We recently engaged with a human-centered designer, Jeanette Mellinger and Eleven.net, a cutting edge user design firm. We had seen declines in user adoption of Dispensers for Safe Water in Uganda, in particular, and we wanted to get deeper insight into what prevented people from using dispensers, and what our customer thought was needed for them to routinely chlorinate their household drinking water.
We are very happy to report that we have completely turned declining user adoption around in Uganda and are now at an astonishing 53% adoption rate as of July. We wrote about this previously here. But we also wanted to give some insight into what we learned with Jeanette. Her beautiful and detailed findings are in the gallery below that give you an idea what questions we asked to learn more about the lives and motivations of the users of Dispensers for Safe Water.
We focused on our key constituents: People who influence decision making about safe water in their households, including mothers of young children; our community promoters who are a critical factor in increasing user adoption; and other community influencers. We asked questions about a typical day, routines around water use, and perceptions about chlorination. We talked to lots of promoters and understand better the pivotal role they hold as community experts on water. We also reinforced our existing knowledge that a superbly functioning supply chain and quick responses to maintenance issues are key to keeping our customers confident that Dispensers are filled and working. We implemented a lot of the recommendations from this review and have seen the results.
We owe a debt of gratitude to Jeanette and her team who gathered information with keen insight and understanding of our customers and their agency and dignity. Take a look at our learnings!
