Design Ethnography Interviewing Competency Development Across 3 Countries
Session Th2: Nov 11, 12:05 PM
Abstract:
During 2020, the world became interconnected through the shared experience of grappling with COVID-19, and yet the pandemic also shed light on the inequalities of society, with people experiencing varying levels of impact on their everyday life. A post-pandemic world challenges us to re-think aspects of the traditional ways we have approached education. In particular, the field of humanitarian engineering typically structures courses and research through bringing US university students to lower middle-income countries (LMICs) to conduct design and research projects. With the onset of a global pandemic, this has challenged educators to re-think these courses and projects since traveling with students became impossible. In this presentation, we will discuss a current multi-faceted research project from the University of Minnesota Wright Lab. This project is centered around developing a kidney dialysis treatment system in sub-Saharan Africa, and it has evolved to also virtually training students across three countries (US, Uganda, and Zimbabwe) in design ethnography research techniques.
In this research project, we are currently in the early stages of conducting interviews with kidney dialysis stakeholders in Uganda and Zimbabwe. The research team has established baseline interviewing metrics to evaluate the quality of a design ethnography interviews. We have a research aim of evaluating the difference between conducting interviews with two students from within the country of study (Uganda or Zimbabwe), vs. two students from outside the country and culture (US), vs. paired students from within and outside the country (US with Uganda or Zimbabwe). The outcomes of this work will better inform how we approach humanitarian engineering work and education in the future.
This presentation will describe the interview training protocol that was developed conducted between June and August 2021 with university students in the US, Uganda, and Zimbabwe over Zoom. Students learned skills like active listening, interviewing etiquette, design thinking, empathy mapping, stakeholder mapping, participatory design, service design, and how to conduct interview and co-design sessions. The program is rooted in the philosophy of participatory design, which is an approach to design that involves all stakeholders. This approach teaches students to gain empathy and understanding for others and to design with their needs in mind.