Process

R+D in South Asia

Assessment of Current State

Prior to my arrival on the Protection Collaborative project, IJM had created a pilot version of the SaaS based on their existing internal software. It became quickly apparent through user testing that this design was not up to the task of easing the collection of millions of data points from global implementing partners. After conducting a pilot assessment that outlined in detail the rationale for redesign, I spearheaded a human-centered design (HCD) research project to conduct thorough discovery with potential customers and intimately understand their needs.

Discovery and Co-Design

We began by conducting discovery sessions comprised of focus group interviews and participant observation followed by co-design workshops. I designed a research protocol that a global team executed in the regions of South Asia and Asia Pacific in the months that followed. The final sessions in Latin America were conducted in Spanish by myself and a team of 2 facilitators from our global team as well as 3 to 5 in-country staff in each location we visited.

Insights and Artifacts

Following the 6-month international research tour, every sticky note, every audio recording, every comment was digitally transcribed and gathered into Figma where they were organized first within their respective source materials in an axial open-coding process. I led the research team in producing sets of insight statements, journey maps, personas, and prototypes for each region.

Then, we synthesized these to develop a cohesive persona matrix, cross-cultural insights, and a cohesive, collaboratively designed prototype. I cast the vision for a 7-phase, 8-year product evolution, comparing each iteration to adding a floor to a skyscraper.