Day 18: Interview Questionaire Draft

A very beautiful home

User Behavioral Research for Hagar Project

Interview Guide

Purpose: To better understand how users of Hagar Biosand Water Filters make decisions to clean their filters and accessories and adopt sound hygiene behavior. Specifically, we will interview participants within Hagar’s BSF user community to 1) determine the process which takes place when users obtain, treat and drink water, 2) to evaluate existing elements from Hagar that help to drive/prevent good user behavior, 3) to assess user experience with the BSF, and 4) to seek new ideas and priorities important for improvement.

Premise: These interviews will be conducted with 6-10 BSF users . We will use the topic outline below to understand the usage process and the features of education, learning materials, filter accessory and the BSF itself that are important to the user.

Topics to discuss:

Usage Process

· Please demonstrate how you obtain water and pour.

· What, if any, problems have you experienced when using the filter?

· Do you wash hands after defecation? If not, what would promote it and what prevents you from washing your hands more often?

· Do you feel you wash your hands enough?

· Do people in the household do that too?

· How often do you wash the spout and storage container? Can you demonstrate that?

· Do you think you do that well enough?

· Who cleans the filter, the spout and the storage container?

· Were they also trained by Hagar?

Impression of existing elements

· Have you found the removable spout easy to use?

· Have you found the safe storage container useful?

· Do they help you make decisions about drinking water?

· What information would help you washing your container more often?

· What factors prevent you from doing so? Animal feeding, day to day work, fatigue from carrying the water? Is it because you can’t see inside?

· What information would help you washing your spout more often?

· What keeps you from cleaning the spout more often?

User experience

· How easy is it to use the filter?

· Have you observed a benefit to your health after using the filter?

· Are the brochures all self-explanatory?

· Do you wish there were more information? What?

New ideas

· What suggestions for improving the experience with the filter do you have?

· Which aspect of the education should Hagar focus on for improvement?

· Have you desired to add features to the filter to make the process easier?

· What about a storage container that does not require you to clean?

· What about a storage container that allows you see through so you know something is growing inside?

Demographic information:

· Gender

· Age

o <35

o 35-44

o 45-54

o 55-64

o 65+

· Highest education in family

Here is another view to a home. Here is where they keep their bulls.

Day 17: Meeting with Volunteers

This is a simple game locals play, called "bowling".
In the afternoon, Saoun et al. conducted a once-in-every-6-months meeting with the volunteers for each community. The volunteers make sure that villagers are using the filters properly.

Day 16: Follow-up families

This is the very turbid well water you get sometimes.

A girl gets water from the large storage container.
Some filters have bugs in them for the cool environment. It does not affect the water.
As we were completing the interview, people walk their bulls by. They do this all during the day.

Day 15: Building Filters Part II

Cement is the first ingredient.
Then the cement is poured on top of the mold, which already has the PVC pipe installed, and is dried.
Once it is dry, just pour sand and gravel on top and it is basically done with the addition of a diffusion plate and developing the biolayer.

Day 14: Building Filters Part I

We started at 9AM at the construction site right next to the river. There were about 13 of them. When we arrived, there were some cement filters already finished.

Children nearby the site.
Those villagers that are participating today are all here to put in their work.Sand collection for the filter.

Day 13: Leaving for Kampong Chhnang

I met with Viriya and Heng today at 7AM. I forgot my bag of clothes in the moto taxi, then went all the way back to Toul Kork on another moto taxi ($1 round trip). And then fortunately found the same driver who gave back my clothes and electric tooth brush. Anyway, I got back to Hagar and met Saoun, the manager for Kampong Chnnang. We got on a bus taxi to Kampong Chnang that took 3 hours.

Day 9: More with Hagar

I proposed the following to Hagar.

Our very personal goals are learning about water treatment and helping with volunteering in underserved communities. The more families that we help and the more youth (other leg of the project) that we empower to take part in volunteerism and giving back to the less fortunate parts of the community, the more personal satisfaction we will get for this project. These personal endeavors can be measured by our personal growth and student participation.

These questions were brainstormed and will be revised with Viriya and Olaf. For example, during the meeting today, Olaf mentioned that even though the filter is capable, families for unknown reasons still do not drink enough water. To explore the question of how users drink water and to better understand what drives or hinders adoption of sound behavior, we would focus on qualitative research on ethnographic interviews. While we would follow this in order of procedure (starting from when a villager retrieve ground or well water and then all the way until they drink the water), it is important that we also ask questions that aren't anticipated but are important in gaining keen insights into behavior. We would then be able to derive some common themes that Hagar should focus on as it may choose to reconsider its training in order to allow users to more easily navigate the filter, understand the process and ultimately be closer to wellness.

We should conduct these interviews with villagers that take responsibility for the filter in the family. 1:1 interviews are picked versus other techniques because of the richness of the method and include questions about their experience with water before we have the interviewee "pretend" like he/she is getting water at the beginning of the day. In the end, we would have the interviewer return to the pre and post filter processes to give us additional infromation regarding ease of use and experiences with specific features. The purpose of these interviews are to 1) determine their experience and how it has compared to without filter, 2) to ascertain the efficiencies of the current teaching campaign 3) to find aspects of the training that can be improved. The interviewees would be asked to commit 1-1.5 hours in their home given its convenience.

Benefit to Hagar:
Through this two-pronged research, we hope to reveal insights and recommend changes to enhance customer experience with the BSF, which we hope will drive them to adopt more desired habits. With 1;1 inteviews, we also hope to clearly delineate the current work flow of the filter user and help reveal other areas of inefficiencies that require future improvement.

Following these interviews, we should identify specific features that drive good behavior and vice versa. We may then design a survey to learn more about issues that results from the above qualitative research. Next, we can perform a factor analysis on a Likert Scale or cluster analysis in order to gauge overall user experience and to identify factors and subsequently make appropriate suggestions. In addition, we can also assess how potential tools such as safety storage containers would be helpful, what part of the education was remembered.

Ray should be meeting with us tomorrow.

The Silver Pagoda

July 9th, 2009

Day 8: Dr. Davin, Tommy Ngai and Hagar

I submitted the following questions to be Hagar and Dr. Davin,

As for Hagar's end, they have been having issues with optimizing sand sifting techniques and producing sound user practices. After learning that, we have confimed the overarching goal of ours is produce novel solutions for unmet needs of the villagers using the filters. We think it would be helpful if ethnographic interviews can be conducted with the villagers that you are
working with to try to gauge their unmet needs. This would help everyone understand not only whether they are getting the quality water they desire, but also whether there are subtle but overwhelmingly uniform failure in the cleanin practice, water storage practice, dissatisfaction with volume output, etc. Once a defined need is identified, we would come up with solutions for them.

Topics to discuss:

Attitudes toward using water filter

What do you like best and least about using the water filter?
What may be hindering you from paying partly for a water filter?
Is the water quality that you are getting dissatifactory, no opinion, satisfactory?
Do you feel that you would use the filter if it has the same cost as bottled water?

Pre filtration behavior

How you involve family members to help with attaining pretreated water?
What information would help you adopt sound pretreatment behavior?

Post filtration behavior

How often do you clean the filters?
What causes you to not clean this as instructed?
How do you store your water?
What impact, if any, do health education have on your pre and post treament habits?

New ideas

What could a filter installation team feature in its product that could faciliate sound user practices?
Do you see value in video tutorials for product setup and importance of hygiene and cleaning?
What factors of the water filter prevent you from doing that?
What feautures of the current education about filters is useful and what is excessive?


Before the storm?

After presenting some leading questions, I discussed the possibility of doing ethnographic research with his subjects. Dr. Davin said the social aspects of filter usage is difficult to control while Hagar is fairly interested in getting answers to that question.

Day 7: High School Students

Let's see, we met with Vuochlin, Vuochly, Lihoung at Café Sentiment on Monivong Blvd near Central Market. We talked to them about our project, the amount of involvement, etc. They are getting the following message and helping us recruit!

Here is the project description:

We are SEALNet Cambodia and we are here in Phnom Penh to improve water quality to underserved communities in Cambodia.

Cambodia has the highest infant and under-five mortality rates in Southeast Asia, 97 and 141 per 1,000 live births, respectively. Dirty, diseased water leads to a cycle of poverty, sickness and inability to develop. We hope that by empowering the youth here, we can together help to fill this gap.

What is the goal of the project? Our goal is to increase health awareness as widely as possible near Phnom Penh to create a new culture of creative sustainability. We believe if everyone contributed ideas in creative ways we can reduce the incidence of diarrhea.

Why should I participate in the project? By planting the seeds of giving, you are connecting with the rest of the Cambodian community that is less fortunate. You are giving people hope that young people in Phnom Penh want a sustainable future. You will learn to take initiatives in an effort to help the underserved, such as health advocacy campaigns and fundraising. You will learn about the basic sciences behind the current water filtration systems. The simple act of help a community make a small step toward wellness is a good beginning to learning the significance volunteerism makes.

I'm a student and want to introduce the project to my class. Students are encouraged to spread the word. We can provide some curriculum ideas to get you started. We also go into your classrooms to help you implement the project.

How long is the project? Student will be meet with us in a classroom setting for 2 hours per day from (Mon, Tues and Friday of the week) and for 2 full day on the weekends for 3 weeks.

What skills do I need for this project? You should be proficient in English and have a passion in helping underserved communities.

Tell us in a few sentences (less than 500 characters) are interested in this. Be creative!~~

Day 6: Ray Cantwell

We met with Dr. Ray Cantwell, who has worked with water treatment before coming to Cambodia. He has been here for 2 years already with his wife.

Briefly, he first talked to us about water treatment. We asked specific questions about the BSF and what kinds of issues still exist. We arrived at a couple of interesting areas. While BSF achieves 30-40 liters of water output per day, improvement in health can hardly be measured. Having diarrhea may be caused by food sanitation, hygiene, and perhaps only 20-25% to clean water. That might be true and $20-25 of the $60 cost to build a filter is given to the staff to work and educate the villagers about these topics. Ray claims that it is possible to have more in-depth understanding of hygiene and safe storage practices as an objective.

Lastly, he also mentioned something Viriya also brought up: how could we possibly get more sand for the filters. Right now it's done by hiring 3 people for $3 per day rotating a sift all day, every day. This is a possible avenue as well.

Children on the bank across from Cafe Fresco, where we had coffee.

Chenla Restaurant, #13 Street 278, is a non-profit restaurant which employs poor students from the Phnom Penh area. Great Cambodian mains from US$2-3 and large fruit shakes for less than US$1. Go for a meal and enjoy the after dinner conversation with the enthusiastic servers who like to practice their english! The food wasn't great but it is for a good cause!

Day 5: Hagar Cambodia

We met with Viriya and Olaf at Hagar, which is just north of the Japanese Bridge, about 10-15 minutes from our apartment in Toul Kauk.


This is the entrance to Hagar. Why a factory needs such armor beats me.
So we discussed a little bit about the filter, Kampong Chhnang, what problems we might encounter as new volunteers, etc. The meeting didn't last that long before we were compelled to meet with Dr. Cantwell from Samaritan's Purse Canada.

Day 4: Peam Ro, Prey Veng

We are here at Peam Ro District, 1.5 hours away from Phnom Penh.
On the way, we had to crossed the Mekong River on ferry.

To assess water quality, the water filter needs to be filled in the morning. Peam Ro has water with low levels of Fe, which explains why the nails aren't so red in the pictures.

Pump well!

Allocating samples (raw vs. filtered) to be tested for Calcium,Phosphate.


Spec that measures phosphate and calcium levels before and after filtration
Arsenator? Like terminator, except it just measures down to ppb levels based on the Gutzeit method.
A fruit from a palm species that is similar to avocado..

Striking poses for me!

Day 1: Initiation

We made contact with Dr. Davin Uy, who is the director of Research and Development at the Institute of Technology Cambodia. He has been working on the Kanchan Arsenic Filter, especially in the rural regions where thousands rely primarily on ground water for their drinking water needs.

We will go to the Prey Veng Province tomorrow (Saturaday, July 4th) to check water quality.

We also decided to stay close to ITC for convenience. It is a bit (30 min on tuk-tuks) away from downtown but we both think the apartment is nice and quiet. On a whole afternoon's worth of searching, I have basically toured the city.

View on a motorbike, which is one of the most common way of transportation in Phnom Penh. Hotel owner had her cousin to drive me around to find an apartment!

First of many panoramas that are yet to come, a view on top of a building near BKK.
I am new to this and I need some technical guide.



After much debate and tuk-tuk and free rides offered by the Lam the best hotel owner, we found our place 1/4 the way between Dr. Davin Uy and city center. Happy 4th of July!

Day 0: Arrival in Phnom Penh

We arrived at Phnom Pehn at 7:30PM on July 2nd. Customs was the smallest I have ever seen with just 4 booths and the visa was quick and easy. Customs agent spoke Chinese. We left the airport on a tuk-tuk to finally arrive at the New Lapaillote Hotel near the city center.