Senior Capstone Project | HCDE @ UW
76% of households in Ghana are at risk at for drinking contaminated water. My capstone team, in partnership with PATH and Cova, aimed to increase transparency and empower communities to make educated decisions about water. To accomplish this, we developed a suite of signage and an educational “build your own sign” kit. I focused on the iconography to increase the accessibility of our designs.
Role
Client Liaison
Icon Designer
Key Skills
User Research & Testing
Iconography
Timeline
15 weeks
Context
This project is part of the HCDE Capstone program. I worked with a group of 4, sponsored by PATH and partner Cova. Based on their provided brief, our original idea of this project was focused on signage design and developing universal standards for communication what water is clean. Our design question was “How might we design communication strategies to help water quality facilitators in Central America and Africa convey information about water quality?”
We also conducted some secondary research, which covered a variety of topics from existing water systems and communications to signage and iconography in healthcare. The following are some important takeaways:
Access to water is extremely varied and water piped directly to a household is rare, especially in rural areas. In rural Ghana, a community may have 1-3 public sources of water where people can fetch their household’s water.
In Ghana, women are generally responsible for fetching water. However, they tend to be less involved in water management.
Studies in Kenya and Portland found that a long-term multi-modal approach to communications is important for building trust in the water.
Water quality is extremely contextual. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines 4 categories of contaminants, bacterial, chemical, radiological and acceptable, and provides a framework for defining acceptable values for specific geographic areas.
User Research
We conducted 2 focus group interviews with water quality facilitators in Ghana and Honduras. Our most important findings are as follows:
Currently, community members attend water board meetings where water testing is done. Other communication methods, such as word of mouth, radio or posters, relay what was shared during those meetings.
“They see the results and it's easier that way because people usually want to believe what they've seen with their eyes. And it's easier for them to relay to their friends and family when they do go back.”
Facilitators, who work for NGOs, discussed the lack of trust that community members feel around NGOs. One facilitator explained that conducting testing at community meetings is a way they aim to combat this.
“We are even intentional to leave the [water samples that were tested on] with community members. We don't take those samples. Just so they know that the sample was kept with them, it wasn't interfered with.”
There tends to be a lack of willingness to change, especially amongst older generations.
“There are often, particularly older, adults... who say things like “I've never gotten sick. This water flows straight out of this spring in the mount-ain. It's not contaminated. We don't have to worry about it…” [They are] people with seniority in the community. The rest of the community often kind of follow suit and follow their leadership.”
Discussing our user research, synthesizing and narrowing scope.
Problem Re-Definition
Our original design question had been more focused on standardizing the way water communication was handled, but with the research we had done, we realized this was much too simplistic and would likely be ineffective. The lack of trust and generational lack of change was a sign that we needed to think about longer term solutions. We also wanted to consider solutions that would require less involvement from NGOs. We rewrote our design question to better address the research we had done and to focus in on a more specific problem and area.
How might we design tools to inform people in rural communities in Ghana about water contamination risks?
Ideation
We met as a team to do some brainstorming and then independently developed some of these ideas into low fidelity prototypes. We ended up taking a few pieces of these prototypes and combining them for a “build your own sign” educational kit with a suite of new water quality signage. The goal is to teach community members about water, how to interpret signage and how to treat and transport their water. This is done by walking participants through creating a sign for water quality testing at a water source.
My lo-fi design on label paper.
A blank water quality sign from our mid-fi designs.
Scenario instructions. To be read aloud.
Icons for the signs. Would be printed as stickers.
User Testing
We tested our designs with a few groups of PATH employees, both in Uganda and in Seattle. In person testing included simulating the educational activity so that the testers could get a sense of how it would play out. The following are the biggest takeaways from our testing:
The prototype concept was confusing for testers at first, but when explained, they generally felt it would be effective. Testers especially thought the educational program could be helpful with children.
The signs have areas for checkmarks and strike-throughs, text and icons. Many participants found it difficult to identify these areas or to understand what was supposed to be filled in.
The icons for bacterial, chemical and radiological contaminants were easily identified. The other icons, including usability ratings, were sometimes confusing and we discussed ways to make them more obvious.
Iteration & Iconography
With this feedback, we started working on some iterations. I was mainly responsible for iconography, so the following section covers the design iterations I worked on.
Initial Icons
These are the icons we were using at first. The large ones I designed and the small ones were pulled from online resources.
Second Iteration
Feedback focused on how the icons could tell a story. For example, the agriculture icon was changed from just a sprinkler to a plant being watered to better show what the use case. The smaller icons generally remained the same, but I did new versions of each icon to ensure they all stylistically matched.
Final Icons
We had an additional round of feedback with stakeholders and advisors (more info below), which resulted in some reprioritization of the icons and a small change to the large “No Drinking” icon.
Feedback
After our first round of iteration, we received additional feedback from our teaching team, sponsors and advisors. A key point that came up was about how we think about what water is acceptable. Specifically, our original signage emphasized levels of water quality. However, in the US and other rich countries, we’d likely not accept water that is not drinkable. Some research has shown that non-drinkable water, when brought into the home, increases the risk for contamination. It’s important to hold water to the same standard in every part of the world.
We ended up reframing the recommendation to focus specifically on drinkability (see above icons). We still provide a further breakdown of the water quality for transparency, as well as incorporating further guidelines for transportation and storage.
Signage after user testing.
Final signage after feedback.
Final Prototype
Signage
Our final signage includes a medium size and larger sign. Both use magnets for the icons to make the signs easy to edit. The medium size sign would be posted at any water sources in the community and the larger sign would go at a community center to provide an overview.
Education Kit
Our education program would have a kit for a group to do, with an instruction booklet and signs, informational handouts and stickers for each participant. These materials are relatively cheap and accessible, and anybody with a printer could make their own kit. View the full kit here.
Next Steps
In user testing and feedback, we received positive feedback about our design work, which we hope indicates that the teams at PATH and Cova will implement them. For any future work on this project, we’d recommend focusing on the following areas:
Primary Research: We’d recommend additional research focused on communication around water and what makes it effective to ensure our results can be replicated.
Iconography Design: The feedback in regards to iconography was limited, so we’d recommend additional rounds of feedback and design iteration.
Localization: We believe that this would work across rural communities in Africa and Central America, but that additional research and design would ensure it’s relevance.
Reflection
Having a team to lean on when making a big pivot was very helpful.
We already felt behind going into user research and the idea of having to redefine our problem space was scary. Being able to discuss these concerns with my teammates was critical. It was great to have 4 brains working on new solutions and to have the encouragement and support when things seemed out of reach.
