Human Centered Design at OutBox Hub with Dr. Debra Bishop of Drake University



We just completed a session of some training on Human Centered Design. The event was held at OutBox Hub-a business incubation space, innovation center and co-working space. Outbox Hub was one of the first of its kind of spaces that was designed to help small business people or startups to get their businesses housed incubated. 




Outbox hub has an interesting approach to innovation and incubation. They have great partnerships with many key players in Government, Non Governmental Organizations, Health Sector Players as well as Business. They use these partnerships to solve local challenges with technology. This means for example that they have competitions where students and developers can come up with solutions to health (governance, sector-wide challenges), problems that are developed over time, or over a weekend (hackathons). 

They also present young business people with the chance to pitch their ideas to an audience of possible investors where they can progress and have their ideas developed over time (incubated). 


The offices of OutBox Hub are located on Soliz House on Lumumba Ave. a few minutes from the city center. 


The event was sponsored by the American Embassy and its Business Center as is a collaboration between them and the Outbox Hub. This is part of a partnership that aims at creating linkages between US citizens and Ugandans in business and other settings. 





The concept of Human centered design was birthed at Stanford University in the U.S and has been used countless times in planning as well as design for projects all over the world. 


The facilitator was Dr. Debra Bishop who is Professor of Practice in Management and International Business at Drake University is home to one of the 25 oldest Law Schools in the United States. 


While there was no time for testing the solutions that we developed she took the group through the first four. 

As a teacher she insisted on making sure that the session was practical and so she began with a challenge. 




She took us through the stages of the Human Centered Design Process. They are:

  1. Empathize
  2. Define the problem or challenge
  3. Ideation or brainstorming solutions
  4. Prototype
  5. Testing


We were tasked to come up with a solution to the lack of childcare centers in the country many mothers were battling unemployment and poverty and the compounding problem of dealing with cycles of generational poverty in their communities. There was a challenge of finding well resourced, accessible and affordable childcare facilities in the country. 


She took us through the stages of the Human Centered Design Process. They are:

  1. Empathize: trying to see the problem from the point of view of the women, men and the children.
  2. Define the problem or challenge: define the problem in as many ways possible. 
  3. Ideation or brainstorming solutions: come up with solutions to the problem and ideas around it.
  4. Prototype: here we came up with one outstanding idea that stood out over the rest of the ideas that we had come up with and then asked to represent it using certain tools. Pen, paper, sticky notes, scissors, cello tape. 
  5. Testing: here is where you take your solutions to the person with the need and you actually test them out and ask questions. Usually you end up taking those ideas back to prototype stage, refining them and then testing again. 




One of the groups that offered a solution, presented some ideas about a mobile day care center that would pick specific sections of the city like say parks or stadiums that are accessible to many where services would be offered to the community. This would be inexpensive, within reach of the many parents, and would be resource rich meeting the needs of those who were present. 




One other group offered a solution that would be close to say ladies that work at the local market and would be built with health care facilities, rest area, nursing area (breastfeeding) and more. 


All the solutions that were offered had two things in common. All wanted to make sure that services were close to those who needed them especially the mothers and all were family centered taking into consideration both the wife and the husband. 


What was interesting was this is normally what takes place at hackathons. You get a problem and find ways of coming up with a solution. The major difference is that often the answers are hidden in a technology of some kind or an application. 

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