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In essence, that’s the question that led Dr. David Manz, the inventor of the technology behind the HydrAid BioSand Water Filter, to actually take a look at the culture of the people in Central America and Africa and develop a solution that both fit their needs for ease of use and provided them with clean water for their families.
Other companies tried to force existing products into the developing markets, and while those products may have worked, the people rejected those ideas and the problems from waterborne illness continued to persist.
“Others thought what was needed was a cheap price point. It is, but if it doesn’t work with their lifestyle, people just toss it,” Christina Keller said in an interview for the lead story of this edition of TBL. Keller leads the business unit Triple Quest, part of the Cascade Engineering family of companies, which manufactures and sells the HydrAid filter. “People like to send down products that are cheap, light and easy to distribute. But no one ever goes back to check on them and see that they’re still working.”
The situation Keller encountered in the developing world reinforces the crucial role human-centered design plays in sustainable business. A solution might be fully functional, but if the people who are supposed to use it don’t buy into its value proposition — for whatever reason — the product will fail.
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That Hydraid has found success where other products have failed can be attributed, at least in part, to the up-front design work that went into the product, attests Cascade Engineering’s Christina Keller. Perhaps because of the product’s acceptable design, people who used the filter started to value it even more. In one in-country experiment, the company tried to buy back one of the products from a family who purchased it for $5, but the family refused to part with it even as the offer topped $200. COURTESY IMAGE |
Wouldn’t it be smarter to have users test out prototypes or rough concepts and provide developers valuable feedback before a product hits the market – and before a company has spent precious resources, money and time in fully developing the product, the tooling and production and distributing it?
Advocates of human-centered design — or user-centered design, design thinking or whatever moniker is associated with the concept — say it’s better to get that feedback early on so that a company can improve the product while it’s still relatively cheap to do so. Fail early and often, they say, because it will help your company save money in the long run.
While attention to design can certainly save money in the product development process, it can also lead to a smarter use of materials and ultimately less waste. When a product makes it to the market, fails to get acceptance and winds up in a landfill, no one wins.
Getting boots on the ground in-country for a walk-a-mile immersion in the local culture served Cascade well with HydrAid, Keller said, because it not only gave the company a level of respect for the culture, but it helped them better understand people’s constraints and values as well as observe how people would use the product. For Cascade Engineering, that up-front investment helps the company have a better chance at success with the product, which had the potential to impact thousands of lives in places where people suffer from recurring waterborne illnesses.
The product isn’t simply a philanthropic gesture or charity work, either. The company is taking the long-term, triple bottom line view that this business unit has the potential to yield a positive return. Working in the company’s favor, she said, is the fact that millions of people need clean water and that HydrAid has been proven to be effective.
“As a new business, we’re still investing in it. We hope it will be profitable for us,” Chairman and CEO Fred Keller, Christina’s father, told a recent gathering of business leaders for the Grand Rapids Community College’s Pathways to Prosperity program. “Our hope is that we can have a business focused on helping people. (A business based on) helping people is not new, but it may be new for a manufacturer.”
— Joe Boomgaard, Managing Editor
A gathering of the week’s sustainable business news powered by the editors of MiBiz sent every Tuesday.
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