Often, design as a profession is perceived to be part of the problem rather than the solution. This was why, when presented with the opportunity to work as a team on a real-life project, we chose to use our skills to do something truly meaningful.

Bus station - Kampala                    

FACT Foundation offered us the opportunity to work on a bioenergy-based battery charging station on the Ssese Islands of Lake Victoria in Uganda. Developing the business model for this enterprise would invest in the local people and enable them to make a difference in their own lives, exactly what we hoped to achieve with our project.

As designers, we have been taught the importance of creating something to fit the specific context, and to consider user needs. In order to best assess local needs and capabilities, we planned a research trip to visit Uganda and the Ssese Islands in October 2011.

Lake view - Lake Victoria   

The reality is, there is probably no amount of reading or googling which can prepare you for such an experience. Regardless, we did plenty of preliminary research into the context, and also prepared a set of methods and tools to structure our research with locals.

However, soon after our arrival, we realized that our structured approach would in fact be quite inefficient in the Ugandan context. Every day was new and full of unexpected surprises, and we really learnt to ‘expect the unexpected’.

With the way we live our lives, and the means we have available to us, we assume the best way to work on such a project is to always maintain as much control over the process as possible: do lots of research, plan in advance, etc. This experience taught us the value of just letting go.

Our research plans were immediately scrapped, in favour of a more flexible approach. Even just sharing the same physical circumstances made us settle into the same local rhythm. Having no stable power supply, walking in the heat, or not knowing what you would be doing the next day really start to affect your attitude and perception. And this was just the kind of empathy we wanted to build with the local people. As we lived in this same way, we also learnt to observe and pick up on more intangible things, which was a huge part of our research and our findings.

Interviewing Women

Stating the obvious maybe, but making personal connections with people really made a difference in our perception of the project. When you take the time to just have a regular conversation with locals, to share some of your own life with them, a lot of intangible things suddenly become uncovered. Similarly, statistics and numbers are transformed as you understand how certain issues, such as AIDS, really affect people’s lives on a daily basis.

Ultimately, our trip was an unforgettable experience. Not only for the wonderful things we saw and the friendly people, but for the reality check it gave us and our project. On paper, Uganda is not a wealthy country. But what we learnt, and what we found to be the most relevant to this project is the wealth they have in terms of people and their natural resources. This is the kind of thing which text books will never tell you.

Taking the time to travel, and to build relationships with people allowed us to get a much more vivid picture of what kind of resources are available, and the attitude and lifestyle of the users.

It is difficult to see people in need, to get to know them, to understand their troubles, and then have to simply walk away, take a flight back home. All we have to share are our skills and our knowledge, so we will be investing it all in our project, in the hope of creating a real solution which will benefit the people there.

Fishermen

We have returned to The Netherlands now, and although we miss Uganda already, we intend on putting together a business plan for future battery charging stations, which will suit the local context but hopefully also create potential for scaling up to other locations.

We are documenting our trip and project at warematter