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