A bit of background

We are here for 16 days total, 15 of which we have packed with interviews, field visits and prototyping sessions. The last is one of the team members' birthdays and he wants to visit giraffes. I suppose I should back up a bit to give some context for the trip....

IDEO.org teamed up with a couple of other groups on a project called Amplify, which is a five year project with ten challenges aimed at improving the lives of those living in extreme poverty. For each challenge, anyone with an idea can submit it, they are voted on and five are chosen for design support from IDEO.org and funding from the Amplify consortium. The first challenge is explained here:

Introducing OpenIDEO's Women's Safety Challenge from IDEO on Vimeo.

One of the winners selected for this challenge is Kidogo, a start-up social enterprise which aims to improve the quality of babycare for residents of informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya.

I was brought on by IDEO.org as one of four designers to help develop a self-sustainable business that provides real value to two groups: babycare providers and parents. We are here in Nairobi to do research in the field about what that real value might be, then we will have three weeks in SF to bring our research together to formulate a plan.

As you can imagine I am crazy excited to be working on this - it is a perfect cross-section of my own interests & skills. I am also thrilled to be bringing strategy, marketing and finance know-how to an organization that taking social welfare out of the donor model and putting it into a self-sustainable, local and human-centered business. And, I've never been to Kenya before!