EDSPONSOR

Overview:

EdSponsor is a digital product aimed at financing basic education for national development in Nigeria. It was developed during a hackathon at the Innovate for Africa (IFA) Fellowship 2021, and is currently at the prototype phase.

I and two IFA fellows collaborated on its design during the hackathon.

Skills and Proficiency I demonstrated on the Project: Collaboration, User Research, Prototype Design and Testing, and Pitch Deck Design

The Problem: About 10.5 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 do not have access to basic education in Nigeria (UNICEF). Data from our primary research and secondary sources reveal that poverty and infrastructural deficits in public schools to the learning of such children.

The Process: My team was a 3-man team of IFA fellows.

We approached the problem using Design Thinking. It is a problem-solving approach that requires that we focus on the user and their needs, and not a solution. It also demands continuous improvement (iterations) to our problem-solving approach as we learn more about the user and their points of needs (pain points).

We conducted interviews to empathise with our target users (donors) and beneficiaries (indigent children, parents, and teachers), defined the problem, ideated for possible solutions, prototyped and tested our solution. Feedback received from the tests were then used to improve the product.

Result: Using paper sketches and a tool called Balsamiq, we created a web prototype of our platform, outlining the user journey in images shown in the gallery above.

Reflection: In the course of working on this solution, I learnt the following:

Never assume a solution until you have spoken to those affected by the problem in view. They know better.
To truly meet user needs, focus on the problem, not the solution.
Innovation is not a one-way road. It demands multiple iterations, collaboration, and the grit to keep working until the best solution possible is discovered, designed, and deployed.

More details on the context surrounding the project could be found here.