Prevention of adolescent mental health conditions: is technology a possible source for good?

In 2021, in a bid to explore the transformative potential of technology in adolescent mental health, the Data for Children Collaborative with UNICEF embarked on a groundbreaking project with Outsight International, in collaboration with UCIPT and ElevateU. The first phase of this initiative, divided into seven investigative areas, laid the groundwork for understanding existing systems and landscapes crucial for developing effective programs. These areas were:

1. Systems View of Digital Health Ecosystems (Outsight International)
   This work package delved into the complex digital health ecosystem, creating system models that serve as tools to identify relationships and patterns. By adopting a holistic approach, the team aimed to avoid narrow solutions and recognize the diverse elements of a digital health solution.

2. Overview of Available Data Types (UCIPT)
   The project explored a myriad of public and private data resources, from social and health data to consumer and satellite data. This early exploration provided insights into the possibilities for moving towards an implementable project.

3. Review of Digital MHPSS Tools Literature (ElevateU)
   Recognizing the growing importance of adolescent mental health, a literature review was conducted to understand the impact of technological interventions. The review, encompassing 38 articles and 14 from grey literature, highlighted the overwhelmingly positive impact (98%) of technology on adolescent mental health.

4. Technology Landscaping of MHPSS Digital Tools (Outsight International)
   An effort to understand relevant digital health solutions was initiated to act as a reference point for ongoing evaluation and context-specific needs.

5. Data Landscaping and Key Informant Interviews (Outsight International)
   Interviews with mental health researchers, funders, and service providers revealed a broad consensus that technology's impact on adolescent mental health is nuanced and context-dependent.

6. Workshop Sessions (Outsight International)
   Two workshops focused on compounding factors influencing mental health outcomes, leading to the identification of three key research questions. These questions aimed to understand platform usage, adolescent interactions with online technologies, and the potential for existing platforms to adapt for better services.

7. Phase 2 Conception
   Integrating UNICEF's Measurement of Mental Health Among Adolescents at the Population Level (MMAP) approach with digital mental health interventions was proposed for Phase 2. This approach offers an opportunity for a multi-cohort longitudinal study in Jamaica, testing the effectiveness of digital tools and improving data collection methods.

In conclusion, the collaborative and human-centered approach of the project, grounded in a systems perspective, has paved the way for a comprehensive Phase 2. This ambitious next step aims to improve access to services, enhance data collection systems, and provide valuable insights for UNICEF's programming not only in Jamaica but also as a comparative study across other focus countries. As the project advances, collaboration between the Data for Children Collaborative and UNICEF will define the scope, identify partners, and secure funding, marking a significant stride towards better adolescent mental health worldwide.

How to deal with Intellectual Property Rights in humanitarian innovation

Outsight International recently supported the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in developing an intellectual property (IP) framework to help staff navigate the complex — and sometimes scary — world of IP. In this post we discuss the common concerns that those unfamiliar with the topic face when understanding their options and choosing an IP strategy.

Why is intellectual property an issue in humanitarian innovation?

Humanitarian innovation refers to the creation, adaptation, and application of new solutions to address challenges faced by individuals and communities affected by crises. These crises can include natural disasters, conflicts, epidemics, and other emergencies.

Over the last decade, humanitarian innovation has led to many new products and services being designed and implemented. These might be hardware, software creations or processes. Unlike the private sector where the end goal is to create profit from these products/services, the the primary goal of humanitarian innovation is to improve the effectiveness, efficiency, and impact of humanitarian efforts in providing assistance, protection, and support to those in need.

Although different in their goal, humanitarian innovators usually have to work with IP tools created for the private sector, which can lead to fear and a lack of clarity as to what’s the best approach to reach their goal.

This is for a number of reasons: firstly, IP is seen as an incomprehensible legal topic; second, the perceived risk of getting anything ‘wrong’ in the legal space is greatly feared; and thirdly, many practitioners in the humanitarian/development space see intellectual property rights as a negative thing, usually employed by the private sector to protect profits over people. We now breakdown these fears and try to allay them.

FEAR #1: IP is too complicated to grasp

To say that IP is not complicated would be unfair — there are indeed a lot of component parts to think about: types of IP protection, extent of IP rights, enforcement in multiple jurisdictions, contract wording, registration processes, etc. Among unacquainted innovators, the questions we often hear are:

• ‘How do we file a patent?’

• ‘Should the organisation own patents at all or should we aim to share the innovation as widely as possible for public good?’

• ‘How can we prevent others from appropriating or misusing an innovation?’

• ‘Is it worth it to spend resources enforcing patent protection in a fragile context?’

• ‘Are open source licences always the best alternative for our software?’

• ‘What is a licence?

• ‘Would all of this be the same if the innovation has been developed in partnerships with the private sector?’

• ‘What if the partner is a university?’

Despite all this confusion, IP can be simplified by thinking about options in straightforward language. At a base level, intellectual property can refer to anything created by the mind. This asset could be incorporated in a tangible creation (such as a newly invented device or a piece of art), but not necessarily (it could also be a process, a design, a trademark, or software). Intellectual Property rights comprise a range of rights over a creation, including economic and moral (being recognised as author).

In simple terms IP rights determine who is entitled to use that creation and under what circumstances. To protect these rights, a wide range of mechanisms are available, which can be roughly grouped into three categories: legal, contractual and informal.

1. First, legal mechanisms (often referred to as formal IP protection) offer the most sophisticated safeguard, but require technical knowledge and are harder to enforce, especially in fragile jurisdictions. Among these legal mechanisms, some require a complicated registration process (e.g., patents or utility models), while others are automatic (e.g., copyright) or easy to use (e.g., copyleft or FOSS licences).

2. Second, contractual mechanisms are agreed rules embedded in partnerships, employment or consulting contracts. Some examples include confidentiality or recruitment freeze clauses.

3. Last, informal mechanisms comprise all other protection mechanisms not emerging from laws or contracts, such as secrecy, protective publication, documentation, division of duties, and many others.

Fear #2: Getting IP ‘wrong’ is high risk

One of the main reasons humanitarians are so fearful of IP is because they believe there is a right and wrong way to deal with it. This is not the case. IP clauses written in contracts are — at their base level — just a fancy-worded version of a decision of ‘who has the right to use a creation and how?’.

In some instances, this decision will be influenced by existing IP rights — for example, when adapting something existing you will be bound by the IP rights of that existing thing, or an employee contract might dictate who owns creations invented during work activities. In instances of ‘true’ invention, there is a decision to be made based on a spectrum from closed to open, which also involves an assessment of risks and trade-off.

To determine what IP approach makes the most sense, innovators should consider not only what goals they are aiming for and what resources they have, but also what risks are involved. A systematic risk assessment must be conducted considering risk for the users of the innovation, risks for the organisation and its members, risk for third parties and risks for the innovation and its sustainability.

For example, disclosed IP may be used by third parties for unintended purposes, negatively affecting vulnerable groups. Organisations should consider the diverse profile of people in terms of gender, age, location, legal status or any other personal circumstances that might put them at harm due to IP disclosure to other parties.

FEAR #3: IP protection serves profit maximisation, not humanitarian goals

Historically, intellectual property rights were developed to protect economic and moral rights of creators, with an understanding that this would also facilitate innovation and fair knowledge sharing. Patents, the most IP protection tools, were designed to control who can access innovations, which is very well suited for the patent owner to exploit the innovation and make profits out of it. However, ethical concerns may arise if access to an essential innovation is limited by economic or legal barriers. In recent years, COVID-19 vaccines reignited this debate, with many government and international organisations advocating for a waiver on patent protection to facilitate vaccine accessibility.

Within this context, it is understandable that IP raises suspicions among many humanitarian staff as a tool tailored for profit maximisation, not humanitarian goals. However, since IP rights can be highly customised, humanitarian actors can use them for their own goals as well.

Overall, humanitarian organisations aim to maximise positive impact for people affected by armed conflict and violence. The most logical assumption is that people would usually be better off benefiting from an innovation, and therefore, in principle humanitarian organisations are likely to lean towards more open access IP approaches than the private sector. Open IP approaches allow collaboration, reuse and a more efficient resource allocation in the sector as a whole.

However, even open approaches involve some kind of IP strategy and management to meet the goals of the humanitarian sector. For example, software creators may want to share their code for reuse in the sector, but they still need to make a thoughtful decision among multiple free or open licences, each with its own characteristics, as well as understand the risks, resources and trade-off associated with it.

There are IP options available to innovators which require little ongoing management. Protective/defensive publication is one such tool. This involves publicly disclosing detailed information about an invention to prevent others from patenting the same idea. While the disclosure may not result in obtaining a patent, it acts as a defensive measure to ensure that others cannot claim exclusive rights to the invention.

Developing an IP framework

To address these concerns and develop a common IP understanding within an organisation, it is recommended that organisations working in the humanitarian innovation space develop a comprehensive IP framework, tailored to the organisational context.

In close contact with internal stakeholders and informed by sectoral best practices, the IP framework serves as a clear guidance for decision making, informed by humanitarian principles, risks, and resources available.

Outsight International can help organisations to this end: having already worked on hundreds of innovation projects aiming to serve the public good and helping organisations create these frameworks. If you’d like to learn more or you think we can help, please get in touch.

About the authors

Louis Potter
Louis has a wide range of experience covering development, health, innovation, technology and research. He has worked on over 100 humanitarian initiatives and helps humanitarian organisations, universities and companies to improve innovation processes and outcomes. Recently, he has been helping actors navigate paths to scale in the humanitarian sector and strategise business models.

Pablo Busto Caviedes
Pablo is a researcher with a legal background, who specialises in monitoring and evaluation (M&E), policy research, qualitative and quantitative data analysis. His experience includes a diverse range of social and economic development topics such as rural development, agriculture, or social inclusion.

Addressing drone noise pollution: a public engagement perspective from the front lines

By Denise Soesilo and Bo Jia

We began our journey in 2015 helping organisations and health actors plan out and implement medical drone operations in rural settings. However, as technology has advanced, we see more exciting projects that bring drone deliveries into urban areas. One example is the planned Rigi Tech operations across Lake Geneva in Switzerland, proposing daily deliveries of medical samples between doctors offices in Rive Gauche and Coppet across the lake. The hope is to cut health care system costs, reduce emissions and remove cars off the streets, which everyone agrees is great. But this also brings drones closer to where people live and work every day and raises questions with regard to new types of noise pollution. 

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is defined by EASA as an air transportation system in and around urban environments providing connectivity within the cities and among regions. In recent years, Europe has been perceived as a market leader in the development of UAM. According to EASA, the European UAM market size is predicted to be 4.2 billion EUR by 2030 (see the report we wrote together with the European Institute of Innovation and Technology for more details). 

According to an EASA study on social acceptance of drones, noise is the second main concern after safety. The study concluded that people often find drone noise more annoying than other city sounds. To develop sustainable UAM in Europe, it’s thus critical to address the noise-related concerns expressed by EU citizens. We found that technical and policy guidance is slowly emerging but many unknowns still need to be solved. 

From a technical perspective, there are ways to make a drone quieter, such as using noise-reducing propellers and noise-reduction shrouds. The industry is working full steam on these approaches and whilst critical, there are also important social elements that need to be addressed. In the following we discuss what we have learned about how to effectively address people’s concerns through public engagement. 

The core of this approach is twofold. When engaging with communities we have learned that transparency and early engagement are key. In addition, technical elements and available information needs to be compiled and shared in a way that helps communities engage in a meaningful way. This also signals that industry players are applying best practices to address any potential issues. 

The first step is to ground discussions on facts and data as much as possible and to provide transparency. This means actual drone noise data needs to be collected and modeled or measured in situ. This data will be crucial to inform the affected neighbourhood as well as report to local authorities. This data will be complemented with ancillary information such as prevailing regulations and noise pollution benchmarks. The second step is to enagage the community and understand their perception and fears. Often the history of the community plays a strong role in beliefs and perceptions about noise and industrial projects. If a community has previously had poor experience with environmental nuisance, then this will likely also come to the fore during these discussions. 

Measurement of Drone Noise 

The measurement aspects are an evolving topic, and there are still gaps in academia and practice. Although different projects and research teams have tried to measure the noise, there is currently little industry standard or binding regulation in this domain.

In a real-life measurement, the steps of different approaches include noise metrics selection, test environment conditions, drone spatial positioning, microphone characteristics, and mathematical modelling. It is a technical activity that requires specialised equipment and scientific methodology. Currently, the most relevant guideline is the EASA draft guideline published in 2022 on noise level measurements for drones below 600kg. This guideline is intended to be used on a voluntary basis and does not constitute applicable requirements for the certification of drones, but it also points to the direction for potential future regulation in Europe. It provides noise measurement standards in the specific category that includes activities such as package deliveries, powerline inspections, wildlife control, mapping services, aerial surveillance or roof inspections. The guideline detailed the entire procedure of noise measurement, including test environments, spatial positioning, speed measurement, test equipment, microphone setup, and gives detailed technical requirements for each step. 

Another way to obtain noise models is through noise simulation, which requires less hardware and testing. A team from Hong Kong has measured the noise impact of delivery drones in an urban community based on a flight simulation and noise assessment platform, which contains the flight dynamics, noise source prediction and long-distance propagation modules. The EU-funded project AURORA is in the process of validating a noise pollution model. The APIS project from Stockholm also aims to establish a user-friendly platform which allows for the simulation of noise from drones. 

As mentioned above, many studies have pointed out that drone noise is perceived as substantially more annoying than road traffic or aircraft noise due to special acoustic characteristics. The noise of drones does not resemble the noise of contemporary aircraft which leads to an important uncertainty in the prediction of the perception of drone noise. Different metrics such as Tonality and Loudness-Sharpness interaction might need to be measured to be able to account for the perceptual features of drone noise.

Recommendations

After obtaining noise data and understanding people’s perceptions, what can we do to address concerns? The key is when and how to engage affected communities. First of all, it’s always better to start outreach as early as possible. It can be in the form of a community meeting or roadshow that invites affected people. For the drone project team, it’s suggested to designate a person or even a dedicated unit, depending on the size of the project, to be in charge of community affairs and sensitization. This team should be introduced in brochures or on the website of the project with a detailed description of what they do. A fixed and familiar face can help win trust from the affected people. 

As for the content of the communication, the accurate measurement of the drone noise should be shown to the audience. This can be a noise mapping in the neighbourhood or a printed noise report that can be handed out to the participants to form a basis of discussion along with the efforts the project is already taking to address concerns.

Besides the noise data, it’s always helpful to communicate the purpose of the drone operation. incliding any added value to the neighbourhood as well as to society that will be derived from the operation. People will more likely accept an inconvenience if it is for a positive societal cause such as the delivery of medical supplies or reducing traffic and pollution.

About the authors

Bo Jia
Bo has supported several digital agriculture projects, covering topics such as M&E, digital finance, e-commerce, drones, etc. His research helped push for more programmatic and strategic approaches to analyse digital products and investments in the organisation. He is also experienced in ecosystem mapping to identify potential investment opportunities and improve resource mobilisation.

Denise Soesilo
Denise is an expert in unmanned aerial system (UAS) use in humanitarian and development settings. She has worked with donor agencies and development organizations, humanitarian and United Nations organisations, advising on the application and implementation of drone technologies. Denise served as the director of flight in the African Drone Forum - Lake Kivu Flying Competitions and implemented numerous other drone operations. Through her work, Denise has enabled the safe operations of nearly a dozen cargo drone companies. In addition, Denise has led the implementation of the European Union Humanitarian Aid innovation grant on drones in humanitarian action. Denise has authored several publications on UAS in development and humanitarian action.

ChatGPT: the risks and opportunities for organisations in the humanitarian and development sector

ChatGPT, a large language model (LLM) developed by OpenAI, has emerged as a viable tool for improving the speed and cost of information-related work. It can help automate services, products, and processes by performing human-level information querying and synthesis instantaneously. This technology is rapidly being adopted by organisations in various sectors, including humanitarian and development organisations. However, the adoption of ChatGPT is not without risks. It is important to think about the opportunities and risks of using ChatGPT in the operations of large organisations in the humanitarian and development sector.

Some opportunities

1. Crisis management and communication: ChatGPT can be used to monitor and respond to global emergencies in real-time, providing a centralised communication channel for updates, guidelines, and strategies, while also addressing queries from both internal and external stakeholders.

   But how?
   AI assistants like Jarvis inside Whatsapp and Telegram make it possible to consult quickly on the go. It’s also possible to generate content, such as videos, faster than ever, just with text inputs.

2. Training and capacity building: ChatGPT can serve as an interactive learning platform, providing tailored training materials, simulations, and assessments to help build capacity within the organisation and improve the knowledge and skills of professionals.

   But how?
   Education platforms like Duolingo and Khan Academy now have AI-powered tutors for learners, and assistants for teachers.

3. Internal knowledge management: ChatGPT can be used to query an organisation's knowledge resources, allowing staff to quickly access information and expertise, and facilitating knowledge sharing across departments and regions. 

   But how?
   Organisations train GPT-4 on their knowledge base, to have their own AI-powered workplace search (with AskNotion, Glean, or UseFini). 

   Your knowledge base can become an asset, like Bloomberg are doing by training their own GPT on their financial data.

   Documentation is being automatically created (e.g. for a codebase), and data entry and data cleaning can be increasingly automated with workflow tools like Bardeen.   

4. Emergency surveillance: ChatGPT can monitor global crises as an early warning system, combining information from various sources (social media, news, and health reports) to provide a comprehensive and real-time picture of global threats, enabling swift response and containment.

   But how?
   It’s becoming easier and more effective than ever to scan large data streams, using models like HuggingGPT to create your own pipeline for data analytics. 

5. Public health campaigns: ChatGPT can assist in designing and implementing highly personalised effective public health campaigns by analysing target audience demographics, behaviour, and preferences, and creating customised content to maximise engagement and impact. 

   But how?
   The founder of the world’s leading marketing platform, Hubspot, has pivoted to focusing on Chatspot, where AI helps create personalised content and marketing campaigns at scale.

6. Policy research: ChatGPT can aid in policy research by synthesising relevant papers, data, and best practices, allowing organisations to make informed decisions and create evidence-based health policies and guidelines.

   But how?
   ChatGPT is excelling at summarising academic articles, blogs and podcasts. 
   Further still, it can elevate the capabilities of staff - no barrier to knowing data visualization languages or SQL queries by just using text commands.

7. Grant management: ChatGPT can streamline the grant application, review, and reporting processes, ensuring that funding is allocated efficiently and transparently, and reducing the administrative burden on staff. It could also be used to raise the quality and level the playing field for applicants. Inevitably, it will be used by applicants and funded projects for reporting. 

   But how?
   AI-powered writing tools are speeding up the process, increasing formal writing quality and helping generate ideas (Lex, WriteSonic).

8. Stakeholder engagement: ChatGPT can facilitate engagement with key stakeholders, such as governments, NGOs, and the private sector, by providing timely and accurate information, and enabling efficient collaboration and coordination.

   But how?
   Effort is saved on internal communications by automatic meeting summaries, which could extend further into any type of updates. 

   AI assistants are emerging as a way to make advice more engaging and accessible for external service users, such as this AI-powered agriculture advice for farmers.

9. Multilingual communication: ChatGPT can be used to automatically translate communications, guidelines, and documents into multiple languages at zero cost and time, ensuring that vital information is accessible to a global audience and enhancing the organisation's ability to collaborate effectively across diverse regions.

   But how?
   Whisper AI has dramatically increased the quality of speech recognition of audio-to-text.
   Tech giants Meta, Amazon and Mozilla have all made translation advances, including under-represented languages, which are becoming productized.

10. Virtual Assistants: ChatGPT can reduce staff workload, by summarising meeting notes, triaging emails, and creating intelligent alerts that connect new information with the current priorities of staff. 

    But how?
    Enabling tools like LangChain are making it possible to string multiple actions together, and AutoGPT is making it possible for Chatgpt to prompt itself to come up with and execute a plan of action. These are resulting in first assistants like Milo, an assistant for busy parents.

What are the risks?

With any technology, there are risks that need to be assessed and with ChatGPT, those risks could be more than most. The Outsight Team can help you navigate these in the way that ensures it’s possible to improve efficiency without taking unacceptable risks. Some of the common risks associated with the use of ChatGPT are as follows:

1. Organisational Misinformation: The potential for ChatGPT to provide inaccurate information is a risk that organisations need to consider. It is important to ensure that the data fed into ChatGPT is accurate and reliable, and that the model is regularly updated and retrained to reflect changes in the data.

2. Inherent Bias: ChatGPT may inadvertently reinforce existing biases in the data it is trained on. It is important to ensure that the data fed into the model is diverse and representative.

3. Privacy Risks: ChatGPT has access to sensitive information and needs to be trained with data that respects the privacy of individuals. It is important to establish clear policies and procedures to protect the privacy of individuals.

4. Legal Risks: The use of ChatGPT needs to comply with the relevant laws and regulations, including data protection laws.

5. Reputational Risks: If ChatGPT is used to produce content or communicate with stakeholders, there is a risk that the communication may not reflect the values and tone of the organization, potentially leading to reputational damage.

How Outsight can help

To ensure safe and effective adoption, we must map the optimal use cases for the organisational level, and empower bottom-up understanding and best practices at the individual level. Outsight can support and accompany organisations on their journey to leverage this game-changing technology, and has developed a stepwise program, including:

1. Mapping use cases relevant to the organisation's operations.

2. Evaluating the limitations and risks associated with the identified use cases, along with a generalised framework.

3. Prioritising innovation opportunities based on short, medium, and long-term impact.

4. Developing education and capacity building content, workshops and trainings to have a repeatable and scalable impact on the safe adoption of ChatGPT from an end-user perspective..

5. Supporting the implementation of capacity building programs to take advantage of cost and time savings effectively.

The ultimate goal is to support organisations to take up the dramatic time and cost-saving opportunities made possible by this technology, while protecting against the risks and limitations amidst the hype.

ABOUT the author and OUTSIGHT INTERNATIONAL

Harry Wilson
Harry is a product person and consultant on applying technology for impact. He has led teams which have built products used by the WHO, World Bank, UNICEF, Inter-American Development Bank, as well as acted as a consultant to companies like Facebook for Good, Microsoft and Intel. His specialist areas are AI & data, blockchain and communities.

ChatGPT
ChatGPT is a sophisticated language model powered by OpenAI's state-of-the-art GPT-3.5 architecture. With a vast knowledge base spanning a wide range of topics, ChatGPT is an expert in answering questions and generating natural language responses that are both informative and engaging.

Outsight International
Outsight International provides services to the humanitarian and development sector in an efficient and agile way. Outsight International builds on the range of expertise offered by a network of Associates in order to deliver quality results adapted to the specific tasks at hand. If you’d like to discuss working with the Outsight team, please get in touch or follow us on LinkedIn for regular updates.

We just started a new energy team: here's why it’s important

Extract, Exploit, Consume, Continue.

We all (mostly) universally accept that our relationship with how we all extract, use, and devour energy is fundamentally flawed and significantly problematic for the future of humanity. No longer are we in a time of hyperbolic language that starts with if, maybes and buts – we have already altered our planetary ecosystem beyond repair. As a result, themes of energy access, sustainability and transition dominate international, national, regional and local humanitarian (and wider international development) programmatic dialogues. Yet, there are significant flaws in the systems we all use to create modern, reliable and sustainable energy systems and services for forcibly displaced groups around the globe.

The specific niche the Outsight Energy Team has chosen to focus on is the integration of the lived experience of marginalized groups into actual humanitarian programmatic objectives, through the creation of socio-technical energy ecosystems. By directly connecting the conceptual and practical, the strategic and programmatic, the technical, social and everyday drivers of energy ecosystems, the Energy Team at Outsight International blends humanitarian and development approaches to provide bespoke energy ecosystem support to organizations and individuals around the globe.

Ultimately, we feel that co-design, participatory research, human centered-design, co-creation, co-design (and the multitude of other names for it) is fundamentally the right pathway to enable marginalized groups to be the protagonists of their own energy futures. Right now, focus groups and surveys seem to be infiltrating into bigger humanitarian energy systems and services but how can we all ensure that this process does not reinforce post-colonial and neo-liberal power structures that are fundamentally extractive? How can we make this process transformative for all involved?

It’s a question that does not currently have an answer - but we are working on it (and helping others work on it too).

So whilst we work on persuading institutions, founded long before we all came into this world, that the fundamental methods that they use need to change, we wanted to start building a community of clients, collaborators and team members from all over the world. Let’s bring together local, regional and global leaders to transform the sector we all inhabit. Let’s challenge ourselves and the way we work. Let’s amplify the voices of people we are trying to support. Let’s break down these power structures and be transformative rather than extractive.

Before this becomes a monologue rather than a quick read and I share our secrets with you about how we are going to create easy to use practitioner toolboxes, develop case studies and systematic evidence that can show you how we add value etc. - I will leave you with this.

Maybe thinking like this makes us at Outsight the disruptors of our sector, the ones who at the end of every meeting says, “yes, but…”. We are pushing for a sector where the voices of the forcibly displaced are embedded in every part of the discussion, and these dictate the strategic priorities to funders; not the other way round. The forcibly displaced need to be given the power to shape their own lives.

If you would like to be a part of this (just like Energypedia and others are) then reach out, send an email, post a letter, or give us a call.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS AND OUTSIGHT INTERNATIONAL

Dr Ben Robinson — Outsight Energy Team lead:
Ben is an energy expert engaged with critical elements of the energy transition across Asia and Africa in the Humanitarian and wider International Development sectors. He champions innovative and disruptive socio-technological ecosystems to enable the forcibly displaced, and other marginalised communities, to be the protagonists of their own energy futures. See his most recent publications here.

Outsight International
Outsight International provides services to the humanitarian and development sector in an efficient and agile way. Outsight International builds on the range of expertise offered by a network of Associates in order to deliver quality results adapted to the specific tasks at hand. If you’d like to discuss working with the Outsight team, please get in touch or follow us on LinkedIn for regular updates.

Building an educational sectoral crypto-currency for the development sector

Recently Outsight was asked to help the Italian NGO, Helpcode, in partnership with the Politecnico Milano, scope how crypto-currency might be used to provide better services to beneficiaries in their projects. After some initial research we focused on sectoral currency as a way to multiply the value of donations in the education sector. Louis and Denise, the two founders of Outsight discuss the work…

The non-profit sector has, in recent years, started to take an interest in emerging blockchain and crypto-currency technologies, as these provide the potential process large amounts of transparent transactions at low transaction costs. These qualities — in theory — should enable the financial inclusion of beneficiaries, as the barriers of entry are low. In addition, specialised crypto-currencies can be utilised to multiply the impact of monetary funds when set up as a sectoral currency.

What is sectoral currency and how does it work?

The late Bernard Lietaer was a strong proponent of the radical possibilities of sectoral currencies and monetary systems to solve many challenges of today’s world. These included looking at the way we value resources in a short-termist fashion, to proposing mechanisms to protect the world economy from inflation. Among his many interesting initiatives, is the ‘Saber’ educational currency idea, designed for implementation in his native Brazil.

The educational currency is designed to set in motion “a substantial “learning multiplier” so that a given amount of money can facilitate substantially more learning for a greater number of students. The currency would fuel this learning multiplier without creating any new financial pressure on the economy. What this means in practice is that a tangible resource (in this case, a university scholarship) is given to younger students, rather than those who will use it. As the resource — turned into tokens — enters the educational system at a younger age, it is then possible to build a transaction chain between students of different ages until the tokens reach the older students who can cash them in with the university. The transactions that take place along the chain can be adapted to the needs of the system. In this case, the aim is for older students to provide mentoring services to younger students.

Students in the system hold an electronic wallet containing tokens. When a mentoring session takes place, the younger student will then ‘pay’ the older student with the tokens, which over time pass up the chain, age-group by age-group, until they reach the university students by the deadline of that year’s currency validity. Importantly, a demurrage fee (it loses its value after a set period) is attached to the currency in order to keep it in circulation. This prevents students from holding onto the tokens for their own profit later on as 100 tokens this year will become 50 tokens next year if not used. We have illustrated this chain below.

An overview of the educational sectoral currency system in the hypothetical DRC context.

In this example, a token could pass through five transaction points before being cashed in. Thus, a single scholarship for one student is having a positive impact on five other students who would otherwise not receive any direct benefit. This multiplying effect is the true genius of the sectoral currency approach and can be adapted to help many sectors, such as environment or care.

About the context

The Helpcode project location of Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo was used as a hypothetical location for the use of sectoral cryptocurrencies in support of ongoing programmes with the broader aim to reduce poverty through improved access to education. At the current stage of the research, the location provided the use case for the exploration and prototyping. There are currently no plans for direct implementation.

Bukavu is a city of about 800,000 inhabitants in the east of the DRC on the southernmost shores of Lake Kivu. Bukavu is a commercial and industrial center in the region and is known for the production of coffee, tea, tobacco and strawberries). Bukavu is host to four universities and at least four higher learning institutes including a teacher training college, a scientific research institute and an Institute of medical technology.

Helpcode has a small presence in Bukavu mostly through financially supporting school children. Funds are administered to the Foundation Foyer Ek’Abana, who then disburses the funds to about 1,600 beneficiaries — all of them children — to support the costs of attending schools.

Additional projects are planned to provide a mobile medical unit to serve about 1,500 street children throughout the city with basic medical services, alongside programs to reunite these children with their families and to provide economic support, as well as supporting return to school and connecting to job opportunities. Many children living on the streets are orphaned. Many do not have identities, though some support exists now to issue birth certificates and IDs. Unconditional cash transfers alongside the current support may be an option to older children, but these children do not typically have smartphones.

In this context, sectoral currency could offer the added benefit of increasing value for every dollar invested by providing the system to school age children who could then exchange credits for mentoring or services from older children who will use them for scholarships. The value of the system would be underpinned by Helpcode by making an agreement to exchange the local currency for an agreed cash value at the end of each school year. As the currency moves up the chain towards the final use at university, each owner can receive something in exchange for the currency that is of value to the older students — i.e. mentoring, care services, food. The value of each dollar of the currency effectively increases each time it changes hands moving up the chain.

The prototype

Following the system proposal, Politecnico Milano produced a prototype built using the Ethereum platform. The prototype offers the following features:

• Registration as a student

• Peer-to-peer transactions for mentoring sessions using QR codes.

• Picture proof for mentoring sessions.

• Demurrage of currency for each school year.

• Cash-in at university.

At an early prototype stage, this is how the app looks.

The welcome page of the app.

The wallet page of the app. Here you can select the type of service and whether to send or receive tokens.

The transaction history page of the app. Where students can view their transactions.

The transactions themselves are made using a QR codes. The mentoree scans a QR code on the mentor’s phone once a session is complete to send credits to them.

The mentor’s receiving page.

The mentoree’s sending credits page. This would turn on the camera to scan the QR code.

Other important considerations

As a novel and relatively complex concept, it is important to consider the potential pros and cons of pursuing this idea in a development context.

Pros:

• Sectoral currency has been trialed in Japan.

• Some progress on humanitarian local currencies with ICRC.

• Increases the value of scholarships beyond just recipients.

• Existing demurrage crypto-currency example.

Cons:

• Need to ensure access to suitable end devices for trading with the currency.

• Risk of unforeseen variables — what if the currency becomes tradable for illicit services?

• Risk of monetizing transactions that should otherwise be freely shared (casual homework support, advice)

We also listed some remaining questions and concerns that need to be addressed before pursuing implementation further.

• Does this process require a critical mass of users to be effective?

• How much adult guidance is required in this process for oversight and guidance?

• What constitutes a valid mentoring session to initiate a transaction?

• Do all children need their own smartphone or can a third party on the ground manage the transaction while younger children deal with hard tokens / paper wallets only?

• What basic conditions need to be met for a sectoral currency to be successful?

Next steps

Together with Helpcode and Politecnico Milano, Outsight is pursuing the further development of the educational sectoral currency platform. We aim to engage with end users from a UX and service design perspective in order to ensure we can address the outstanding questions and make the tool more specific for its context of use. If you’re interested in using sectoral currency or want to discuss the topic with us, please feel free to get in touch.

ABOUT the authors AND OUTSIGHT INTERNATIONAL

Denise Soesilo
Denise is one of the Co-founders of Outsight and has worked with the World Bank and other development, humanitarian and UN agencies — advising on the application and implementation of space-based systems and other technologies in humanitarian operations.

Louis Potter
Louis is one of the Co-founders of Outsight. He has a wide range of experience covering development, health, innovation, technology and research. Having worked in the field, he is well acquainted with the practical realities of delivering impact. In recent years, he has been helping organisations to improve innovation processes and outcomes. He is an experienced facilitator and has been closely involved in efforts to improve collaborations between the nonprofit, academic and commercial sectors. He is based in Lausanne, Switzerland, and received his MSc in Global Health from the Karolinska Institute, Sweden.

Outsight International
Outsight International provides services to the humanitarian and development sector in an efficient and agile way. Outsight International builds on the range of expertise offered by a network of Associates in order to deliver quality results adapted to the specific tasks at hand. If you’d like to discuss working with the Outsight team, please get in touch or follow us on LinkedIn for regular updates.

Decrypting human-centred design: Why it is important for the third sector

What role can human-centred design practically play in development and humanitarian work? As a researcher and designer, Gunes Kocabag — an Outsight Associate — is often asked this question. Sometimes with scepticism — but more often with genuine interest.

Human-centred design has become a respected practice in certain parts of the humanitarian and development sectors (aka the third sector). However, while many people may have seen references to its techniques, it may not be obvious how it is applied in practice. In this article, she outlines: what is human-centred design; why it is necessary; and how to apply it in humanitarian and development contexts.

FROM DESIGN AS A CRAFT TO DESIGN AS A MINDSET, and FROM USER-CENTERED TO HUMAN-CENTERED

Design has historically been categorised as an art, a craft, or as a way to improve the look and functionality of products. However, from the 80s onwards a new perspective on design has progressively taken hold – an approach that defines design as a process and a mindset that can be applied to solve diverse problems. The term ‘Design Thinking’ was popularised by the design firm IDEO in the early 90s and today has gained increasing popularity in the business world as a methodology to approach complex problems.

A key principle of the design mindset is its emphasis on placing user needs and expectations at the centre of the process. As users (aka customers) in the commercial context are more and more empowered with their decision making, companies are racing to understand their users and identify their innermost unmet needs to create the next winning product in the market. That is why user-centred design is increasingly popular in corporate innovation circles.

Global development work often happens within complex systems made up of multiple partners, people on the ground, multiple end beneficiaries and various contextual factors. So it is not only about creating solutions that work for the end-user but also for all key stakeholders within the system. It requires an approach that is not only user-centred, but human-centred, which takes into account the complexity of all stakeholders. Thus, in humanitarian and development innovation, the term that is predominantly adopted is human-centred design (HCD).

WHY HUMAN-CENTRED DESIGN?

Although human centred-design is becoming increasingly recognised and embraced by leading third sector actors such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, UNICEF and WHO working regularly with innovation, there remains lack of clarity on how human-centred design can be properly harnessed to ensure better interventions for a greater range of projects.

Here are three key reasons why human-centred design can greatly improve the success of humanitarian and development projects.

Reason 1: HCD complements system thinking to reveal differences between how the system works in theory and how people actually engage with it

Systems thinking is often referred to as a go-to approach to solve complex problems — and rightfully so — as it provides a great way to break down and make sense of the parts of a system and the relationships between them.

The systems thinking pioneer Donella Meadows defines social systems as “the external manifestations of cultural thinking patterns and of profound human needs, emotions, strengths and weaknesses.” Human-centred design can help dig deeper into those external manifestations to get to the core of human behaviours, needs and expectations behind them.

By placing the focus on the human actors within the system, HCD helps bring abstract concepts such as beneficiaries, government officials or private sector initiatives to life.

By placing the focus on the human actors within the system, HCD helps bring abstract concepts such as ‘beneficiaries’, ‘government officials’ or ‘private sector initiatives’ to life: identifying the human stories behind each, with their unique needs, motivations and goals. HCD’s emphasis on qualitative data helps us move beyond an understanding of what people do to an understanding of the social, cultural, and psychological patterns that reveal why people behave the way they do.

Understanding not only how the system theoretically works, but also how people live and breathe within the system, we can create effective solutions that meet needs and expectations at both functional and emotional levels.

Case study: Improving the adoption of home-based immunisation records (HBRs) in Africa

Home-based records are medical documents issued by a health authority, and provide a record of an individual’s history of primary healthcare services (e.g. vaccinations) received. They are maintained in the household by an individual or their caregiver. Since the beginning of the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) in 1974, home-based records have served an important role in increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of immunisation programs around the world. However, retention rates in many countries remain significantly low, which is particularly worrying in countries with a high birth cohort.

To tackle this problem, we first need to understand the system and the actors within the system. A systems-thinking approach focuses on understanding the key parts of the system and how they interact with each other. Adding human-centred design to that, we glean a better understanding of the human actors behind the institutions and the human actors that affect and get affected by the system.

When I worked on this challenge in collaboration with WHO and multiple other development partners, focusing on six African countries, our first task was to understand the system map and identify the key stakeholders. Then we applied HCD to dig deeper. Through ethnographic, immersive research on the ground with health workers and caregivers as well as officials in the Ministries of Health, we were able to challenge the big picture.

During pilot research, we brought together Ministry of Health officials, caregivers and health workers to compare their knowledge of how the system should be working, with an understanding of how it is actually working. Being able to observe what was actually happening, the physical and emotional burdens on the ground, what unofficial, makeshift solutions were put in place by those who had to solve problems on the ground helped us all view the system under a different light and helped shift priorities at the institutional level. Through this nuanced understanding, we were able to align key stakeholders on prioritising the needs of the end beneficiaries and health workers on the ground, as well as creating a roadmap for successful implementation that balanced the different priorities of the stakeholders involved.

Reason 2: HCD goes beyond creating solutions to creating end-to-end experiences that drive adoption

For successful adoption of a developed solution, a functional framework focusing on efficient delivery is not enough. To deliver a solution that is efficient and effective, we need to ensure it fits into the lives of those who will be using it. The main premise of HCD is to frame the whole challenge from the perspectives of the human actors, be this the end beneficiary, a specific actor in the value chain, or a key decision maker. We then design interactions and experiences tailored for the specific context and expectations of those who will be interacting with the particular product or service.

When designing services, HCD addresses these interactions not only at one point in time but through the whole journey of service delivery: before, during and after. This helps us understand the functional and emotional highs and lows of the experience, developing fixes to mitigate the lows and catalysers to enhance the highs. Through this methodological approach we can identify potential pitfalls early on and design solutions that work end-to-end.

A service journey maps out the user’s experience step by step, as well as the people, processes, policies, and systems behind the service delivery.

Case study: Improving the quality of data in humanitarian emergencies

Access to high quality and timely data can be a life and death-defining factor when monitoring humanitarian emergencies. The MSF REACH project, coordinated by my colleague, Lucie Gueuning, is an initiative addressing exactly this problem through creating a web-based platform to support MSF staff on the ground. The platform combines institutional data with crowd-sourced information from various sources.

While all are working towards a common goal, the platform needs to be used by different types of users with different levels of familiarity with the technology, different environments of use, culture and legal context, different skill sets and mental models. The quality of the data, which is key to the platform’s success, depends on providing an inclusive experience to all its different users.

A human-centred approach to solution development in such a context, can ensure that the user experience of the platform is designed to maximise its effective use by different users, taking into account all steps of the experience from accessing the service to data entry to making sense of the data. To give one specific example, the design of the user interface can have a significant impact on the quality of the data as well as how users perceive and prioritise data.

By putting users at the centre, human-centred design ensures that the interactions fit the users’ different mental models and drives the adoption and successful use of the platform. For MSF REACH this means high quality data, which is critical for saving lives.

Reason 3: Through divergent thinking, HCD catalyses new perspectives and out-of-the-box solutions

HCD is a process that can be applied to different problem spaces. It is made up of iterative cycles of divergent and convergent thinking, following a pattern of exploring possibilities before narrowing down on one solution. This emphasis on divergent thinking allows its practitioners to ask ‘what if…’, think out of the box and imagine possibilities beyond established patterns of thinking. Divergence is then followed by a structured and criteria based process of convergence that defines what is possible.

HCD follows an iterative process where divergent thinking is followed by structural convergence, both for problem definition and for solution development.

Bringing together different mindsets and skills sets is essential for divergent thinking. This helps explore the problem space from different perspectives and create richer solutions. Thus, HCD projects rely on a combination of different topic expertise combined with the perspectives of stakeholders on the ground. Participatory design, co-creation with communities, design sprints are common methodologies that are used to catalyse divergent thinking in a structured way.

Case study: Developing a strategy for 10 years from now

Developing strategies and roadmaps in the humanitarian and development context is a complex task. It involves multitudes of stakeholder (often with very specific areas of expertise) who need to understand one another, if not reach a common understanding. Building empathy between stakeholders is key to having a meaningful conversation around priorities. HCD, with its emphasis on divergent thinking, can create a space for building empathy among stakeholders, a safe space to step into someone else’s shoes and think creatively. It is here that HCD practitioners can thrive in a facilitating role, helping structure discussions, outcomes and strategic roadmaps.

When I worked with a global foundation as a consultant on HCD, our challenge was to bring together employees to co-create a future strategy while introducing the HCD methodology. Using a HCD approach, we were able to get participants from different groups within the foundation to work together and collectively discuss how the foundation should evolve to support its global network of partners. In a workshop setting, participants stepped into the shoes of policy makers, advocates, scientists, end beneficiaries and other actors they interact with day to day. With this new perspective, they articulated how the future could impact those actors and what this could mean for the foundation’s strategy. This approach enabled participants to leave behind their roles and titles and explore the problem space from a new angle, providing a strong foundation for the definition of a new strategy.

To sum up, human-centred design can greatly improve the success of humanitarian or development projects by:

• Revealing the nuances between how the system works in theory and how people actually engage with it.

• Creating end-to-end experiences that drive adoption.

• Catalysing new perspectives and out of the box solutions.

HOW CAN WE APPLY HUMAN-CENTRED DESIGN IN THE THIRD SECTOR?

Going back to my initial question, ‘What role can human-centred design practically play in development and humanitarian work?’, I would like to finish this post by providing some concrete pointers on when and how you can incorporate HCD into your work:

• During scoping and need identification - to ensure we’re accounting for the experiences, needs, mindsets and context of the all human actors involved and not just making assumptions about what is needed.

• During solution development - to develop solutions that fit into the lives of the target group and provide an end-to-end experience that drives adoption.

• During implementation - to prototype and test solutions with users and stakeholders, to learn and iterate to improve the solutions.

• During monitoring and evaluation - to complement quantitative data on what is happening with qualitative exploration of why it is happening.

• Throughout our work - to catalyse collaboration, out of the box thinking, iterative solution development and experimentation through design sprints, co-creation workshops or methodological training.

Human-centred design is not just a high-level theory, but a practical tool that can add value over different project phases. For those who use it, it quickly becomes indispensable for achieving efficient and effective implementation. It is exciting to see its increased adoption in the global development field, yet there are still many more situations in which humanitarian or development practitioners are not taking in the whole picture, and thus missing opportunities to implement much more efficient projects and systems.

ABOUT Gunes AND OUTSIGHT INTERNATIONAL

Gunes is a researcher and service designer specialising in the development of human-centred solutions in complex stakeholder environments. She has worked as a consultant for public and private sector entities as well as global development organisations in areas including global health and financial inclusion.

Outsight International provides services to the humanitarian and development sector in an efficient and agile way. Outsight International builds on the range of expertise offered by a network of Associates in order to deliver quality results adapted to the specific tasks at hand. If you’d like to discuss working with Gunes and the Outsight team, please get in touch or follow us on LinkedIn for regular updates.