Cover page of our Pitch Deck
Background:
Educational development is one topic I am very passionate about, and I was more than thrilled to contribute to the development of an education-focused solution, as an Innovate for Africa (IFA) Fellow!
The IFA fellowship, which is ongoing, included a hackathon which is an event in which teams work on creating solutions to identified problems, and often lasts for a few hours or days. IFA fellows worked in teams to design effective solutions to significant problems in fields such as education, agriculture, healthcare and transportation.
My team, consisting of two other fellows and I, chose to work on an education-focused solution. We had to use the design thinking framework to create a product that would deliver true value to our intended users. We went through the stages of empathising with target users, defining the problem, ideating, prototyping and testing our intended solution.
It was a remarkable journey for me as I contributed to my team’s work by creating sketches for our prototype, conducting empathy interviews, co-designing my team’s pitch deck, and testing our prototype alongside my team mates. This process taught me never to assume that I know the solution to a problem until I have spoken to those who are directly affected. My team discovered the solution to the problem on the journey. Yes, we had hypotheses and assumptions to start with. But we kept changing our approach to solving the problem as more data and insights arrived!
Our Product:
EdSponsor is a digital educational financing platform that connects enthusiastic donors to kids who do not have access to basic education due to poverty and to public schools needing urgent infrastructural upgrade.
We chose to focus on making a product that would enable educational financing after our learning from our primary market research. The name “EdSponsor” was coined from a combination of ‘Education’ and ‘Sponsor’. So, an EdSponsor is someone who sponsors education. And our ultimate goal is to drive national development by investing in the target indigent kids and underserved public schools, so EdSponsor exists for the “….financing basic education for national development”.
The process of our discovery of this solution has been laid out in the next section.
The Process:
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). Our work progressed along these lines:
Empathy - First, we are very concerned about indigent children who are not receiving basic education. They are being shut out of the opportunities that the 21st century holds for them, with resultant effects on them, their family and the nation. Through our user interviews, we got to know what life looks like from the perspective of kids. So, we thought, how could we enable them access basic education? We had to create personas which are fictional description of the kids we are targeting as a guide on a journey.
Define - Having found those we want to help - the kids, we needed to define what the problem was exactly and why the problem exists. This led us to create our problem statement, which, summarily was, “How might we enable indigent children who are out of school to access basic education in Nigeria?”
Ideate - We then set out to brainstorm, thinking up various ideas that could address the problem, and using tools such as Stormboard for collaboration during as we came up with ideas. Each member set out individually to think (divergent thinking). The team then met to share ideas and narrow down our options (convergent thinking). Still, we tried to keep our eyes on the problem, and not rush at any solution yet. It was a continuous cycle of brainstorming, gathering data and adjusting our approach.
Further down the line, data revealed that poverty was indeed a key barrier to these kids’ access to learning, as was directly stated/inferred by 83.3% of our interviewees. So, that got us thinking: the answer to poverty in this case is funding. How then do we get money as a leverage for these kids to get into and stay in school? We need donors! This finding took us back to the stage of defining the problem and adjusting our problem statement that now read something like this:
How might we build a digital educational financing product that will attract donors to sponsor the education of indigent children who do not have access to basic education due to financial and infrastructural constraints, while offering top value for donor investment?
Our scope was therefore expanded to include donors, individuals and corporate entities. We had to create donor personas as well and gather data that would help better understand donors and their needs.
Also, this helped us to segment those we are targeting. We had a group of persons that would be using our product directly, the donors, and those that would be beneficiaries, the indigent children. Since, donors would the users of our platform, we decided to design EdSponsor primarily with the donors in mind. We thereafter moved to the next phase of crafting what our product would look like.
Prototype - A prototype is a representation of an intended product which gives other people a clear understanding of the product that the innovator intends to create. In our case, we wanted to build EdSponsor as a website and, later on, a mobile app too. So, we started with paper sketches and then made an interactive prototype using Balsamiq.
This is how or intended solution works: A user (donor) signs up, views a database of indigent children or public schools in dire need, selects a child or school they would like to sponsor and give funds via secure gateway.
Screenshots of our prototype can be seen below:
The Homepage:
The user login page:
User's dashboard, showing the kids and project (s) they already support:
User's view of potential beneficiaries (schools):
User's view of additional details and invitation to sponsor:
Secure payment gateway for sponsorship:
Post-transaction page:
The relationship does not end at the point giving! Our dedicated team stays in touch with donors, share updates on child’s progress and could even arrange a visit to the benefiting child/school as donor desires, thus creating a truly immersive experience for both user (donor) and beneficiary (child/school).
Test - Finally, we took our prototype and subjected it to testing by some users. We noted their feedback and applied this to making improvements on the product.
Pitch - Finally, our product was pitched before a team of judges and other IFA fellows! Our effort was lauded and counsel for further improvement was received. For our team, the journey has not ended yet as our desire to make real impact on real persons through EdSponsor lingers!
My Takeaways:
This process really taught me to listen and watch out for true user needs and never assume a solution. I must rather discover the solution, as I learn and allow my learning to shape my approach to solving the problem! It has also taught me that innovation is not a one-way road! Innovators have to keep going back and forth in the design thinking loop of empathising, defining, ideating, prototyping, and testing the intended solution until the version that meets the user’s need the most emerges. And this I look forward to applying these on my future endeavours in innovation and serving humanity.