D:LAB FELLOWS WORKSHOP ON NOV 26, 2015
November 26, 2015
Where?: Mcnulty Foundation Design Lab in the King Engineering building
When?: Nov 26, 2015, 1:30pm – 2:30pm
This workshop afforded three Fellows to kick start or re-analyse their projects by applying design thinking frameworks with the help of other interested members fo the Ashesi community. See the projects below.
Title: Design Thinking Ashesi PR By: Michael Quansah Brief: Ashesi’s Public Relations team is the main communications arm of Ashesi. We handle both internal and external communication on Ashesi’s behalf through a number of media; social media (web), print, a couple of times radio and also television. Our current modus operandi is tailored towards storytelling and should be able to inform and inspire audiences ranging from high-school students to potential donors, and to parents and college students.
Currently, we rely on the Ashesi website as the main portal for all of our communication and engagement with our ‘followers.’
We want to use design thinking to expand our reach and also engage and recruit followers for Ashesi on all our platforms with fresh, strong and relevant content consistent with the Ashesi dream.
Title: How to build a community around digital fabrication at Ashesi By: DK Osseo-Asare, Project Lead, D:Lab FabHub Brief: Digital fabrication is science fiction in real life, and it’s already changing the world in mind-blowing ways. Just as major technological breakthroughs like the wheel, printing press, steam engine and computer revolutionized how we think, see, feel, communicate, move and live so too digital fabrication represents a major transition in human history. The power of computers and the rise of the Digital Age has been celebrated because it allows machines to network human intelligence, and do thinks quicker, faster, cheaper and more reliably.
Digital fabrication goes even further—it enables computers to move beyond cyberspace and directly make things in the real world. Already today millions of 3D printers around the world are being used to help build household objects, furniture, cars, planes, buildings, food, clothing and even “living” human body parts and organs made out of cell tissue. Ashesi is poised to play a leadership role in this next phase technological progress, in Africa and beyond.
I want to use design thinking to understand how to build a community around digital fabrication at Ashesi.
Title: Open Virtual Reality By: Kabiru Seidu and Jonathan Dotse
Brief: We are passionate about VR technology and the potential it has to transform the ways in which we craft and share our ideas, stories, and experiences. Our aim is to support the development of a sustainable VR ecosystem that will enable people in Africa to take part in this new media revolution.
We are thinking of an Open VR Project to be structured into three sub-projects, software development, hardware design, and content production.
We want to use design thinking to help us develop a long-term roadmap for our project.
D:LAB FELLOWS WORKSHOP ON NOV 18, 2015
November 18, 2015
Where?: Mcnulty Foundation Design Lab in the engineering building
When?: Nov 18, 2015, 10:10am – 11:40am
This workshop afforded three Fellows to kick start or re-analyse their projects by applying design thinking frameworks with the help of other interested members fo the Ashesi community. See the projects below.
Title: TRIGGER
By: Jesse Clifford Akosa
Brief: I have observed that in many situations, attitude towards work or academics can be inhibited by unstable emotions and hence depleting effective human production. In some situations, people are driven to extremes such as suicide and murder. Consider bipolar patients who have to always keep their sanity in check through drugs and other avenues. They cannot let their emotions overcome their thinking and cause disruptions in their lives and that of friends and loved ones. Given these issues, I have set out to find a module which will be able to trigger desired emotions in humans using audio and visual aids. This is not to say emotions are bad, but why should we let them dictate our actions when we can control them for our benefit and that of society?
Title: SPRING BLOOM
By: Itumeleng Ralebitso
Brief: I am currently working on an initiative I started during the summer called SPRING BLOOM. A group of 6 youth from SOS Children’s Village Maseru, Lesotho, came together to get other youth from underprivileged backgrounds to finally proclaim that, “Winter has come and gone, not to crush us but to provide us with the necessary conditions for spring. The SPRING season is here and we are ready to help each other BLOOM.” Most people from disadvantaged backgrounds in Lesotho are unable to eventually excel in school, work and in life generally; not because they do not have capacity and skills but because their scarring backgrounds have left them without the very much needed self-worth and self-efficacy. SPRING BLOOM exists to help these people to heal and rise above their situations. We hope to do this by helping them get involved in their own development; a psychological approach that has proved effective. Based on my own experiences as an SOS child, and from numerous conversations with the SOS youth, I have realized that a lot of them are talented but are not motivated to try and develop and use their talents because of lack of self-esteem. We have already started and there are a number of challenges, hence I seek to use design thinking process and other design tools to find a way of intersecting psychology and arts; my passions, as well as business administration to make the project sustainable.
Title: Inculcating fun and entertainment into the busy stressful academic life of an Ashesi student.
By: Chris Nana Ampadu
Brief: Most Ashesi students find the location of the school campus very far away from their social lives. The campus barely has any recreational centers and going out to meet friends to have a good time requires a lot of money for transportation, a lot of spare time to cover the distance and an upgraded endurance for terrible roads. Alas, a nice outdoor event is organized for students and nobody turns up, because if you are not doing a group/individual project you either have an assignment/discussion/quiz/exam/presentation to prepare for.
Frustration then sets in; you are far away from your social life in a remote location, and you cannot even make time to relax when a social event comes to you. This often leads to the academically productive albeit the stressful life of most Ashesi students and I aim to use design thinking and analysis to find ways to bridge this gap and create a more holistic university experience.
FELLOWS WORKSHOP
November 11, 2015
The agenda for the day was to help D:Lab fellows who had projects they were working on and needed help in thinking through their projects with the design thinking methodologies.
Where?: Mcnulty Foundation Design Lab When?: Nov 11, 2015, 10:10am – 11:40am
This workshop afforded three Fellows to kick start or re-analyse their projects by applying design thinking frameworks with the help of other interested members fo the Ashesi community. See the projects below.
Title: Inculcating a saving culture among High School and Campus Students By: Alex Waweru Brief: Developing a saving culture is crucial in every rapidly growing economy. As noted in many case studies, Japan and Singapore to mention a few, an increased saving culture precedes a boom in the economy. My hope is that this will be the case for Ghana too. In the same manner that a fine clay pot is molded while still wet, I intend to be a saving culture in young high school students, at the same time create a business model out of it. I aim to design a simple, easy and realistic approach to saving.
Title: The Crafters Incubator By: Nepeti Nicarnor Brief: Artisans in Africa have tremendous skill and know-how which are not fully exploited for self and national development. I believe Africa needs people who are makers in addition to thinkers because we have become so dependent on imports of value- added goods. This dependency exports our job opportunities elsewhere and leaves us trapped in low income, low-quality living, and low-value production cycle. I believe artisans (carpenters, tailors, welders, auto mechanics, etc.) are our Makers and have a great potential to turn their own lives and our economies around if they can be given holistic support. This support needs to include: capacity building in developing entrepreneurial and design thinking mindsets, links to technical expertise, as well as access to quality equipment & inputs, markets and efficient business systems and processes. My goal is to develop an environment that offers this holistic support to artisans to grow this industry and raise its productivity and profitability levels and catapult it into the mainstream economy. I want to use design thinking tools to establish a profitable business model for doing this.
Title:The Kaya Childcare Center By: Rose Dodd Brief: I have always noticed the porters in the market, as I’m sure we all have. They work hard, running after moving vehicles; carrying heavy loads on their heads in the hot sun, and even sometimes having to physically fight for work. They’re in every major market in Accra, sometimes with babies as little as 4 weeks old strapped to their backs. Yes, we cannot save all the underage porters on the streets of Accra but what if we could provide a safer environment for their at-risk babies and infants. The Kaya Childcare Center, which I have chosen to name my venture, will aim at providing health and early childhood development care for babies and infants of these young porter mothers. The main aim is to get the babies away from the hectic daily ups and downs of their porter mothers and give them the chance to be healthy and well developed. Kaya Childcare will run as a non-profit dawn-to-late-evening childcare center that takes only babies and infants of homeless and underprivileged Kayayoo (female porters). The center will, therefore, take on some attributes of a home or orphanage as well as attributes of a daycare center. As such it will provide care only within set hours of the day and will not provide overnight care.
ANALOGIZING THE ASHESI D:LAB WITH ASHESI DONORS
September 28, 2015
This was a workshop to develop analogies to characterize the Ashes D:Lab from a donor’s perspective. Donors presented these analogies with participants who came.
Donors developed analogies to represent the Ashesi D:Lab from their perspective. The question for the day was “How might we make the Ashesi D:Lab an Engine for transnational development in Ghana and across Africa”. Donors came with analogies such as an avalanche.
DESIGN THINKING GHANA’S 40 YEARS DEVELOPMENTAL PLAN WITH THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CLASS
September 23, 2015
This was a workshop to brainstorm on different archetypes of the Ghanaian workforce evolving along a forty-year timeline in collaboration with the Ashesi University College Development Economics class.
The D:Lab helped the Economics Development class and the Ashesi Community to use design thinking to come up with a development plan for Ghana, The event started off with Faculty, Mr. Ebo Spio and Dr. Adomdza in a panel discussion on what Ghana should focus on in the developmental plan. After the discussion, archetypes were developed to help participants step into the shoes of these archetypes.
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