CHALLENGE
Help USAID and IGES reduce the outbreaks of mosquito-borne diseases by engaging students with collecting mosquito data in their communities and sharing it with the scientific community and the world.
OUTCOME
A gamified citizen science platform that empowers users to reduce the risk of mosquito borne diseases in their communities, ensuring collection of and access to higher quality validated data, while having fun.
The platform introduces a gamified experience to the data collection and elimination process while following a narrative on the app. The more data the citizen scientists collect the more points they receive to move forward in the game.
The goal of the game is for the player to become the ‘Genius’ scientist by completing all the missions in the ‘lab notebook’, collecting all the medals, and having the latest and most advanced lab.
GENERAL INFO
Partners
Dalberg Design, USAID Global Health Challenge, IGES, NASA Globe
Team
Daniela V Sánchez, Maria Alejandra Sandoval, and Pragya Mishra
Location
Peru and New York
Role
Design Strategist and UI/UX Consultant
CONTEXT
“On February 1, 2016, the World Health Organization declared the Zika virus and associated health threats an international public health emergency”
To stop the spread of infectious disease outbreaks USAID launched “Combating Zika and Future Threats: A Grand Challenge for Development”. The challenge called upon the global innovator community to generate cutting-edge approaches. As a result, Dalberg Design was brought in by USAID to conduct research and provide recommendations that could help make an existing piloted platform created by IGES into a more engaging digital experience for tween students.
RESEARCH
“Because of our meeting with the municipality we can no longer use containers for flowers in the cemetery, now we have to put flowers in a green sponge. We stopped being the spectators and became a part of the action - by sharing our work with the community and involving the local municipality.”
Focused on analyzing and understanding the use and impact of piloted app “Go Mosquito Habitat Mapper” in Peru. The research, served as a case study for the app’s potential impact for world-wide communities vulnerable to mosquito-borne diseases.
Through our research we found the following three main points:
Citizen scientists act as multipliers of knowledge in their families, neighborhoods and communities, engaging other stakeholders with the data.
Stakeholders and communities use the collected data to, on the one hand, share it with the global scientific community and guide public health policy, and on the other, to influence local change in the community.
Despite its benefits, all users found the app confusing to use, with too many complicated processes that were difficult to understand for children and parents alike. This confusion led to issues of data validity, incomplete submissions, and user disappointment.
Ultimately, these insights led us to create initial prototypes and co-creation exercises that further explored the concerns and benefits of the app.
MY ROLE
I joined the Dalberg design team as a design strategist and UI/UX consultant for the course of 4 weeks. My role in the project focused on three core areas:
Research - planning and creating activities and prototypes for gaining feedback during in-country research.
Synthesizing Learnings - synthesizing learnings from users and communicating findings in a co-creation workshop with all the stakeholders involved.
Creating Final Outcome - developing the final concept and list of recommendations for the next version of the platform.
DIAGRAMS
Information Architecture
Theory of Change
Game break-down
App development over time