TU Delft Global Initiative

Mariana | SPD | Awareness and accessibility of the menstrual pads in Uganda

On the last week in Uganda I did a workshop with the Makapads team. It was a very productive session where everyone was engaged and got excited about the future solutions. One main learning is that it’s important to empathize with the people in the company and their vision. As they are the ones who will implement the solution, if they don’t agree or believe that you have their best interest, this might be a barrier for implementation.

The last thing I was missing was testing with users. It’s challenging to go from research to design. In order to not put too much pressure in this phase and get paralized, I created an MVP with posters to test the visual input and the messages. We tested it quick and dirty, went to a school, and talked to some girls to get their input.

This is how my iterative design process starts as I'm returning to The Netherlands.

After all these weeks, it’s sad to leave, but exciting to bring this project to life.

Mariana | SPD | Awareness and accessibility of the menstrual pads in Uganda

During the last week, I did interviews with relevant stakeholders for the project. I spoke with two girls to talk about their experience with menstruation, what they know and who they talk to about their period. We also explored the relevant characteristics of menstrual pads.
I interviewed VHTs (Village Health Team) as an interesting point of distribution of pads and information in the village communities. We talked about their role in their community and the way that they mobilize information and health programs.

Both provided really interesting insights, key to make the strategy work.

Reflecting on my work, I was too optimistic on the planning. It’s tiring to be on the field, so it’s important to alternate days to do interviews and others to process the information. As I was alone, something that worked very well was having canvases with the activities for the interviewees. It helped to guide my notes and make the processing of information easier. The parts of the interviews where I didn’t have this guide made it confusing on the notes I had to take.

Lessons learned and onto the next steps!