学习的方向发展，但也要确保计划足够灵活，以便往其他方向发展。
Though you should come prepared with an idea of what you’d like to learn, make sure your game plan is flexible enough to allow you to pursue unexpected lines of inquiry. You could even consider asking the expert to actively help you work on an earlyconcept.
也可以使用视频聊天软件。
Using videoconferencing tools like Skype will allow you to share and build on visual concepts in real time.
**第二研究 Secondary Research **
社会创新领域有时候挑战很大，所以第二研究，无论是在线完成、阅读、计算数字等等，可以帮助你问出正确的问题。扎实的基本功知识对完成设计挑战有很大帮助。尝试最新科技，哪些有效，哪些无效，为什么？
Social sector challenges can be really thorny, which is why secondary research, whether done online, by reading books, or by crunching numbers, can help you ask the right questions. A firm foundation of knowledge is the best place from which to tackle a design challenge. Try to find recent innovations in your particular area. They could be technological, behavioral, or cultural. Better yet, take a look at other solutions in your area. Which ones worked? Which ones didn’t?
3. 把你自己浸入到环境中 Immerse Yourself In Context
这会给你 This Gives You
从环境中学习到的技术
Skills for learning from what’s around you.
**注意 Keep in Mind **
保持开放心态，保持初心，保持空杯状态。关注你以前没关注过的细节。
Approach your observation with an open mind and imagine this as the first time you have gone through this experience. Look for details you may have overlooked before.
1) 计划你的观察行为 Plan Your Observations
亲身模仿会让你加深对访谈对象以及他们生活的了解。
The best route to gaining an understanding of the people you’re designing for is to see in person, where they live, work, and lead their lives. Choose an experience that can inform your challenge. For example, if you are looking for new ideas on ways to provide healthier food options for people in need, you might visit a low-cost cafeteria or fast food restaurant during the lunchtime rush. Wait in line, order a meal, and observe the space as you eat. If you have the opportunity, you can learn a lot by shadowing someone for a few hours.
2) 捕捉眼前事物 Capture What You See
It’s easy to interpret what’s in front of you before you’ve fully understood it, but first be sure you’re taking down concrete details and quotes alongside your impressions. Think of certain aspects you want to capture, such as:
- Map out the different parts of your experience from beginning to end (we call this a “customer journey”).
- How did you feel at different parts of the experience?
- What was unexpected? Challenging? Seamless?
3) 反射你观察到的Reflect on What You’ve Observed
适度模仿，记录，分享给团队成员
Immediately after your observation, take some time to reflect upon the moments you found most interesting. Capture them on Post-its or in your notebook so you will be able to share back with your team in a way that is accurate, vivid, and visual.
4. 类比启发 Analagous Inspiration
**这会给你 This Gives You **
A new perspective on the challenge you’re working on, as well as inspiration and energy.
注意 Keep in Mind
Explore with an open mind, even if you do not immediately understand how to apply your experiences. After you regroup, spend time relating what you found interesting to the challenge you’re tackling.
1) 头脑风暴类比经验 Brainstorm Analogous Experiences
Start with a large sheet of paper, and list the distinct activities, behaviors, and emotions you’re looking to research in your own design challenge. Next to each one, write down a setting or situation where you might observe this activity, behavior, or emotion. For example, when one of our teams was designing an online college experience, they narrowed down one objective to learn how to create a sense of community. This team sought out and interviewed a former Navy SEAL to understand how they structure bootcamp to create intentional bonds amongst recruits.
2) 妥善安排 Make Arrangements
确保在非公共场合采访时，事先取得许可。
If you want to talk with people while in a private (as opposed to public) space, it’s best to get permission. For example, if you’re going to a hotel for inspiration and want to interview staff or take pictures of the space, speak with a manager ahead of time.
3) Just Take It In
不要太在意体会其他体验，启发阶段就是需要从未知的境遇去学习。实际上，你的设计团队会发现这种浸入式体验的好处，你应该随时随地包车这种心态。
Don’t worry too much about making sense of the experience in the moment. This part of inspiration is all about gaining learnings from unexpected places and experiences. In fact, your design team may find it helpful to keep an eye out for analogous experiences throughout the process, not just in the Inspiration phase. Later, it might influence your project in ways you never imagined.
第三步：制作访谈指导 Build Your Interview Guide
和陌生人访谈没那么简单。首先要让他们感到舒服，方法如下：
Having a good conversation with someone you don’t know isn’t always easy. When speaking with research participants, you first have to help them feel comfortable. It might seem odd, but conducting an interview with a casual tone and feel requires rigorous preparation. Here’s where to start.
确认主体 Identify Objectives
从设计目标考虑问题：你为什么研究？你想找出什么？你将要访谈或者观察谁？设身处地的想象，然后写下来。
As a team, think about the goal of your design challenge. Ask yourselves some basic questions: Why are you doing the research? What are you trying find out? Who are you going to talk to or observe? Know that the most valuable part of creating a discussion guide is the thinking that goes into it.
头脑风暴 获得问题 Brainstorm Questions
写指导手册时，多想一些最有效和有启发性的反馈。访谈指导手册不应该是观察记录，而是应该确保你在轨道上。把问题写的简练且容易阅读些，这样你才能够花更多时间和被访谈者沟通交流。
When writing your guide, think about the kind of feedback that’s going to be most useful and inspiring. Interview guides should not be seen as scripts for the observation, but rather guide rails to make sure you stay on track. Make questions easily scannable so you can maintain more eye contact with your interviewee.
组织问题 Organize Your Questions
先问简单好回答的问题，然后慢慢深入。这可以让受访人慢慢进入状态，方法如下：
A good rule of thumb is to open with some general questions, then go deep. This will give your interviewee time to get comfortable with you. Here’s some helpful guidelines:
- 普通问题开场：问一些诸如年龄、干什么的、有没小孩。类似这样不假思索即可回答的问题。
- Open General: Gather basic demographics first. Ask people their age, what they do for a living, if they have children, etc. Begin with questions your participants are comfortable answering. For example, if you are designing new savings products, you might ask people to make a list of all of the things they purchased yesterday.
*深入：然后问一些深入的问题，比如他们的希望的事情这样开放式的问题。最好和你的设计挑战相关。
- Go Deep: Ask more profound questions about hopes, fears, and ambitions. It’s best if these questions are open-ended, but relate subtly back to your design challenge. For example, if you were working on a project related to saving money, you might ask someone to draw the five big things they’re saving money for over the next ten years and how those things fit into their life goals.
语言技巧 Word Questions Strategically
中文和英文没啥可比性， 参考。
Frame questions in an open-ended way. This helps you to further explore your challenge and elaborate on interesting themes you discover during the conversations. Try:
- “Tell me about an experience …”
- “What are the best/worst parts about …?”
- “Can you help me understand about …?”
鼓励人们说他们自己的故事，避免问一些回答只是是/否的问题。
Encourage people to tell you their whole story and avoid questions that lead to just a yes/no answer.
使用有形的对话来开始 Use Tangible Conversation Starters
It can be helpful to share early ideas or concepts in your conversation, particularly when you are working on an abstract challenge. You can create a sketch, build a simple cardboard representation, or describe a scenario to elicit a reaction or response from participants. These are called conversation starters.
确认方案 Confirm Your Plans
确认日期、时间、地点，和团队成员们确认交通工具。
You should confirm date, time, and location for your research activities. Agree on logistics, including transportation, with your team. Can you conduct your research during the Class 2 Workshop? Consider scheduling Class 2 on a weekend so that your team has more time to talk with and meet people. We encourage you to take asmuch time as you need for the research activities. Don’t feel like you must complete Class 2 within the allotted workshop time.
分配任务角色 Assign Roles
As part of your field research, you’ll designate one person to lead the conversation and a different team member to take notes. Remember to encourage them to write down direct quotes and capture the details we’ve outlined on page 6. The team should also select someone to photograph your interview subject and the surrounding environment. Make sure you ask for permission before taking any photos. It’s often best to build trust with your interview subject before asking to take photos, so you may want to leave this until you’ve finished the interview.
研究小技巧 RESEARCH TIPS
通过耐心获得信任 Establish Trust With Participants.
- Listen patiently. Do not interrupt, and allow for pauses to give participants time to think.
- Use nonverbal gestures, such as eye contact, nodding, and smiling, to reassure participants you are engaged and interested in what they are saying.
Encourage Participants To Show As Well As Tell.
- Have participants draw what they’re talking about. Visuals often prompt more conversation.
- Try asking “why?” in response to five consecutive answers.
**Know What To Look For. **
- What people “say” is often different than what they actually “do.” Look for cues in the things that people keep around them or the way they carry themselves.
- Notice workarounds that people have created in order to make a system or tool serve their needs better.
**Capture What You See. **
Take lots of notes and photos of what you see, hear, feel, smell, and taste during a field visit. Capture direct quotes when possible. Write down immediate thoughts without worrying about interpretation.
第四步：其他研究方法 Step 4: Additional Research Methods
Though likely difficult to explore given the time constraints of this course, these are some other methods we use at IDEO.org to gain a deeper understanding of the people you’re designing for. Just some food for thought!
Personal Diaries
Ask participants to reflect at the end of the day on certain moments or themes. This gives them time for personal and uninterrupted thinking, and gives you an interviewee’s thoughts captured in their own words.
Use this when: You want to get a longer view of a participant’s experience over an extended amount of time.
Photo Essays
Give participants a disposable camera and a list of objects and/or experiences to photograph throughout their day. This gives you a firsthand, visual perspective about your participants through things that are important to them, or are part of their everyday lives.
Use this when: You want to compare and contrast the different daily experiences and realities of a set of participants.
Customer Journey
Have participants create a personal timeline of an experience, then have them map how they felt at different points along the way. Use the map as a visual jumping off point for conversation.
Use this when: You want to discuss a complicated system or series of interactions with a participant. (The process of buying a car is a good example.)
Card Sorts
Create a series of cards with a single word or image on it and ask participants to prioritize what’s most/least important, interesting, or relevant to them. Ask them talk through their decision process during this activity so you can understand why they make the choice they make.
Use this when: You want multiple participants to narrow down a set of ideas.
Concept Provocations
These are a series of concept drawings with accompanying explanations. Concepts could be outliers meant to elicit a strong reaction, or early ideas you might want to build into prototypes.
Use this when: You want early feedback on why participants like or don’t like certain features.
第五步：记住你所学到的 Capture Your Learnings
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the amount of information you have gathered after an interview, so use a few minutes immediately after the session to capture what you’ve observed, as well as any new ideas you have as a result.
Take Time To Regroup
Plan extra time so that you can share your thoughts and impressions with your teammates right after your interview or observation. This may often happen in a coffee shop or while in transit.
Share Your Impressions
What are the things you found most interesting during the observation? Listen to each others recollections. Compare experiences and impressions, but don’t worry about interpreting these stories yet.To cover the most important topics, consider using these prompts:
- Sound bites: What were the most memorable quotes that people heard? Why were they memorable?
- Interesting stories: What was most surprising to you?
- Interactions: What was interesting about the way he/she interacted with his/her environment?
- Remaining questions: What questions would you like to explore in your next conversation?
Illustrate New Ideas
Did the observation spark a new thought or idea for you? Sketch it out. Don’t worry about the way your sketches look or feel intimidated about being visual. These illustrations will help you communicate your ideas to others and give you all a head start on brainstorming concepts.
Case Study: Vroom
A Human-Centered Take on Early Childhood Development
Advances in neuroscience and child development confirm what many educators have long believed: Children’s readiness for kindergarten (and life beyond) hinges on positive engagement with their parents and caregivers during the first five years of their lives. This is the most active period for brain development—children’s brains form new connections at a rate of 700 synapses per second. But as a society, we underinvest in children and families during the earliest years, leaving far too much opportunity on the table. For low-income parents, who may have lacked good models themselves, much of the parenting advice is unattainable. The Bezos Family Foundation and IDEO.org set out to activate engagement through new tools and messages, and to broaden the prescription beyond commonly heard (but not uniformly embraced) directives about reading to children.
Could there be a way to communicate brain science directly to parents in ways that positively influence behavior, and raises the value of all forms of positive interaction with babies and toddlers?
The Outcome
After extensive interviews with parents, child development experts, and pediatricians around the country, the team developed a large-scale messaging campaign celebrating everyday moments as learning opportunities. Whether sitting in the laundromat or shopping at the supermarket, the fundamental message was that taking advantage of the many chances to engage with a child strengthens the foundation of that child’s brain development. The Bezos Family Foundation built upon our design team’s key insights, further developed them, and in the spring of 2014, launched Vroom. Vroom advocates for the time parents do have and using it in different ways to help build their kids’brains.
INSPIRATION
The IDEO.org team undertook a highly immersive inspiration phase, visiting low-income communities in California, New York, and Pennsylvania to conduct interviews with parents and to observe existing programs aimed at improving child development outcomes. The team learned that many of the parents they met had had very tough upbringings. These parents didn’t feel fully equipped to engage with their children, because their own parents didn’t engage with them. One of the most successful programs the team witnessed during their research was one in which nurses went into people’s homes for several hours each week simply to play with the children in front of the parents. By modeling play, they were able to affect behavior change and shift the parent-child dynamic.
Interviews with child development experts and pediatricians tended to reinforce the direct findings: If parenting advice is limited to reading books, those who don’t feel comfortable reading aloud may forego all forms of engagement. One pediatrician in New York argued outright that playing, talking to, and responding to children trumps reading.
In the end, immersion turned out to be absolutely critical to the design team devising innovative solutions. Because the designers found themselves working on behalf of communities that are quite different from them, they had to push the boundaries of their own empathy, but indoing so, they came to really understand the
needs of low-income parents.
To the delight of the individual team members and to the benefit of the project, this approach eventually led to open doors in the participating communities.
By immersing in the neighborhoods and communities they were looking to serve, the team established trust with a core group of individuals who then told their neighbors and referred friends, creating the critical mass necessary for understanding the audience and building the right brand voice.
IDEATION
When field research was complete, the team returned to San Francisco to synthesize its findings and look for patterns among the interviews. As they synthesized everything they learned, the team began to formulate a voice, identity, and set of design principles for the campaign.They came to some core principles that still guide Vroom today, ideas like Speak in the voice of their peers, Withhold Judgment, and All parents want to be good parents.
The team came up with a series of personas, each of them representing a woman from the communities being served, then invited mothers to the office to review mood boards, listen to sample voices, andprovid feedback on which character they’d trust for advice on child-rearing.
From this feedback period, the team discovered that most parents, though they weren’t drawn to an academic approach to engaging their children, were very interested in the science behind behavior and brain development. Through a host of interviews, the team heard parents talking about a eureka moment after meeting with a neurologist who explained how the science worked. It was a revelation that had a big impact on how they saw their role in bringing up their child.
IMPLEMENTATION
By the end of the Inspiration and Ideation phases, the IDEO.org team had created a strong, well-defined creative brief that could be handed to an advertising agency and used as the foundation for a major campaign. They came up with provocations and prompts for people to play with their kids as well as an advertising strategy that included guerrilla interventions displayed in laundromats instead of on big billboards. After another couple years of refinement and more design work, the Bezos Family Foundation launched the pilot of Vroom in 2014 in King County in Washington State.
Method in Action: Immersion
In 2012, IDEO.org began work on a project with the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, an organization that seeks to advance the global market for clean cookstoves. A compelling technology, clean cookstoves have the potential to improve health by reducing exposure to smoke from traditional fires and stoves, improve livelihoods through increased savings from reduction of fuel use, and help the environment via a decrease in carbon emissions. Emily Friedberg, a designer on the project, wrote about a day spent cooking with a Tanzanian family as part of her team’s Inspiration phase research.
Given language and cultural barriers, it’s relatively difficult to really get to know people in Tanzania in a short amount of time. To remedy this situation, our IDEO.org cookstoves team arranged to spend an entire day with one family, casually hanging out and cooking an afternoon meal.
Daniel and Gaudensia welcomed us into their family of nine in the Tanzanian town of Buhongwe. Our first stop was the market where we bought everything we needed for our feast including meat, beans, sweet potato, ugali flour, fruits and vegetables, and… a live chicken.
When we got home, the ladies quickly got to work lighting the three charcoal stoves and cutting up the meat and vegetables. The oldest boy, Godwa, was told to slaughter the squawking chicken. Cameras ready, we watched as he cut through the bird’s neck, drained the blood, and left the carcass twitching in a bowl ready for plucking.
The meal took several hours to prepare. There was swapping of pots and lids, lids doubled as cutting boards, and each item including water and the chicken went through several discrete processes before it reached the table. And when it was done, three hours later, it was elaborately dished onto plates for the men and the guests and eaten out of cooking pots for women and children, and all consumed in the space of 20 minutes.
And then, when it was cleared, they lit the charcoal stove again and started preparing for dinner.
