TU Delft Global Initiative, Stevinweg 1, Delft (2026)

13/05/2022

☀️💧Salamu kutoka Kisumu!💧☀️

As of Sunday evening, the Nyarobe team is working and researching in Kisumu, a relatively big city at Lake Victoria. Past Monday, Sophie and Charlotte had their very first focus group consisting of 25 participants! The focus group was a community living together and at the same time they were registered as a SACCO group, a group ensuring each other social financial security. We mostly gained deeper insights regarding our business model, the water regulation in Kisumu and the different marketing techniques used outside of Nairobi, in more rural areas.

Yesterday, the team traveled to Homa Bay to visit 4 different people from the target group. We found how vastly different the water supply is regulated. In Homa Bay, most people drink directly from Lake Victoria or from a borehole. Buying bottled water is very unusual, which offers us a challenge to see whether our water filter could be designed in a way that it can make fresh water, water from Lake Victoria, clean and healthty.

This is the last update from the Nyarobe team in Kenya. For questions or more information, make sure to follow our Instagram: nyarobe_waterfiltration and reach out to us!👋👋

Kwaheri, team Nyarobe

12/05/2022

Mariana | SPD | Awareness and accessibility of the menstrual pads in Uganda

On the last week in Uganda I did a workshop with the Makapads team. It was a very productive session where everyone was engaged and got excited about the future solutions. One main learning is that it’s important to empathize with the people in the company and their vision. As they are the ones who will implement the solution, if they don’t agree or believe that you have their best interest, this might be a barrier for implementation.

The last thing I was missing was testing with users. It’s challenging to go from research to design. In order to not put too much pressure in this phase and get paralized, I created an MVP with posters to test the visual input and the messages. We tested it quick and dirty, went to a school, and talked to some girls to get their input.

This is how my iterative design process starts as I'm returning to The Netherlands.

After all these weeks, it’s sad to leave, but exciting to bring this project to life.

10/05/2022

AZHIM IN MBALE

I have been doing research with the community in Namabasa, Mbale on the vulnerabilities of women in emergency flood situations. In the early warning system that I am designing, the first stages are about monitoring the rain situation and the sensitization of impending floods. By frequently disseminating information on how to act early before floods happen, it is hoped that women could save themselves before the disaster. The most preferred method of communication in this village is the use of megaphones, or locally called 'community radios'. By making use of this tool, information can quickly reach thousands of people in the village at the same time, and women do not have to leave their household chores to receive important information about disasters.

09/05/2022

Salamu kutoka Nairobi!🌤☔️

The Nyarobe team has been researching in sunny, sometimes rainy, Kenya for one and a half weeks already! The past few days, we've been conducting interviews with one of the biggest companies within water filtration in Sub Saharan Africa. We talked about how to launch a product in the, already quite saturated, Kenyan market.

Next to this, we visited the NGO Shofco in Kibera, Africa's biggest slum. Shofco aims to provide education and leadership development for women and girls and is present in 10 slums across Kenya. Shofco also owns several water kiosks within Kibera and is planning on scaling up further.

Next to busy Nairobi, we also spent one day in Narok, a relatively small and old city. In Narok, we also visited a water filtration company and we visited users from our target group. The goal was to find out how water is regulated outside of Nairobi and we found that it depends vastly on the location in what way the water is contaminated. Tomorrow we head out to Kisumu, a small city located next to Lake Victoria, to round up our user research.

For more info and updates follow Basic Water Needs and our instagram: nyarobe_waterfiltration.

05/05/2022

Mariana | SPD | Awareness and accessibility of the menstrual pads in Uganda

The third week in the field in Uganda is quite different from the first two. It’s not talking to relevant stakeholders anymore. It's time to put everything together and start moving into design solutions.

While doing the analysis of all the information collected during the last two weeks, really interesting insights start to pop out and the ideas start to come together.

With these insights the planning for a co-creation session with Makapads starts to formulate. The goal of the session is to come up with solutions according to their capabilities and interests. This would make the implementation more realistic.

When planning the session something to take into consideration is the level of creativity of the group. This might be a barrier, but it can also be turned into an opportunity. This is why this session will be more guided in order to have the desired outcome.

The session will consist of presenting insights and possible directions in order to give the company clarity and possible directions for them to choose, refine and define.

Let's explore and see how it goes!

04/05/2022

CERTIFICATION OF MEDICAL DEVICE

Jambo!

Since I am in Nairobi, I can not wait to share with you what I have learnt about the certification process of medical devices! Recently, I have facilitated a focus group session with entrepreneurs from Nairobi to learn from their experience in certifying their medical devices. From the focus group session and other individual interviews, I learnt that the Kenyan Bureau of Standards (KEBS) plays a very large role in the certification process whereas, previously, I thought only the regulatory body of medical devices named the Pharmacy and Poisons Board (PPB) was the main actor. Medical devices that are intended for the Kenyan market need approval from both bodies. One of the pictures includes a typical KEBS sticker on the product that has been KEBS approved!

Until now, I discovered there are very few (to almost none) organisations that have managed to fully design, manufacture and certify medical devices locally in Kenya but these organisations are seeking a way to achieve this in order to boost Kenya’s economy and to allow medical devices to reach the market in a more effective and efficient way. It seems that obtaining certification locally in Kenya is possible in theory!

It is not necessarily that many organisations have failed to obtain certification locally but the type of approval such as CE-mark from Europe or the FDA from USA, grants access to a wider market. This is because these approvals are accepted in many places outside of their respective continents. For this reason, organisations currently may prefer these approvals however only those with large enough amount of financial resources can obtain it.

This was my last post, I hope you enjoyed reading what I have been up to in Kenya! Thanks to all the kind and helpful people in Kisumu and Nairobi, I was able to learn a lot about the topic! If there are any questions, feel free to contact me!

04/05/2022

💧💧Habari zenu wote!💧💧

Last Wednesday, Meike, Femke and Mila arrived in sunny Nairobi and as of yesterday, Sophie and Charlotte joined the team in Kenya's capital city as well! We have settled ourselves in our house in Kilimani and yesterday we kicked off our first interview with users in Kenya! We visited Brian, the local Basic Water Needs employee, https://www.basicwaterneeds.com/. He introduced us to several water kiosks in his neighborhood and we learned about the different water filtration processes and what customers value when it comes to buying clean drinking water. A water kiosks is a small shop in which bottled water can be bought or at which you can fill up your own bottles or jerry cans.

Next to the different interviews with water kiosks, we also had our first user interview at the gated community 'Paradise Lost'. We took our prototype with us to show the participants and we learned about what these people usually need to do to get clean drinking water. This was quite an interesting visit, as one of the participants used to be an owner of a water kiosk herself and she was an expert on water filtration. We learned that trust plays a big role when it comes to buying behavior, especially when it comes to products that are related to health, like drinking water.

Next week, we plan on visiting several people in different areas of Nairobi. By interviewing all these people, we want to find out how to eventually market and price our product and how to make it fit exactly to the needs of our target group.

For more updates of our research under the African sun ☀️, follow us on our instagram: nyarobe_waterfiltration.

For more information and updates regarding Basic Water Needs, follow Basic Water Needs

Kwa heri!

03/05/2022

Hello from Dhaka again! Over the past few days we have been exploring one of the densest cities in the world and the site of the Global Housing project. This site is located outside the embankment of the city, in the eastern part near the Turaq river. In collaboration with the Bengal Institute we will develop solutions that allow for the expansion of Dhaka, while taking into account the environmental and social challenges. Bangladesh faces challenges related to water as it is a country of rivers that frequently overflow during particular seasons. The site consists of wetland, floodplains as well as higher grounds. Besides the water, the heat also poses challenges for creating a comfortable living environment. The rapid urbanisation of the city over the past few decades has led to a lack of sustainable urban planning. There is for instance a shortage of public spaces, motorised streets dominate the public landscape of the city.
During the next weeks we will tackle these challenges and strive to create a comprehensive and holistic design. In the next post we will keep you posted on these design solutions and the collaboration.
1) The brick factory situated on the south part of the site
2) Discussion with professors and students from TU Delft and Bengal InstituteImage / credit: Nusrat Sumaiya/Bengal Institute
3) Students from Delft and Bengal Institute visiting one of the locations of the site

29/04/2022

AZHIM IN MBALE

I have decided on a specific focus for my project in Uganda and it is about “how to get women to safety in emergency flood situations”. The location that I will be basing my case study on is a village called Namabasa which suffers from bad floods almost yearly, and even now, flooding is already beginning to happen due to the rainy season. Women endure the hardest challenges during floods as they usually have less physical capability to traverse the strong water currents, increasing the high possibility of losing lives. With the collaboration of Uganda Red Cross Society and local social organizations, we will be designing an early warning system combined with a response strategy that hopefully is contextually relevant and implementable in the long run.

28/04/2022

Mariana | SPD | Awareness and accessibility of the menstrual pads in Uganda

During the last week, I did interviews with relevant stakeholders for the project. I spoke with two girls to talk about their experience with menstruation, what they know and who they talk to about their period. We also explored the relevant characteristics of menstrual pads.
I interviewed VHTs (Village Health Team) as an interesting point of distribution of pads and information in the village communities. We talked about their role in their community and the way that they mobilize information and health programs.

Both provided really interesting insights, key to make the strategy work.

Reflecting on my work, I was too optimistic on the planning. It’s tiring to be on the field, so it’s important to alternate days to do interviews and others to process the information. As I was alone, something that worked very well was having canvases with the activities for the interviewees. It helped to guide my notes and make the processing of information easier. The parts of the interviews where I didn’t have this guide made it confusing on the notes I had to take.

Lessons learned and onto the next steps!

27/04/2022

Habari za asubuhi! 😄

We are Geert, Meike, Mila, Sophie, Femke and Charlotte and we are currently in Nairobi, Kenya, to conduct research for a masterproject of the TU Delft. We are both Integrated Product Designers and Strategic Product Designers and together we are developing an electric waterfilter for middle income urban Kenya, together with Basic Water Needs. The goal of the project is to create an affordable waterfilter that provides convenient and reliable access to clean drinking water. Clean water scarcity is one of the biggest challenges in Kenya today due to the rapidly growing urban population, poor watermanagement and climate change. In addition, we are focusing on creating a sustainable filter system by extending the filter lifespan, through a backwash system, and offering replaceable filters.

Follow our adventure under the African sun and join us for more updates (IG: nyarobe_waterfiltration).

26/04/2022

Hi from Dhaka! We are a group of 9 architecture students travelling to Bangladesh. As part of the MSc 2 Global Housing Studio (Faculty of Architecture), we are having a bilateral collaboration with the Bengal Institute. We are working on resilient housing solutions in the context of an extremely dynamic ecosystem.
The trip is to understand and immerse in the Bangladeshi culture – and the challenging conditions of the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta. There, we do fieldwork in the form of site visits and collaborate with 10 Dhaka students. In our coming posts, we will keep you posted about further site visits and the collaborative design solutions.

1) The Delft students in front of the parlement building by architect / Louis Kahn.
2) First meeting with our partners of the Bengal Institute.
3) Bengal and Dutch students gathering for the parlement visit.
4) Typical street view in Dhaka.

TU Delft Global Initiative

13/05/2022

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