It was another week in the IFA innovation readiness program. My team and I have been thinking about the best way to create the best product solution for our hackathon challenge using design thinking to sharpen our product development skills.
Hackathons are not new to me but I've never participated in one. When the IFA facilitators said we'd be doing a hackathon I had to Google it. According to hackathon.guide, "A hackathon is any event of any duration where people come together to solve problems". The IFA team then asked us to submit a list of problems that we have noticed around us. I submitted two problems. One problem I noticed in the education sector and one in the health sector. I was assigned to health with a few team members who share similar interests.
Our lectures start by 11am. That beautiful Thursday morning, I joined the Zoom call using the link sent to us and our lectures on design thinking commenced. We learnt about the different design thinking processes and we were given a task to work on together during our breakout sessions using what we had learnt. Just incase you're wondering what is involved in design thinking, "Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. Involving five phases—Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test—it is most useful to tackle problems that are ill-defined or unknown." source: interaction-design. It is important to note that these stages are not always sequential. Teams often run them in parallel, out of order and repeat them in an iterative fashion. - still from interaction-design.
source: medium
Empathize:
Here, we are expected to gain an empathetic understanding of the problem we are trying to solve, typically through user research. During this phase, we interviewed a few people. Medical healthcare providers and patients. 90% of the health care providers we interviewed agreed that their judgement has been affected due to unavailability of accurate medical records, 60% of the non health care providers had visited the hospital in the last 3 months, the health care providers all agreed that a data analytics and management system would be beneficial to the health sector.
Define:
During this phase, we consolidate the information gathered during the empathize stage, we analyze our observations and combine them to define the main problems. The information we got from the interview helped us understand that:
Doctors say having accurate patients data will help the diagnosis
Clients say they need better and faster service in the hospitals
After the Define phase, we had a better understanding of the problem we are trying to solve. We had a group meeting where we deliberated on the best approach to the problem statement. We composed three more problem statements and we chose one. We chose the right problem statement that best defines the challenges we gathered from our interview with healthcare providers. We adopted the new problem statement and went straight to the next phase.
Ideate:
This is where we generate ideas. Confident that we have a better understanding of what the user needs, we embarked on several brainstorming sessions trying to find a way to solve the problem. During the brainstorming session, we brought several ideas that could solve the problem we had in mind. We came up with a few solutions that could solve our new problem statement.
We evaluated our solutions using a model where we checked the ideas' desirability, viability, feasibility and team excitement. After this stage, we agreed on building a secure digital software that stores patients data with quick data retrieval and hospital cluster management built in.
Prototype: After the ideate process, the team and I started working on a prototype that best describes our ideas adding some cool features on the way that makes the life of doctors easier.
Testing
We tested our prototype with some of our colleagues at the IFA. They were so excited to see it. They found it easy to use and easy to understand. We asked them a few questions during the testing like "Did you find it easy to access the patients medical records?", "What was easy about using this application", "Do you have any recommendations?".
Pitch Day:
On the pitch day, we were ready. The presentation was set and the judges were ready. I will let the slides I attached do the talking
Side Note
The hackathon was a wonderful experience. I had the opportunity to bond with my team members during meetings, exchange ideas, brainstorm and collaborate with my team members. During the hackathon, I had the opportunity to practice the design thinking processes and it helped me understand the importance of diverse thinking while working in teams.
Extra Reflection
During the course of this hackathon, I have learnt that your initial perception of a problem could be wrong. Yes, you may be right, but you could be solving the wrong problem. And I have come to realize that it can bring about the failure of a wonderful idea. Listening to clients and doing extensive research, creating user personas, made it easier for us to channel our idea in the right direction and to ask the right questions during the brainstorming sessions where we had to come up with ideas and numerous solutions.
As an entrepreneur or while I work for a startup, I intend to ask the right questions, do extensive research, have series of productive brainstorming sessions with the right problem statement in mind. This will help my team know the right questions to ask, draft out our user personas and focus on building the right product for the right people. Reduce overhead cost by ensuring we understand our market.
Conclusion
Nimra health is an exciting product I would like to build in the nearest future. Nimra health is one of the main answers to the challenges we face in Nigeria and all around Africa. With Nimra, so many African lives will be saved.
Did you learn something new? You can send me an email on chilo.nwokolo@gmail.com.