Partner: SETCO Automotive, SETCO Foundation

Key Stakeholders: Local Government and Health Clinics

Community: Dolatpura, Gujarat

Challenge: How can we support Dolatpura women to address health challenges and empower them to advocate for better health conditions?

India struggles with addressing health challenges, especially of women health challenges. In Dolatpura, poor sanitation systems and traditional smoke stoves cause major health problems for both women and children. Due to open defecation, the community is flooded with fecal matter related illnesses during monsoon season. Another challenge is with the traditional stoves, which release smoke into non-ventilated kitchen spaces that cause respiratory issues. The University of Michigan’s BLUELab India Project (BLIP) team collaborated with SETCO Automotive to launch sustainable, chimney stoves and composting toilets to improve preventative health problems. The BLIP team designed a stove with a chimney and collaborated with the local government to build composting toilets.

Impact of Design in the Community:

0% harmful smoke inhalation by women

1,000+ stoves built within Kalol

25% of the women were trained to build stoves and earn an income (approx. 200 rupees per stove)

Design Role: Project Co-Lead

I led the team in conducting ethnographic research, concept development, rapid prototyping, and iteration through participatory design. I synthesized research insights from community interviews, tours, observations, and other immersion activities to develop a strategy for innovative solutions. As the sole native Gujarati speaker, I facilitated discussions between key stakeholders and my team.

METHODOLOGY

Ethnographic Research to Define the Problem

I led digital ethnographic research to understand the way of life, cultural/gender norms, and built environment of India. I shared my research with the design team to educate them on the ethnography of both India and rural Gujarat. In india, my team and I conducted ethnographic research through group and one on one interviews with community members, expert interviews with key stakeholders, shadowed men and women to understand their day to day routine, and toured the community. The research allowed us to understand the community and their interaction with their environment, challenges experienced throughout their day, past/existing countermeasures and their gaps, and aspirations of the community. My team and I shared our inspirational moments and key findings of five key health challenges. Through a prioritization assessment, we selected two of the five health challenges: open defecation and smoke-stoves.

Concept Generation, Co-Creation, and Prototype

As a team, we brainstormed numerous solutions by sharing our ideas, consolidating parts of ideas that worked, visualizing them through sketches, and conducting desktop research to explore other possibilities. Through a feasibility assessment, the design team identified two potential solutions for two problems: composting toilets and chimney-stoves. We connected with community members and key stakeholders to gain their feedback on the proposed solutions, modified our designs with their suggestions, and co-designed to gain consensus. We decided to focus on stoves for our first prototype. As a team, we were able to make a successful prototype in Ann Arbor. We built the prototype with the community and tested it. The prototype failed. One of the community members pointed out that the airway and pots/pan chamber is too wide causing smoke to exist through the gaps instead of the chimney. We continued to rapidly prototype additional stoves.

Design Implementation to Reflection and Evaluation

We tested our prototype, and it successfully met the design specifications. The community reacted positively and approved the 5th prototype for implementation. We collaborated with Sumitraben, community member and stove builder, to pilot the prototype for 3 months and understand the viability of the chimney structure. Throughout the time, my team and I collaborated with SETCO Automotive and SETCO Foundation to develop a sustainability plan with a business model, allocate resources for scaling this technology, and identify KPIs to measure impact of technology in the community. I collaborated with SETCO Foundation to host workshops with women stove builders to share the stoves design, brought awareness of the health benefits of a chimney stove, and shared our plans to scale this technology within the community. We continued to monitor and evaluate our solution.