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IBM Sustainability Garage

w/ Heifer International

Design Researcher Fall 2021

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Heifer International

Heifer Logo

Working with farming families to apply climate-smart agricultural techniques

Heifer proposed co-establishing with IBM the Center for Excellence in Digital Farming.

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Sustainability Accelerator Garage w/ Heifer

The IBM Sustainability Accelerator is a pro bono social impact program that applies IBM technologies and an ecosystem of experts that are critical but inaccessible for orgs aiding populations especially vulnerable to environmental threats.

Phase 1 used IBM’s Garage Methodology to better understand the pain points of Malawi’s farmers and provide a technical roadmap for intervention.

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Objective

Increase smallholder farmer income by providing them digital technologies, which would facilitate fair prodits for their labor but are too expensive without support.

Initial Reach

100 smallholder farmers in Malawi

Scalability

1500 smallholder farmer coops globally

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Garage Method

IBM Garage is a framework for accelerating digital transformation. It helps generate innovative ideas and equips orgs with the practices, technologies and expertise to turn those ideas into business value in weeks.

For this project, we introduced specialized sustainability focuses into the process.

I was a part of the Phase 1: Co-Create Effort to discover, validate and ideate on user pain points and deliver a technical roadmap for Phase 2: Co-Execute.

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Phase 1: Co-Create

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Kick Off

1 Week

Align on vision and user outcomes

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Discovery

Design Thinking

2 Weeks

2 Weeks

Explore user personas, needs, and as-is experience

Explore big ideas and to-be experiences

Identify technical areas of interest and requirements

Identify milestones, risks, and assumptions

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Golden Thread

2 Weeks

Create a to-be journey

Validate with SMEs and end user

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Technical Roadmap

3 Weeks

Co-create the roadmap

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Design Research

I was a part of the design research team for this project. We conducted:

  • 2 Discovery Workshops

  • 5 Sponsor User Interviews

  • 2 Validation Sessions

with Malawai and Honduras users as well as SMEs from Heifer and IBM.

*To learn more about the personas we crafted, the challenges we identified, and any of our other findings please request access.

Media Coverage

This portfolio is still under construction, please pardon any strangeness you may encounter.

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