Sam Ferguson
I’m a Strategic Designer. I find inspiration in aligning design work with an organization’s strategy. I believe design methods are one of the strongest ways to develop a unique value proposotion.
DOC 234—34/2
Time: 12 Weeks
Type: Sponsored Capstone Project
Role: Research, Strategy, Fabrication Design
ORP
We designed an intuitive and affordable handheld device to measure chlorine levels in drinking water. This is the first handheld device that uses an ORP (Oxidation-Reduction Potential) Probe to test drinking water.
Our design integrates the testing proccess into the pshyical device in order to make the proccess intuitive without relying on the language-heavy, technical intstuctions.
The material cost for the device is under 150$, as apposed to a colorimeter which would cost 700$
Overview
PATH is a global health nonprofit organization whose work includes scientific research, engineering, policy advocacy, and scaling resources to develop affordable, locally tailored medical devices and health technologies.Chlorination is one of the most affordable ways to sanitize drinking water. However, in many low income settings in the world testing chlorine levels is not. There were historically two options: colorimeters and test strips. Colorimeters are lab-grade tools which are very accurate at measuring chlorination, but are very expensive device and require the use of reangents for each test. Test strips are very affordable, but are hard to interpret and aren’t accurate to the correct granularity.
What would a device designed for low-income settings look like?
Two Personas:
Honduran EOS Ciurcut Rider: Travels through rural Honduras by motorcycle, goes town to town testing water, maintaining chlorinators, and disseminating water safety info to townspeople.
Ghana Rural Nurse: Has many tasks, and must always prioritize allocation of time and resources. Has many task tasks that may feel more important than testing water. Little knowledge of water quality, but comfortable with techincal devices generally.
Key Features
Reducing Complexity Through Proccess Representation
Another challenge for this project is the inherent complexity to getting accurate measurements using an ORP probe. Probe calibration, site-specific calibration, probe cleaning, and probe storage all must be executed correctly and in order to get accurate measurements.
We overcame this by representing the proccess on the device itself. The steps move left to right, across the device. We designed high level, image-heavy instructions that avoid technical jargon wherever possible. There is a heavy emphasis on rinsing the probe between steps, as it was a commonly missed step in user testing.
Reducing Supply Chain Distance with Local Fabrication
With innovations in fabrication technologies, access to low volume fabrication methods have increased dramatically. Both Ghana and Hoduras have 3D printers in thier universities.
we saw an opportunity to increase the autonomy of low income countries through local fabrication. The housing for the electronics to be 3D printied and self fabricated. This cuts out reliance on single companies for access to a device or replacement parts. In countires with poor supply chains this could cut down lead times for replacement parts from a few months to a few days.
Takeaways
Research Limitations
Research was our largest challenge for this project. With our intended users being rural community members in low income countries, we were not able to access our user directly for research.
We overcame this by using a combination of secondary research, interviews with subject matter experts (SMEs), and competitive analysis to inform our design choices.
One takeaway is that SME interviews can be extremely useful in developing a product strategy. While they couldn’t answer finer details about user interaction, SME’s were able to answer questions about the contexts of use, that would have otherwise taken many user interviews and analysis.