While one of our students was in Ghana they made a great video about the trial. Hear from our first customers what they feel about how the project is going.

Finally the time has arrived when the Uniloo team will get to test their business model and the idea of an in-home portable toilet during a 6 month trial.

Arriving in Accra to find out my internal flight was cancelled and I needed to get a 6hr bus trip, which turned into an 8hr bus journey toKumasi, was not the best of starts to setting up the trial. When I arrived in Kumasi I was happily greeted by the project coordinator Asantewa and the two students from Cranfield University Simon and Clemens. We moved into the project house and the long journey was forgotten as there was great energy in the team.

The first thing to do was to sort the warehouse for the delivery of the Torp-Isak portable toilets (great toilet all the way from Separett in Sweden), the closest commercially built model currently on the market to the Uniloo design. Once the toilets arrived it was time to arrange the branding of the toilets and getting the uniforms and t-shirts ready. With the project we have tried to use local talent as much as possible. We managed to get great uniforms made by sourcing fabric in the local market and getting a tailor to make them. What a great job he did.

The polo shirts, the printing of the passbooks, receipts books, business cards and all marketing materials were all produced and compiled locally. The results looked really good and professional.

At the end of week1 I knew we were in for a long journey but we had a great weekend watching our project coordinator Asantewa graduate with her masters from KNUST technical University in Kumasi.

Key Learnings:

Logistics are a nightmare; always have a plan B when working in Africa.

Week 2: Contracts and waste containers

Week 2 started off similar to week 1, my internal flight to Accra to meet with Unilever Ghana was cancelled. This turned out to be a good thing as there was so much work in Kumasi to be done. Our aim in week 2 was make sure the new recruits into the project, the Waste Collector, Service Associate, Contract Manager and Project Contractor were all trained up.

This was a very interesting part of starting up the trial, teaching people about sanitation and good hygiene who had little education in the area before. Everyone in the group really enjoyed the training as we tried to make it as interactive as possible using good, bad and in-between cards to indicate how to improve hygiene. The training was held at the offices of the Waste Management Department of the KMA, reflecting their ongoing support to the project.

The next phase was the practical training/interviews for the workers. We decided the best way to select the workers was to see how they performed in the field first. This was a good idea as candidates who flourished in the classroom fell apart on the field. The most worrying thing we found was the alcohol abuse by the workers in the sanitation field.

Key Learnings:

Getting the contract with the operators set up was a real challenge and a great learning for the future. Managing the stakeholders is very important in any project.

Week 3: Shipping containers and setting up for first loo delivery

We now had reached a point where everything was coming together; we had our uniforms, payments books and staff. A challenge we did not envisage was trying to find an old shipping container to store our items at the waste collection site. We spent 2 days driving all over Kumasi and following up on leads to buy/rent a container. We also needed to buy a poly tank to store water for the cleaning of the waste containers and preparing the toilet chemical. Our student from CranfieldUniversity, who was tasked with analysing the waste, was also having challenges in terms of finding the correct measuring equipment locally. The week ended well with us finding a container and purchasing a poly tank.

Week 3 was a definitely the week of challenges, one of the biggest is importing things into Ghana! Week 3 ended with us finally receiving the waste containers and intermediate bulk storage container (IBC) which allowed us to get toilets into peoples home for the proposed start date. The containers had gotten stuck in Luxembourg and we needed to write a letter to the commissioner to get them released a long story but a good learning.

Key Learnings:

A key learning from the week is that cash is king in Africa; you cannot get anything done without showing the money.

Week 4: First toilet, first family, first day

The day finally arrived when the first loo was going to be installed. This turned out to be much more of a challenge than we could ever imagine; finding a time when people are home and ready to receive the toilet was not easy. On the first day we managed to install 2 toilets which was a great achievement considering all the hard work and challenges the team had in the preceding weeks. The first families were very happy to receive the loos.  We also realised that we needed a handy man to help with the installation of the toilets.

The first problem we had was that the toilets began to smell after 1 day, we reacted quickly and corrected the chemical in the toilet to reduce the smell. The families appreciated that we are working on as trial and gave us great feedback. By the end of the week we had 14 families, stabilized the issues with smell, most families had used the toilet and had been serviced at least once. Before we handed out the toilets we did a survey on expectations and once the toilets were handed out we did another survey. This gave us great data and helps us prevent unhappy early customers as all our customers were very happy with there new toilets and the service.

When we handed out the toilets we also gave families  “do and don’t” and “how to use” posters. The families found this incredibly helpful.

The best part about the start-up was that we had people coming up to us all the time asking if they could sign-up for a toilet. We even had people calling us from other parts of the city asking when we would be starting up in their area. We also got our final delivery of Unilever products so we could provide the families with some great cleaning products for their new toilet service. During the week I also paid a visit to Unilever Ghana, where I met the MD who gave his blessing to the project and some great insights to growing the business.

During the start up week we also had a visit from the KMA Waste Management senior manager who was very impressed with the start up and even suggested areas in Kumasi for the 2^nd phase role out. We also informed the KMA of which families were involved in the trial so that they could do an independent evaluation of the project. The best part of the KMA visit was when a member of the community came up and asked where he could sign up for the service, so all very positive.

At the end of the first week of the trial we had managed to install 14 toilets, solved the issues with smell and had all the equipment for the trial in place (trolley made locally from old pipes). What an accomplishment by the team!!

The time had arrived for me to head home; I had a fantastic time inKumasiand was happy to leave knowing that the project was in good hands of the project coordinator Asantewa. I felt that during the time setting up the trial The Clean Team was successful because we did everything with a smile and positive attitude. We were all very aware of the sensitivity of sanitation and gave families and people working in the area the greatest of respect. The positive attitude rubbed off onto the families and the people we worked worth. We attracted wonderful people, from our driver to the waste collector; everyone was positive and hard working. Thank you to everyone – lets keep the Clean Team spirit up.

Thanks so much for your interest in our blog, and for all your support and suggestions. We’ve put a lot of effort into defining what we believe is the best current solution for urban sanitation in developing areas such as Kumasi, and as always we welcome any thoughts or feedback to build on these designs.

Ghanasan Design Summary PDF

Testing a prototype with a family in Kumasi

One of the toughest things about prototyping in the field is having to explain to people why you need to take the prototype away after they have tried it. Several families we met with said that now that we had gotten them thinking about having a toilet in their homes, and now that they had experienced it for a couple days, they really want one.

Unfortunately, because there is currently no service provision for emptying the waste from the small toilets, it’s also not right to leave the toilets with the families after we return to the U.S. They would have no safe place to dump the waste and it would likely contaminate the soil and water of their communities.

So, we’re a bit stuck. Fortunately, the pilot test will be moving forward within the next few months which will allow many families to have access to both the product and the service. Additionally, it’s really encouraging to see such a high level of interest in the concept from the families who experienced the toilets, which makes us optimistic about this program moving forward and scaling quickly.

- Jocelyn (@jocelynw)

Suame Magazine

We visited Suame Magazine over the weekend, a massive area housing some 200,000 artisan engineers hard at work. The majority of the manufacturing center seems to be focused on auto repair and aftermarket fabrication, but there are a lot of special little places doing their own sand-casting and custom machining. Really inspiring  for us as designers.

SMIDO is an organization working to unify and develop the offering of the many small shops here, and plans to introduce safety standards (badly needed). http://www.smidoghana.org/about.html

These rolling carts (in the background) are all over the city, and are incredibly simple and well built. You see many loaded with hundreds of pounds of goods or materials lumbering down the narrow aisles of Central Market.

Rebar

Rebar is used in so many ways here, from this crowbar and tail light guard above to the grills of the cooking stove below.

Sign Painting

We’ve also been impressed by the beautiful painted signs advertising businesses around Kumasi. The best are probably the barber shops, check out the Tupac one.

Not just a barber, a barber with a toilet.

Yes We Can (become consumers) Shop.

Tiles

Tiles are extremely popular, and this broken tile pattern is in almost every washroom.

and…Cheap Plastic.

Cheap plastic products are ubiquitous in Ghana. These somewhat beautiful plastic teapots sell for about $0.20 US each.

That’s all for now, we’ll post some more shots from this rich environment soon.

- the Ghanasan team

Adam reviewing potential changes to our prototype with a Kumasi family

At IDEO, designers live by the mantra “fail early, fail often,” and we’ve kept true to that this week here in Ghana. After leaving four toilet prototypes with families to test for a few days, we met with the families and came across some pointed criticisms from the users. It’s these failures, early in the process, that help us understand how to improve our designs, and we were glad to hear them. Overall, though, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and gives us great hope for the future of in-home sanitation.

A few notes from our conversations:

• Haija, with whom we had met several months ago, was intrigued by our prototypes, but came away confused after a few days with them. In her 70′s, she had potentially the most to gain from in-home sanitation (no more walking to the public toilet! no more squatting!), but the complexity of the prototype we left with her and her family was overwhelming, and she suggested we simplify it dramatically to ensure it can be used and understood by children, the elderly and everyone in-between.
• Kamal, an assemblyman and an upstanding member of his community, had some complaints about the smell of one prototype and it’s location in the home, but also noted, “This is the first time I’ve sat on a toilet since grade school,” and after giving us a handful of useful suggestions, was inspired by the possibility of having a toilet in his home full-time.
• Mohammed, another friend from our previous visit, gave us some great feedback on pricing and helped us understand what value the toilets might have in the home. While some families politely told us that sanitation is a much higher priority than television or mobile phones, Mohammed pointed out that he’s already got a way to dispose of his waste (albeit not hygienic or pleasant, by his standards). So if he came upon harder times, he’d choose to pay for things that he couldn’t do on his own, like entertainment and mobile phones. Though he still placed significant value on sanitation, this was a good reminder of why it’s critical to design an aspirational service- one that provides more than basic sanitation and hygiene, but dignity, pride and satisfaction as well…

All in all, a very positive first week, failures and all. We’ve left the toilets with another group of families for the weekend, and are anxiously awaiting their feedback tomorrow. Fingers crossed!

One of our prototypes installed in a home in Kumasi

One of the families we left the prototypes with this weekend

-Danny Alexander, IDEO (@dalexdalex)

Explaining the toilet's functionality to the families

After a long (very long) journey from San Francisco to Kumasi, we’re excited to say we’ve made it safely, toilets and all.

We brought with us 5 toilet prototypes, a mixture of some off-the-shelf portable toilets and some that we designed and built back in California, and have already left them with families here in Kumasi to test. We’ll be returning in two days to empty and clean the toilets and get the families’ feedback, but initial reactions have been overwhelmingly positive. The elderly, in particular, are excited about the possibility of not walking to the public toilets everyday, but we’re excited to see how the whole family feels about them after a couple days.

After we get a better sense of how the families use the toilets, we’ll modify them and give them to new families, repeating the process and testing as many ideas as we can in the two weeks we’re here in Kumasi. Prototype, test, refine, repeat.

While we’re prototyping with users here in Kumasi, we’d love to know your thoughts on portable toilets. Have you used a portable toilet before? What worked well? What would you change? We’d love to hear your feedback!

-Danny Alexander, IDEO (@dalexdalex)

One of the families we're testing our prototypes with

Danny and IDEO designer Jessie Silver building toilet prototypes

It’s been a while since we’ve updated, but we’ve been hard at work prototyping some of our concepts to bring back to Kumasi for user feedback. This weekend, after weeks of building, we’ll be on our way, toilets and all!

We’ll be in Ghana for two weeks, and will have six functional toilet prototypes with us. We’ll leave the toilets with several families throughout the city to get their feedback on the various functional elements, service scenarios and initial market positioning before returning to San Francisco to refine the prototypes further.

Adam Reineck (an uber-talented IDEO Industrial Designer  and the newest member of the Ghanasan team), Jocelyn Wyatt and I will do our best to update the blog while we’re in the field to share our experiences. And if you see a few designers boarding a plane to Ghana with 6 toilets in hand, be sure to say hello!

-Danny Alexander, IDEO (@dalexdalex)

We’ve come to the end of the first phase of the Ghanasan project and are thrilled to share our deliverable which includes both research findings and opportunity areas from the IDEO team as well as concepts that inspired us from the OpenIDEO challenge.

Please share your comments or questions with us. We look forward to your feedback as we begin the next phase of this project with Unilever and WSUP next week. We’ll keep up the blogging and Tweeting as we continue to prototype and learn.

Thank you all for your fantastic contributions to OpenIDEO! This work is so much stronger because of all that you have done to support it.

With our extended team, we reviewed the submissions from OpenIDEO and were incredibly inspired by all the great ideas and the tremendous amount of work that went in to creating the concepts. We selected 22 concepts for evaluation and are feeding them in to the final deliverable.

After evaluation is complete, we’ll post the final document here. Thank you OpenIDEO community for all your great work on this challenge! We can’t tell you how useful it’s been!