Post-Trip Report #1 : Parramos and Aquisiché

After the trip with Caltech and Art center students we programmed some trips along with other Landivar students and teams, to get more research opportunities, surveys, and general info obtained from what we saw and perceived. During this trip I decided it would be interesting to go with the shoe and honey people to the communities where they are working since that offers the opportunity to obtain info from two perspectives of  a rural town, Parramos (a more developed and suburban-ish town) and Aquisiche (a rural town, very similar to Pasajquim). This will be useful for our business plan in locating our target group.

What we wanted to know:

+ Differences in water usage (Between rural and suburban areas)
+ Differences in water knowledge (on disease, where water comes from, if its contaminated, etc)
+ Willingness to pay for a filter or potable water
+ What kind of potable water services they use, how much does it cost?
+ Perception differences (form and function)
+ Water pressure and consistency
+ Main concerns, health vs. saving money
+ Organizations, Entities people trust
+ Branding perception (name, label, info)
+ Having an employee installing and changing replacements vs. DIY
+ Strategic distributors and points of purchase (tienda, ferreteria, mercado, etc)


PARRAMOS

Parramos is in Chimaltenango, about 30 mins. from Antigua.  Surveys where made to Arnulfo and 2 of his sons (they are the family Irene and Giuseppe are working with). When asking Arnulfo about water usage he told me he knows that the water is contaminated and dirty mostly because he can SEE it, the water gets turbid in winter and you can see particles floating around.  He also knows it makes you sick drinking it and this is why he buys the 5 gallon salvavidas container (he pays about Q80.00 a month). Water from Parramos is obtained in the same way we've seen in most places (well/municipal container/rotoplas container/chorro de pila) . Water isn't constant it comes to the chorro every 2 days.  Arnulfo collects water in old oil drums and he fills his pila so that he can always have water (to water plants, wash clothes, clean patio, etc).

PROTOTYPE PERCEPTION

+ Again the chunky one was the winner, but they were all concerned about it being to long, this would represent a difficulty in filling their pilas. They were also concerned about using the filter for "not so important water", Arnulfo suggested a valve with an extra piece where he could attach a water hose to fill his oil drums and water his plants.
+ He said he would be willing to pay up to Q250.00 for the filter and no more than 25 (choca) for the replacements if they were have to be bought  every month or less. (Two replacements a month would be a reason not to buy it )
+ Ferreteria is the preferred point of purchase again, I investigated how accessible ferreterias where in the area (there are 10 in Parramos!).
+ The need of a guarantee was brought up again by them, it was interesting that they said that as long as Landivar or something from the city guaranteed it, it was ok.
+ I asked them how would they name it just to see their creativity jaja and they came up with PURIFIC (I guess it's because we have this toilet cleaner called "pato purific" yep...duck purific, and everyone now believes that purific means to purify in English haha!
+  They agreed that it seemed easy enough  to change, they said it would be useful to have demonstration on the ferreteria but that once would be enough.
+ They mentioned it would be good to have some sort of indicator that the carbon is saturated, by color or something.

AQUISICHE

+ It was kind of difficult to get info in Aquisiché, it a town very similar to Pasajquim. Aquisiché is located  really beautiful mountaintop (about 1:30 to go up the mountain in Sophie’s mega terracan!!) amazing view from there, really nice people but also really shy people.
+ To summarize it all I didn't get too much feedback, when I started asking about water they quickly replied that they get water from the mountain and that water from the mountain is clean.
+ They don't associate waterborne diseases with water contamination.
+ They drink directly from the chorro. When they get sick they go to the health stand and get free medicine, so the argument about saving on medicine or salvavidas service was useless to get their attention.
+ They where not really eager to pay for the filter (cause they think they don’t need it)

Trip Report #3 : Pasajquim : Saturday 8/22

 

Pasajquim is about a 20 minute boat ride from Luzmi's home on Lake Atitlan and then a 2 hour drive up into the mountains (or the clouds really). It's super, ridiculously beautiful along the winding roads with volcano views and steep drops off the side of the road into the clouds below.

The class has a relationship with this village that goes back at least a couple years. So, our visit had many purposes. One was to follow up on old projects (a drip irrigation system, a corn sheller), two was to work on new projects. We wanted to take water samples and test out our filter. The technical stuff. More on that later. But more importantly, we needed to do things that couldn't be done in LA and find out things we can't Google:

+ what are their attitudes to water?
+ how do they use it? (drinking, cleaning home, rinsing food, watering plants, cleaning clothes)
+ what illnesses are prevalent? (diarrhea is common and dangerous, especially for children)
+ what kinds of products do they purchase?
+ what do they spend on tap water?
+ on bottled water?
+ do they know about water illnesses? (are we going to need to educate users?)
+ what do they think of our prototypes?

Afterwards we had lunch w the villagers and then had a discussion about each project and got feedback from the villagers. It can be hard to get honest feedback because culturally, they want to be nice and welcoming, they know we're trying to help. But we were able to get criticism from them and it was very helpful. Things such as:

+ the thing needs to look better! It's pretty ugly now... it's just pvc pipe fittings. They want a label or some graphic/logo. I totally agree, but wasn't sure if it was just the American consumer in me wanting a BSO (bright shiny object)
+ stress health benefits... water is cheap in rural areas. Maybe stress money savings in urban areas where water is more expensive (this was validated later and is a huge part of our business plan)
+ demonstrate product viability at point of sale (we already knew this from the previous year's research and our own observation at Solola, but it was nice to hear again)
+ it's big... it can have a problem fitting in certain sinks if you're trying to get a bucket under it. We have to figure out how much carbon is necessary and shrink it accordingly. Paradoxically, the vast majority of users prefer our chunkier prototype because it's perceived as being more effective. We have to resolve this combination of being compact and simple, yet robust (and robust looking), yet not so slick that it appears foreign and scares people away. At last, a styling exercise that isn't superficial.
I like love this.


Water passes from a well-type thing up in the mountains (a big hole, lined with plastic, that gathers rain water). It requires a harness to climb up the mountain and get to it which sounded awesome, but wasn't gonna happen in the time we had.



Juan Carlos was giving a hand while we were testing the filter. Unfortunately, I had my hands full with the filter most of the time, so I don't have any photos of this. I'll have to ask around for more. We did learn a few things though:

+ it's really hard to screw it on tight enough so that it doesn't leak
+ once you get it on super tight, it requires Juan Carlos in order to unscrew it
+ Juan Carlos can't be sold along with the filter, so we're going to need a solution
+ fortunately, there are no shortages of solutions to leaky pipe fittings
+ since the carbon in the filter gets used up, ppl may want to disable or remove the filter when using water for certain tasks: cleaning clothes, watering plants, other things besides drinking & rinsing food
+ we don't really want ppl removing the filter often because it opens up opportunities for contamination and damage and it's an annoyance
+ a y-valve might be a nice option to offer filter-less water



Reverse view of previous shot.

More Images from the Sololá Traditional Market

Trip Report #2 : Sololá Market : Friday 8/21

On Friday we woke at 5am and drove a couple hours into the mountains to a traditional Mayan market.

We were to split into small groups and observe market behaviors:
+ What types of goods are being sold?
+ Who is buying them? (age, gender, class)
+ How are they being marketed?

A summary of our observations includes:
+ Goods sold: food, herbs, medicines, furniture, kitchen goods, basic tools
+ Everything is cheap: in quality and price
+ People have little trust in goods so aren't willing to pay much for them (which means only cheap goods are on the market) ... chicken & egg situation
+ The streets with brick & mortar shops garner a little more trust with consumers. Most of their product is bought in the city.
+ Many shops show their product in use to demonstrate quality (see fruit samples photo). There was also a man selling scissors, cutting various materials to show their strength.
+ There is very little differentiation between sellers. Preference is given to sellers whom the buyers have a personal relation with.

Here is a short video I took just to show the atmosphere at the market. It's a bit shaky, but it ends up conveying the crowded and hustled feeling quite well.



Later in the trip we decided this wasn't a good venue for our filter. People want a water filter to be reliable and the price and design can reflect that. This is inconsistent with how these markets work where things are either temporary (food) or cheap (used light switches, scissors, unfinished wood furniture, etc.)

Trip Report #1 : Thursday 8/20

I'm going to do a few posts that cover the trip chronologically.

I wish I could have posted each day during the trip, but that just wasn't possible without paying AT&T an exorbitant sum.

The trip began with a visit to Landivar University which the Guatemalan students attend. We had a couple lectures on research procedures and Guatemalan culture. Mostly review of things we covered over the summer.

The main take-away from Ken was to observe:
+ What can you see in other people's lives?
+ What product/system can be put in place to help someone make money?
+ What can they sell?
+ What can save them money?
+ What can improve their health?

The next day we would visit a brick and tile maker and TPS (Tecnologia Para la Salud) which makes dry-composting latrines, wood stoves, water pumps and other products that help people live healthy lives.

One of our teams (Diego, Orlando and Mallika) would work with the brick and tile people for the rest of the trip to optimize their production process and see what kinds of opportunities they could find to increase business, improve health, etc.

TPS was an opportunity for the wood stove group (Pablo and Stephen) and us, the water filter group, to speak with someone who distributes this type of product to Guatemalans and has direct experience with the people, production process and the distribution.

Post Trip To-Do List

We're all back and had the most amazing and productive time in Guatemala.

Before I share the day-to-day details and photos I wanted to put up the post-trip to-do list. All these are products of the tremendously helpful feedback we got from surveying people about water use, water perception and feedback on last year's prototypes. We were able to talk to many groups of people, men/women, different ages and income levels, rural/urban. Monica will continue to interview people and get feedback on each iteration of the prototype now that Peter and I have returned to LA.

Design/Engineering
1. Label / Packaging
2. Fix Leaks (fewer segments)
3. Bendable - to fit in tight spots
4. Make it easy to replace carbon reliably
5. Make appearance model(s) and send to Monica for surveying

Science
6. Formalize sampling procedure
+ supply list: filter(s), carbon, bottles/bags, knife, wrench, alcohol, clean rags, garbage bag, ladel)
+ better science: eliminate contamination by not opening filter on site, clean faucets and filters to prevent cross-contamination
7. Get test results from lab and see where prototypes stand
8. Determine component lifetimes
9. Determine amount of carbon necessary

Business
10. Determine available materials + costs
11. Analyze surveys to determine costs of existing water
12. Determine product price (using #6 and #7)
13. Distribution model and advertising
14. Target Markets
15. Research possible product guarantee - organizations, govt
16. Business plan - phases

Leaving tomorrow!

We're leaving Tuesday night from LAX.

Peter and I were supposed to get last year's prototypes from Edgardo before leaving so that we can test them in Guatemala. It will be a real shame if we can't get them in time. One of the things we must do is get user feedback from the 7 or so prototypes that we have so that we know what kind of tweaks to make regarding function or fitting it to various faucets, adapting to user behaviors and expectations of how something should be if drinking water is coming out of it.

Hopefully we'll have some photos of it in use put up here soon.