Thomas Ibale, Researcher & Advocacy Coordinator at Design Without Borders Africa – HD Knowledge Talk #6

Thomas: Into the project that we’re currently working on, the name of the project is the Enhancing Fisher Folk Safety Project, and this is to do with protecting fishermen from the problem of drowning. Drowning has become a very big epidemic, not just in Uganda but in different countries in Africa. Due to the access and use of water bodies, both for fishermen and transporters, there are always incidents that happen. The goal of the project is to develop affordable and contextually relevant flotation devices, which can be a life jacket or a life ring, or it could take any form, like a group flotation device that everyone can use in case of an emergency. One of the other goals is to improve communication and comprehension of weather information amongst fishermen. How the weather information gets from the Department of Meteorology, which is the body in charge of disseminating weather information, to the fisherman, and how effectively can that work? Can it be through a certain medium? Can it come at certain times? Once these two goals are tackled, then it will also lead to positively influencing the behaviour of fishermen to adopt safety measures. Right now, the fishermen might not trust the weather information they receive, or they might be less inclined to buy a life jacket because it costs a lot of money, and hopefully, at the end of this project, we would have positively influenced their behaviour and make them adopt better safety habits and take those measures even before they go out into the lake. Also, to return back to the water when they understand the gravity and magnitude of what it means to lose a life, and also it could affect the rest of the community, especially the immediate family and the boat owner, and so on.

For this project, we’re working in these districts. What you have here is the map of Uganda, and this is Lake Kyoga right here in the middle with the districts marked A and B: A is Soroti and B is Serere. Then on Lake Victoria, which is down here, we have districts marked C, C is Mayuge, and when you go further down south you have D which is Masaka, E is Kyotera, and F is Rakai. These are the districts that were identified by the Makerere School of Public Health as having very high cases of drowning. Starting from Uganda, it was reported between the years 2016 to 2018 by the Makerere School of Public Health that 2,066 cases of drowning had happened in those years. Also on a global scale, in 2023, the World Health Organization reported an estimated 236,000 annual deaths worldwide. These are very staggering numbers, and the numbers are only increasing if the fisherfolk do not take safety first, and we are here to help them with that. We’re here to design systems and also products that could help bring this number down and resultantly hopefully everyone is safe to use the water. Out of these incidents, 95% of those involved were not wearing life jackets, and 58% were attributed to bad weather conditions. Due to different factors like the life jackets being expensive, or sometimes you have to travel very far from the landing sites because, if you go to the map, you’d see Kampala is around here, and now if you’re trying to get a quality life jacket, most of them are in the capital city, so it’s harder for them to travel to the main towns to get the life jackets, which could be a problem of access and also a problem of cost. We are currently tackling those issues. In the slides that are coming up, I’ll explain that further.

Methodology: Human-Centred Design

Thomas: What we’re doing right now is using human-centred design to save lives. In my own words, because there are many definitions for human-centred design, but I hope this one does it justice: human-centred design is a creative approach to problem solving that starts with the end user and ends with a tailor-made solution to fit their need. Everything surrounds the end user; they inform the whole process. By the time you develop a solution, it has to fit them, it’s true to their context, and it’s organic, it’s something that they can relate to and something that they can be able to replicate by themselves or as they go forward, pointing towards sustainability. This involves understanding the fishers’ needs and circumstances, as well as constant dialogue and refinement with fisherfolk. Even from the start of the project, when we did the research, it’s still going on, it’s constant dialogue, it’s constant learning and trying to understand what exactly the pain points are, and the strengths as well if they are there to leverage for the fisherfolk.

Just some more insight into the process that we use, here we have what we call the double diamonds, because when you look at the shape, it’s like two diamonds. Right now, we are at the develop stage. To get there, you go through discover, define, develop, and then eventually we’ll deliver next year. Hopefully, by this time next year, we could even show some of the work that’s been done, but the pilot starts at the end of this year. I’ll go through the discover, define, and develop phases in the next slides.

Discover is just trying to understand the people, the needs, and context, so practicing empathy, stepping into their shoes, and understanding what exactly the problem is, which could change because you could come with your own bias, you could come with your own thoughts, and when you realise that, oh, okay, this is what they’re telling us, the problem could change, it could get further defined. Once that’s done, you go to define exactly what it is. You interpret the findings, you gather all the data. We would sit down for long hours as the team, we try and see about what’s important, what are the main key points, so continuous discussions internally as well as still with the community, because whatever we gather, we have to confirm with the community; they are the decision maker in that process. Once that’s done, you go to the develop phase, so the potential solutions, you generate ideas, prototypes to tackle the challenges defined. Here is where you go wild with everything, and if you notice, as the diamond gets wider from discover and narrow on defining, it also goes wider on develop. You just have to go crazy with the ideas. We have to make sure features are able to generate as many, so we have a big sort of idea bank, and we can always refer to it because the ideas could change or they could complement each other. We always have to have the ideas stored as we proceed to concept development and testing. Once we’ve tested the solutions, we run the pilot and refine the solutions. We do test cycles right now, in the first cycle which we came back from about two weeks ago, so we’re testing some of the solutions and hopefully we can get to refine them even further. We have a trip coming up in June back to the communities, and once that’s done we can run the pilot and get involved with the… we’ve been in constant dialogue with the necessary bodies, so if it’s for flotation devices, we’re talking to the Uganda National Bureau of Standards and things like that, having those constant meetings and dialogues; if it’s the Department of Meteorology, we’re having those constant meetings week in week out as we continue to refine these solutions and make sure they hit the right spots. So that’s the double diamond, the four Ds: discover, define, develop, and deliver.

Discovery: Immersion and Data Gathering

Thomas: The discovery phase, we’ll get into now the different processes of the project. The discover phase in some cases can be described as the inspiration phase. It involves immersing yourself in the context of the people you are designing for, practicing empathy, stepping into the end user’s shoes to see things through their lens, and there you get a better perspective on the problem you’re trying to solve. Notably, we always have to ask for consent. We don’t just storm in; it’s not right to just walk into a room and start taking pictures and taking data. You follow the principles of research ethics and maintain confidentiality, and we go into the field, move above bias, so just free, open to anything, open to finding whatever, and once you have an open mind, then the sky’s the limit, you can get as much information as possible.

Here are some process photos from the discover phase. Here we have focus group discussions with fisherfolk. The fisherfolk include fish mongers, community elders, community leaders. In this picture you can see one of the research assistants, Steph, was invited into the house of the fisher. We had this whole family and a few more people there. You have discussions, you try to ask questions, you try to probe not just around drowning but then you probe around different topics like what’s the living standards, level of income, and the socio-economic factors as well. Here on the right side you have a picture where we’re talking to community leaders. You speak to the community leaders, and some of them also have… we have the marine police, so they’ll tell you some of the incidents that have happened, they give you a history of things, they’ll tell you what has worked and what has not worked. Gathering as much data from all these different stakeholders gives you a diverse, multi-dimensional perspective on things since you have everyone’s input on the problem.

Also in the discover phase, here we have me over there gathering data on the months with the most turbulent weather conditions. Remember we’re trying to improve weather formation systems. We try and document the different seasons, and right now it’s a bit tricky because, with the climate change issue, the seasons start to change, and the fishers also express that; they say, “oh it used to rain a lot in December but now it has stopped, it used to be very hot in January but now it’s raining.” Trying to get those different findings and trying to understand the calendar and weather system. Here we have a dialogue with a fish trader. Speaking to people who are within the stakeholder sphere of the fisher, he might not be the fisher himself, but the fish trader has information which is also very valuable. He’s the one who receives the fish when the fishers return to the shore. He can tell you the different times which they go out to fish, the different types of fish they catch, and all this is valuable information because you now start to see the patterns. You see that with the night fishing, the people go late at night, they’re going to fish a certain… it’s called a silverfish, very tiny fish called mukene, and also there’s the risk of going to fish at night because there is low surveillance on the water by marine police and things like that. It starts to uncover even more information that’s valuable when you’re now trying to see how to deliver the weather information at the different times of the day, so that a fisher can be informed even while they’re out in the water that, oh, tonight it might rain, so I need to go with a life jacket, or I need to be going in a group with my friends, because there’s also that communal sort of bond and they move together in groups. If they take those safety measures as well, it would help them.

Here also you have a roleplay activity. We use roleplay to bring out some of the information we need. We would ask the fishers to draw a boat on the floor, you can see the chalk over here, some of the equipment they use, just to improvise, use some cups. That’s the scooper that they use to lift the water that enters the boat or to store fish sometimes. They use a jerrycan as a backup flotation device for people who can’t afford a life jacket. This has also been identified as a design opportunity, that we can be able to design flotation devices that incorporate jerrycans. Since these are always readily available in the community, this was valuable information for us to know. The fishers will also sit in a certain order that will see okay there’s maybe two fishers who sit, there’s a coax man, and then maybe a pilot, and we start to see the formation and how they go out to fish.

Then it would also involve interrogating the current flotation devices in the market. Here you have one of the community elders was telling us about the life ring and why it’s important, why he prefers it to the life jacket for example, and then also the different fishers in the room would listen and chime in, give more information that would help us gather as much data as possible.

Then we had a couple of interviews with the tailors in the community. The tailors are a very key point for us because once we’ve been able to develop the flotation devices, they have to be able to be made by the tailor, so right now we are providing materials to the tailors to be able to make some of the designs that are coming up with. Right now they’re not ready to show, but hopefully in the coming months I’ll be able to share in the community chat and with the rest of the team, but we have to speak to the tailors and they’ll give us the experiences they’ve had. If it’s to deal with fixing flotation devices, we’ll get some valuable information on that. This specific tailor here was able to make a flotation device by her own, like someone would come and request and say, “oh I need this flotation device made.” She would tell us as well how much it would cost, what would be involved, and the length of time, if it takes three days, if it takes four days. She was able to make one out of jerrycans, which was pretty impressive because you now start to see the positive deviance, the people in the community who are already coming up with solutions to the problem of drowning. That’s also very inspiring to see in this space.

Then here’s a picture of a low-quality life jacket in the market. You can see the standard already, this is not something someone would trust even when they look at it or want to wear, but it’s what’s available and it costs about 20,000 Uganda shillings. If I’m to do the math, that’s about four, five dollars. It’s the cheaper coasting flotation device, but it’s not the most reliable. Funny but sad enough, there were some quotes from the fishers that were saying, “ah this is a flotation device that you wear if you just want to be identified on the water when you’re drowned.” There’s not so much humane that it’s because people would laugh, but it’s a very serious issue that this is what’s readily available and it’s not up to standard. It’s our job to come in and fix this.

Defining the Challenge: Journey and Stakeholder Mapping

Thomas: From all that information we’re gathering we’re able to come up with the journey map. The journey map informs what the fisher does, his daily activities, and at the different timestamps. While we’re collecting the information we had the information gathered and also while we’re doing the collection of data there was one of our designers Nora, she’s very talented, she was able to sketch some of these things and we further refined them with another one of our communication designers Elsie. I have to pick them up because they’re a great team, they’re very good at the visuals. She did the visuals for the journey map and you see the different timestamps from when it’s 5 a.m. to 8 a.m. the fisher sets off to go out into the water. They usually take about two hours to reach the fishing grounds and preparation, setting up the nets, is also a process and here you have the different hazards that are highlighted in the orange boxes. There are certain things that also are not within our scope but happen in the journey: if a fisher goes out to fish and then there’s floating islands, so their boat can get trapped. Here you also have something that we noted was that some of these flotation devices have hooks and now the net can hook onto the jacket and pull you into the water. That’s also a hazard and something we have to consider when making the designs. Some of the fishers go out when they are intoxicated and they run the risk of falling in the water. Sometimes they don’t have the life jacket on them and when they fall into the water then it’s a problem. As the day goes on, let’s say the fisher has gone on the journey safely has reached up to this point, there’s also the threat of the weather changing; heavy winds and heavy rains they told us could damage the boat or overturn the boat and those sudden weather changes they can’t really prepare for because also while they’re out in the water it’s hard for them to receive the weather information. We are also exploring having sort of like beacons that light up maybe in the distance or finding a way to connect to satellite which is also a bit not in our forte, so we now have to partner but we are also just exploring certain things where it’s okay if the fisher is out on the water how can we get this information to them? Once the fishers are back they sometimes cook while they’re out on the boat or they carry the food and then once they get back around 2–4 p.m. they hand over the fish and then there’s also the threat of the leaking boats. There’s also people who go out and fish on illegal boats and now that also brings up tensions between the marine police because marine police go out looking to clamp down these people and they are also trying to escape and basically also trying to make a living, so there’s that tension between the marines which you also have to navigate correctly or safely. Then there’s certain things like engine failures that may cause damage to the boat and that’s also another problem still. All these different activities happen within maybe a typical day or at different points in different scenarios of a fisherman’s journey. Once they’re back they always return a lot of the times they either have boat owner who now they hand over the fish to. You’ll also see that there’s an ownership of boats where the fisherman is not the person who owns the boat but the boat owner invests in the fisherman to go out and fish. There are also those dynamics and that’s an important dynamic.

In this stakeholder map, what we have here is the different people that influence the fisherman at different levels. Here we have the immediate sphere: the stakeholders like the boat owner who I’ve just spoken about and then also the family because this is usually the last people or first people the fisherman sees before he heads out and also when he comes he always reports to his family. Also part of the process of a fisherman is to leave money at home or buy food and make sure everyone is fed before they go out into the water because in some cases fishermen would go out for two or three days, so they spend quite a lot of time out on the water. Then outside of this sphere you have the health worker who’s always at the landing site and they’re always health centres centred either at the landing site or some distance from the landing site. You have the community announcer, the people who move sharing information whether it’s about topics like immunisation or if there are campaigns happening. You have the community tailor, you have the local leader, you have the fish trader, you have the processor, the person who sells fishing gear; so if it’s fishing hooks, nets, life jackets they’re also in this circle, a boat builder and so on. Then outside circle you have the marine police, the fisheries officer who’s not also very immediate because he sometimes sits at the landing site but also sits at the district headquarters, so might not be immediate but still is an important person in the chain in the stakeholder map. You have the weather forecaster, you have the local weather forecast; the people pass on the traditional knowledge because they also believe in certain systems or certain ways things are going, maybe the moon, it’s a full moon tonight that means there’s going to be rain tomorrow. There’s also those dynamics and we’re also exploring that, integrating both the scientific and the local weather information. All these key players, the scary person usually at the landing site, the FPU, Fisheries Protection Unit which is the marine police, and then the policymaker, that’s the government official; all these are key to the livelihood and safety of the fishermen and also the transporter. Transporter is the person who carries people across the water every other day.

Development: Ideation and Mock-ups

Thomas: Once we were done with the discovery and defined phase we now move to the development phase which is quite the fun part because now generating all the big and wild ideas are welcome and there’s no judgment zone. We started with an internal ideation by ourselves and then we do the community ideation with the rest of the fishing folk. That was also over a couple of days: we’d have four-day workshops where we have the fishers together and they’re expressing their ideas through sketching and building mock-ups and we have how might we statements that prompt fishers to create. A how might we statement can be a statement like “how might we rapidly deliver weather information to fishers at the landing site?” It’s a statement that prompts you or pushes you to think and create ideas and do all sorts of things. In the development phase usually as an activity just to loosen up the room we always have an icebreaker, it’s always nice to start on a fun note. Here some of the fishermen do their favourite nursery rhyme and also us as facilitators. We also did a nursery rhyme just to get the energy up for the day and at different points of the workshops, because of things like attendance, you can also start to get tired. It’s always good to give a little refresher here and there as we generate the ideas because the workshops can be quite intense they can be quite heavy.

Here you start to see the fishers, we do some prompts where we just get them into the mood of sketching. Here one of the fishers, we had asked the question of “how can you be able to dig safely in a rocky garden?” He came up with different hoes that you would use, one that’s like a fork, one that’s like a regular hoe, one that’s sharp and he explains the idea, just to get fishers into the mood of sketching and explaining. It also helps them to shake off the nerves because it can be there at the beginning and also just to express themselves a bit and they are also encouraged to use sticky notes in case it’s something they need to describe they can write it out on a sticky note to bring out the idea. Then for the flotation device sides we do some embodied demonstrations to identify the strengths and pain points of the life jacket. We’d have them sit in the same formation they use in a boat and ask them questions like “what about this life jacket, why would you remove it while you’re out in the water?” and say “maybe it’s too hot here.” You start to see Dennis asking the questions and Nora is doing the sketching. Nora is identifying the different points, maybe the fisher is saying that it’s too tight around the ribs, the midriff, and also it’s too hot around here. Those different elements that affect the comfort of the life jacket, this would also be valuable information because as we go on they will now have to make a flotation device that they would be able to wear.

Still concurrently as the flotation device team is working we also have the weather information systems team working, so that’s why you keep seeing me bounce between the two. Here’s one of the ideas that the fishers sketched: he said that to help fishers determine the strength of the wind at the landing site before they go out you can maybe tie a cloth on a pole and have it hanging vertically, so if it’s high wind, strong wind, you could see it blowing pretty strong and that would tell you the strength of the wind and also what direction it’s coming from. Then here we’re evaluating the different communication devices in the flow of weather information. They’ll tell us the current devices they use, if it’s a mobile phone, if it’s a radio, if it’s a megaphone, if it’s a bell. They’ll tell us the different devices they use whether they’re useful or not, some of the strengths of these devices and also the limitations because sometimes you can go out into the water and you lose the network. That’s also a limitation of having the mobile phone for example and they would also suggest some ideas that you could use. Here they had said if we could design something that’s like an antelope horn, something that can help a fisher blow if there’s a problem on the water or at the shore they can blow and the sound is able to travel across the waves. Maybe using the paddle, maybe there’s a sign that they can agree on that okay if there’s a problem they put up the paddle to show someone who’s at the landing site and they’re signalling for help. Maybe carry a whistle, can the whistle be attached to the life jackets? You’ll see now also some of these solutions can go with what we’re designing on the flotation device side and it was just a whole bunch of solutions that we’re trying to come up with and the fishers were giving, giving, giving. We had over 200 ideas easily and we had to sift through them later on but it was just all about bringing as many ideas together and letting them generate, churn them out.

We use the SCAMPER tool, it’s one of the tools we use to modify a design. In this case we had the fishers draw the life jackets. Here there’s a problem statement: it can be maybe the transporter has a bit of trouble every time using the life jacket in the rain or maybe it’s in extensive heat where he has to take it off and then he runs the risk. You’d have fishers use this SCAMPER tool, we’d take them through the tool, we’d test it with them and then they’d be able to use it for that real scenario. Here you can see they’re trying to sketch the life jacket and what they may add or what they move. Maybe if it’s one with the heavy sleeves maybe they’d say “let’s make it more like a vest” and “let’s make it like a backpack.” You’ll get all sorts of ideas and the fishers would sketch them out. Once that was done it was now time to build, encouraged to always bring off paper and bring the ideas to life. Using very simple materials like manila paper, tape, rope, it was all hands on deck. You can see me here, a couple members of the team were trying to help the fishers put these mock-ups together and basically the fishers were the designers and we were just there to support, just there to facilitate where need be. They were the drivers and we were the co-drivers. Once that was done it was time to present the ideas to the audience. Presenting the ideas to the audience they all had about 10 minutes to describe their idea. Over here it was a group flotation device, something that’s built almost like a triangle and has hooks on the side that different people can hold on to in case of an emergency and they would explain how it would work. If it came to acting out the different scenarios, don’t worry, I know you can see people on the floor here but nobody was hurt in the process. They’d have to do maybe like a skit, a five-minute skit explaining the idea. It was good fun and it was good to see the growth and the level of ideas that the fishers had reached and also to see them so excited and so engaged in the activity.