Part 2
Introduction
Human experience and complete understanding of human perspectives often influence the importance of design features of various tools used in daily life. Each aspect of a design serves a purpose that cumulatively contributes towards the functionality of the whole device. This is the concept of user-centered design as it features the desires, wishes, and needs of the end-user in the creation of the tool. In the presented article, a review of design centered around extreme affordability formulated by a team of designers from Stanford’s School is reviewed. The design involved the creation of an incubator that could be user-friendly and above all serve the purpose for which it was intended in inaccessible remote areas thus saving lives of premature babies that would have otherwise died due to limited access to medical care.
This blog post is the sequel of the podcast “Introduction to User Centered Design” where you can found out more about the theory behind, as well from other two blog posts that you can read as compliments to each other, so you can undertand the all aspects od UCD. But lets started and introduce you to a case study that involves positive approach and point out the most important aspects to our main topic.
A study by the Embrace-Design for Extreme Affordability (2017) showed that premature babies are born in large numbers worldwide. To such babies, the infant mortality rate is high due to hypothermia, a challenge that can be addressed by using incubators. The Extreme design team identified the problem and saw the need to solve it by designing an incubator that could help save the infants’ lives that were likely to suffer from hypothermia. Achievement of the above objective involved the inclusion of several stakeholders including doctors, hospital staff, and the most significant group, parents of the endangered children. While there are effective incubators designed with several inbuilt functionalities, they remain limited in resource-poor settings especially in remote areas where access to electricity. For instance, the ideation behind the design of the embrace was motivated by the tragic story of the demise of the premature neonate to hypothermia in India. While other causes of neonatal mortality exist and remain largely controlled with other measures, hypothermia is the most preventable cause of neonatal death especially in resource-poor settings (Lunze et al., 2013). A systemic review of the literature revealed that at least 12 million neonates die globally per annum due to hypothermia, which reflects the greater burden of the most preventable cause of neonatal death (Hill et al., 2010).
Challenge
Annually, more than 20 million babies are born prematurely and with low-weight (McCormick, 2015). The mortality rate among such babies is high due to inaccessibility to incubators, especially in Third World countries (Hill et al., 2010). Although hospitals in such countries may have several incubators, they may be located in major cities, denying accessibility to millions of people from rural areas or the few incubators costly to hire. Moreover, the existing incubators required electricity for their operation, another service that seemed a problem for many people, especially in developing countries. The challenge remained creation of warming device that can keep normal human body temperature over long duration without using electricity.
User-Centered Design Approach
The presented case study focuses on a user-centered design study on Embrace offers a solution to the millions of infant immortalities experienced in India and globally. A user-centered design follows a six-phase process (Brown, 2008). User centeredness is gauged by level of user involvement in the creation and design of the device. Therefore, data collection on desires and wishes of the user is the first step. Secondly, the product’s requirements are specified and detailed by the designers, followed by generating a design solution to the user’s need. The design is then evaluated in terms of its usability. It is then implemented, and then finally, the product is supplied for use by the target community. The project commences by analyzing the people’s needs and concludes with a solution that meets the needs. The following figure shows the structure of a user-centered design.
Figure 1 shows the user-centered design approach to a problem. The process begins with user research and analysis that lead to concept design upon which user prototypes are tested. Detailed designs are inspired by the testing results leading to the project launch. The image is adopted from Kling, 2017.
As illustrated in the above figure 1, user-centered design involves researching and analyzing the user, their objectives, and contexts. Empathy is then embraced to understand the users’ current problems, while iteration is used to evaluate and improve the design (Misra, 2013)
Development of Embrace Idea
Since 2017, the Extreme team has been rolling over its sleeves to innovate the Embrace incubator. Based on the problem statement above, the challenges faced by parents who get premature babies include inaccessibility of incubators due to long distances to hospitals, the high cost of acquiring an incubator, and unreliable electricity to those who can access the available incubators. To solve the problems, the Embrace team began their research to develop an incubator that could serve most people who needed an incubator’s services globally. The team began by empathizing with the people of Kathmandu, the present capital city of Nepal. In the city, they observed the neonatal unit of the capital’s hospital and later traveled to the interior areas to observe premature babies’ handling. In their empathy journey, the team learned that an overwhelming majority of premature babies were born in Nepal’s rural areas. Besides, sadly enough, the team realized that those premature babies were never taken to the hospital. To those parents who attempted to take the children to the hospital, most of the infants could never make it.
Following the above alarming observations, the Extreme team realized that their new incubator needed to address those challenges. It dawned that no matter how good the incubator was to be made; their efforts could be pointless without addressing those challenges. More incubators into the hospital could also not help eliminate the problem as very few infants reached the hospital. The team realized that it needed to be functional in the rural setup for their design efficiency. That meant that the system must be culturally appropriate, sterilizable, intuitive, transportable, and most importantly, economically viable. Also, their system must not use electricity as the only power supply.
Solution – Innovating the Prototype
The empathy was successful as the Extreme team developed a prototype called the Embrace shown in figure 2. The incubator design was different from the other incubators in many factors. The Embrace design structure resembled a sleeping baby and could be wrapped around a premature baby. It had a pouch of phase-change material (PCM), which served the incubator’s primary purpose (Moore, 2012). The pouch maintained the infant’s body temperature to the required temperature for four to six hours without being recharged. The most exciting aspect about the pouch was that it was maintained by immersing it in boiling water for only a few minutes. It needed no electricity. Again, boiling water is readily available in all parts of the world as it involves just heating water. It could therefore be used even in the interior-most part of Nepal.
The sleeping-bag like incubator was light and small to be transported anywhere. It was easily portable and could be transported to rural areas. The material making the incubator was also easily sterilized when submerged in boiling water. It was the most intuitive incubator ever to be innovated. The incubator also enhanced the practice of Kangaroo Care by the mother to the child. Most importantly, the incubator cost was a mere $25, cutting the traditional incubator’s cost by about 800 times (Embrace–Design for Extreme Affordability, 2017). The following figure shows the appearance of the Embrace incubator.
Figure 2 shows the Embrace bag. The design consists of a coat that keeps the neonate warm plus a rear pocket to receive phase change material warmed with boiling water. Image adapted from Embrace–Design for Extreme Affordability, 2017
The pouch, which is the primary temperature regulator in the Embrace incubator, is
innovative wax. The wax is heated in boiling water and keeps the whole incubator warm.
The product has no moving parts and uses no electricity as compared to the traditional incubator (Sibley, 2008). The product is safe, portable, and intuitive to use. The product’s design allows it to be used in a community setting, transporting babies, and in a hospital setting. Both the Embrace Nest and Care can serve those purposes as they have an almost similar structure. The following picture shows theEmbrace Care.
The Embrace Nest is mostly used for medical purposes, such as in ambulances for a premature infant’s transportation. It is also used inwards in hospitals where skin-to-skin care is not possible. Embrace Care can be used in hospitals and homes and can be used as a complement to skin-to-skin care. Compared to the nest, it extends reliable thermal care, especially to vulnerable infants (Misra, 2013).
The Technology in Embrace Incubators
The Embrace portable incubator was first launched in South India in 2011. It was distributed to clinics that were easily accessible in rural areas. The technological innovation has impacted many infants in India as partnerships have accelerated to distribute it globally. The innovation was made by a class at Stanford University that was challenged to develop an incubation system that was about 1% of the traditionalincubator’s total cost (Salvador et al., 2010). The Extreme team developed an almost perfect incubator and has seen development since then. The company is currently based in India and continues to partner with other organizations to improve its life-saving operations. The incubator has been tested in multiple hospitals in India and has been approved by governments. It is highly effective, and more than 200,000 infants have been helped in more than 20 countries (Embrace–Design for Extreme Affordability, 2017). Both private and public organizations buy the product for either commercial purposes or voluntary services. The team continues to launch new baby products such as the Little Lotus Baby, which are blankets and swaddles that help babies sleep better by maintaining an ideal temperature. They have a special program that gives an Embrace warmer for a Little Lotus Baby purchased. The Embrace technology has contributed a significant percentage in saving infants’ lives without putting in
many resources.
Conclusion
The Embrace user-centered design is empathetic, iterative, and interdisciplinary. The Extreme team started by paying attention to the target group in India. The team integrated the community in their research by learning the problems that faced them in the health sector. The team analyzed the problems and immersed themselves in solving the problem, ensuring the user needs were catered for. Suggestions and views of all users in the user-centered design were considered in the design of the incubator. Besides, UCD helped the team integrate all disciplines, such as ethnographers, engineers, and psychologists, who developed the incubator. Lastly, designers should integrate the principles of user-centered design to maximize the usability of
their design. It enhances a deeper understanding of the user’s problems and, thus, crucial for any design. The solution stage ensures all designers ideate any possible solution enhancing the final solution as the best is picked. The iterative design borrowed from UCD will enhance the design since it provides assessment andvalidates the design since its commencement. Furthermore, UCD is a complete cycle that enhances the improvement of the product design. It allows for mistakes helping the designers make a better design product. The most exciting thing about the user-centered design is its iteration. Iteration gives more room for improvement, which is responsible for the popularity and growth of prototyping.
Video by Jen Chen
Thank you for reading this blog post, so far you know about the concept by positive outcome of User Centred Design, but if you want to found out more about the bad outcome of UCD you can read the blog post of my colleague Qinwen and her trilling experience
Quinwen’s blog
For last as a collaboration between our podcast and those two interesting case studies Lisa’s blog post it will introduce you to the Advantages and Disadvantages of UCD.
Lisa’s blog
Reference
1. Brown, T. (2008). Decision thinking (pp. 3-7). Harvard Business Review.
2. Embrace–Design for Extreme Affordability. (2017). https://extreme.stanford.edu/projects/embrace/
3. Hill Z, Tawiah Agyemang C, Manu A, Okyere E and Kirkwood B. R. (2010). Keeping newborns warm: beliefs, practices, and potential for behavior change in rural Ghana. Tropical Medicine International Health. 2010;15: 1118–1124. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-3156.2010.02593.x.
4. Kling Rob (2017). The Organizational Context of User-Centered Software Designs. MIS Quarterly. 1 (4): 41–52. doi:10.2307/249021
5. Lunze, K., Bloom, D. E., Jamison, D. T., and Hamer, D. H. (2013). The global burden of neonatal hypothermia: a systematic review of a major challenge for newborn survival. BMC medicine, 11, 24. https://doi.org/10.1186/1741-7015-11-24
6. McCormick M. C. (2015). The contribution of low birth weight to infant mortality and childhood morbidity. The New England journal of medicine, 312(2), 82–90. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJM198501103120204.
7. Misra, M. (2013). Warmth for newborns: The embrace infant warmer. Innovations in maternal health: Case studies from India, SAGE Publications, New Delhi, India,147-157.
8. Moore Thomas (2012). Low tech body warmer is a baby lifesaver. Sky News. Archived from the original on 5 September 2012. Retrieved 2021.
9. Salvador, T., Bell, G., and Anderson, K. (2010). Design ethnography. Design Management Journal (Former Series), 10(4),35–41. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1948-7169.1999.tb00274.x
10.Sibley Lisa (2008). Stanford startup’s $25 ‘sleeping bag’ could save newborns. Retrieved 2021.
20
0
