HOWTO: Scope Your Project for Positive Impact

Editor's Notes

• #2: Please see Essay #3 in our series to get more information about the point of view.
• #3: Design that Matters is a non-profit that designs products to benefit the poor in developing countries. Every time we take on a new challenge, we spend a lot of time scoping the challenge to ensure our efforts are directed most efficiently toward the biggest benefit we can possibly achieve with that technology.
• #4: One of our most recent product launches is Firefly Newborn Phototherapy. As of March 2014, Firefly has treated over 2000 newborns with jaundice in six developing countries. Firefly reduces newborn mortality, one of the ten United Nations Millennium Development goals. Of all ten goals, we have made the least progress reducing childhood mortality.
• #5: Design that Matters has most recently been focusing on newborn health and global health. Healthcare innovation is particularly tricky as there are so many stakeholders that must be satisfied in order for a design to be well-adopted and reach impact.
• #6: One of the tools we use to help bring focus to our work is what we call the “point of view”. The point of view is the mission statement for the project. Here is an example of our final point of view for Project Firefly.
• #7: The point of view is crafted to enable your team to reach maximum positive impact. As such, it is inspired by your team or organization’s capabilities, as well as the external challenges that must be overcome to make your project viable.
• #8: At Design that Matters, we begin every program by identifying and clearly articulating a need. To reach positive impact it is particularly important to identify a need as opposed to something that is just a desire. This is key to our mission.
• #9: Then we identify the end-users who will be using our design. Our companyis fundamentally user-centered in that we begin every program by immersing to understand what our users think, feel, and do. We build on this information in order to create context-appropriate designs.
• #10: The third element of the point of view is context. It answers the remaining 5 w’s: Where? When? and What?
• #11: Not only does the point of view show where to focus, but in doing so, it clearly defines where NOT to focus. In particular, which needs, users, and contexts the final design will not serve.
• #12: But, a good point of view is not overly constrained. It should still leave room for creativity. It’s kind of a Goldilocks and the Three Bears situation.
• #13: Finally, a good point of view is updated throughout the project as you learn more.
• #14: We combine all of these elements, into just one (long!) sentence with the need at the center.
• #15: And now an example: an analysis of the Firefly point of view. First: the need. We decided to focus on otherwise healthy newborns with jaundice.
• #16: Newborn mortality strikes both premature newborns as well as full-term newborns. We made the tough decision early on that we wanted to create a device that could serve term newborns. Serving premature newborns would put many additional constraints on the design such as the need for warming. For example: if serving premature newborns, we would need to make the device compatible with an incubator, either fitting inside it or around it. However, in low resource countries we found newborn jaundice was like a totally different disease than in the United States. There is a much greater prevalence of very severe jaundice due to late identification and also time wasted in referring newborns to higher level hospitals for treatment. We decided there was still massive impact to be gained by focusing on term newborns with severe jaundice.
• #17: Asking ourselves about who are the users, we saw a big opportunity to serve community-level low resource hospitals. We wanted to stop the cycle of needing to refer newborns across the country. Could we design a device that staff with little training would be able to use in the most remote hospitals with overnight care?
• #18: Investigating the issue, we found opportunities to better keep the newborn centered under the light, eliminate adjustable lamp height settings, and boil it all down to one power button to turn the device on and off.
• #19: We found the context of low resource hospitals also means few staff to monitor many patients. We observed newborns would be stuck for hours either in the ICU getting phototherapy, or in bed with Mom for breastfeeding.
• #20: We saw an opportunity to bring phototherapy to mom to provide newborns with continuous monitoring as well as breastfeeding on demand. The resulting device is small and portable to fit in the room or even on the bed with Mom.
• #21: Creating and maintaining a point of view was critical to the success of the Firefly phototherapy project, and we are now using it on our new projects as well. Here is a sheet of prompts to help you form your own point of view statement to help you achieve massive impact!