Portfolio of Ryan Hubbard
I believe in applying design thinking to social problems.
I'm a systems engineer transitioning into the world of user-centered design and social entrepreneurship.
I've helped grow a fledgling college in Boston and worked on the product team for the best web startup in London. I've helped Ashoka design and pilot an initiative to accelerate social innovation in cities, and now I'm providing strategy and service design consulting for social sector clients around DC.
I like people. Especially you. Let's talk.
I graduated in June 2008 as part of the 3rd class from Olin College of Engineering with a concentration in Systems Engineering.
Olin is known for its focus on design thinking, its project-based curriculum, and a participatory learning style. The Princeton Review kindly says that Olin "may well be the most dynamic undergraduate institution in the country," and the US News and World Report ranks Olin as one of the top 10 undergraduate engineering programs in the country. [close]
Huddle is an online project management and group collaboration tool. While there, I worked on a variety of projects, including redesigning the new user experience. I also lead the first on-site customer visit for the company and performed the first usability studies.
Huddle was voted the best B2B startup in Europe via TechCrunch's Europas, and Businessweek listed Huddle as one of the top 50 startups in the world. [close]
Ashoka is "the world’s largest and oldest organization supporting social entrepreneurs—men and women with systems-changing solutions for our most urgent social problems. Since its founding 30 years ago, Ashoka has provided community, resources, and connections to a global network of more than 2,500 Ashoka Fellows in over 60 countries."
I worked with Ashoka in the US, primarily on the Change Your City Initiative which aims to create an enabling environment in cities to accelerate social innovation. [close]
Whether it's riding the bus, visiting a coffee shop, or searching Google, we utilize dozens of services every day.
Service Design is a burgeoning field that focuses on making the experiences of those services more useful, usable, and meaningful for everyone involved. [close]
Design Thinking refers to the general process of problem solving and innovation using the tools and mindset borrowed from user-centered design traditions. The tools include ethnography, ideation, synthesis, rapid-prototyping, and others, and they can be applied to problems of technology, business, or society. [close]
Social problems are those in areas like education or environment which effect society broadly and aren’t adequately addressed by the current market system. Certain social problems, like access to clean drinking water, may be addressed by the market in some parts of the world but in not others. [close]
Preventing HIV Transmission During Breastfeeding
I was part of an interdisciplinary team at the International Development Design Summit that created a novel, inexpensive device to prevent HIV transmission during breastfeeding. The initial concept secured a $100,000 grant from the Gates Foundation, and a pending patent. The project has been handed over to Family Health International for further development and if successful has the potential to prevent thousands of cases of HIV transmission each year.
Problem
50,000 children contract HIV from breast milk each year.
These children live in low resource areas, so formula isn't an option, and breastmilk is essential to nutrition and survival during the first six months of their lives. We were given the challenge to design an inexpensive device to facilitate flash-heating of milk, which deactivates the HIV.
Team
The IDDS conference brings together a diverse group from five continents and over twenty different countries. Our team of two women and four men was weighted toward the western world but still had an impressive diversity. In addition to me, we had an American MD who had lived in Burkina Faso, a woman from Malawi who was studying mechanical engineering in London, a British chemical engineering student from Cambridge University, an American mechanical engineer, and a mathematics and economics student from Caltech.
Initial Research
With less than a month to tackle the problem, we dived in to phone calls, emails, web research, contacting friends, friends of friends and anyone who knew anything about breastfeeding or HIV.
The more people (especially mothers) with whom we spoke, the more it became apparent that hand-expression and subsequent boiling of milk up to six times a day wasn't pleasant or practical, and problems of stigma in our targeted areas would make the idea even less viable.
Redefining the Problem
Since the initial challenge had met with so much resistance, we decided to redefine the problem in more basic, open terms: designing an inexpensive device to deactivate HIV in breast milk as conveniently and discreetly as possible. We weren't dismissing the flash-heating solution, but we were no longer wed to it.
Research
Due to the time constraints, this was the most intense research phase of any project I've tackled. I was impressed with the amount we were able to learn in a short time with a phone, a positive attitude and dogged determination.
Breastfeeding Research: Determined to become breastfeeding experts, we read articles, watched videos, set up conference calls with La Leche League lactation consultants, and questioned every mother in the vicinity.
User Research: Since we were based at MIT in Boston, our user research was difficult, but we were still able to observe local breastfeeding and conduct phone interviews with African women. We also had access to the people at the summit who came from more than twenty different countries. One Tanzanian woman had extensive experience with HIV culture in both Tanzania and Zimbabwe and was able to give us valuable insights.
HIV Research: In addition to the experience of the MD on our team, we brought in a local HIV researcher to give us an in-depth learning session, and we dug into the latest papers in the field. We were especially helped by papers that discussed the effects of various microbicides like copper and SDS (Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate, the mild, FDA-approved surfactant that makes toothpaste foamy).
Breastfeeding Devices: One of the more memorable experiences of the project was an afternoon trip to Babies 'Я' Us, raiding the breastfeeding aisle for breast pumps, nipple shields, bottles, and bras. These artifacts proved extremely helpful during later ideation and testing stages.
Ideation
The most productive ideation session we had was a hands-on meeting with our collection of breastfeeding paraphernalia and some generic sketch-modeling materials. It was a playful meeting, throwing ideas around, trying out the breast pumps, fiddling with nipple shields, and assembling pipe-cleaner tube devices.
It was during this meeting that we had the initial modified nipple shield idea that evolved into our final product.
Testing & Refinement
Adopting the proven strategy of "fail early, fail often," we did as many back-of-the envelope calculations and tried as many scientific and non-scientific tests of our ideas as time allowed. Among others, we did a taste test of milk mixed with SDS, a home visit with a woman using a nipple shield, and prepared SDS impregnated non-woven cloth to send off to an HIV lab in Pennsylvania.
Product
The final product was a modified version of a shield commonly by used western women when breastfeeding with sore nipples. We adapted the shield to include additional space in the tip for an SDS-impregnated cartridge of non-woven fiber. As the baby nurses, the milk is drawn through the cartridge and small amounts of SDS are released into the stream, deactivating the free HIV. The small nipple shields are discreet and inexpensive, as are the SDS-impregnated cloth cartridges.
Family Health International is currently involved in field acceptance trials of the devices without the active ingredient while the process undergoes further lab tests with the live virus. The final results are several years out, but the latest updates can be found on the project website at justmilk.org.
Redesigning an Appropriate Stove for Guatemalan Entrepreneurs
I assembled a team that won a $50,000 grant to work with an entrepreneurial Guatemalan company to improve rural life with a design for an efficient, healthy, affordable, and desirable wood burning stove.
Background
As a Senior Engineering Capstone every student participates in a year-long team-based project addressing a real-world problem. Most projects are sponsored by an outside corporation, but the school also offers a competitive grant to one student-initiated project each year. Wanting to do work in appropriate technology, I assembled a team of students who then applied for and won the 2007-2008 grant.
Problem
Many people in rural Guatemala still cook every meal over an open, three-stone fire on the floor inside their homes. In addition to the respiratory problems caused by the constant exposure to smoke and carbon monoxide, it is common for small children to fall into the fire and receive debilitating burns.
Old Solution
Our Guatemalan partner company trains entrepreneurs to sell their health-based products, one of which is a wood burning stove. Designed in one day by a Guatemalan stone mason, the stove had a form that has proven appealing to the local people, but had substantial room for improving in efficiency and cost.
Our Work
Our work focused on integrating a more efficient combustion chamber and improving insulation and airflow throughout the stove while maintaining the stove's current physical character. We also expanded their product line to include a small "Rocket Stove" to sell to Guatemalans who cannot afford a big stove but would still like a more efficient and healthier alternative to cooking over an open fire.
The english version of the construction manual for the improved stove is shared below. This was delivered to our Guatemalan partner to translate into Spanish and local dialects.
User-Centered, Collaborative Design with Photojournalists
Collaboration with users throughout the design process reveals hidden opportunities and results in more successful products. During our User Oriented Collaborative Design course, my team of four worked with photojournalists around Boston.
User Interaction
Meeting with many users throughout the semester, our team heard stories about their lives and families, about the communities in which they circulated and the activities they enjoyed. We followed them through their daily routines, from afternoon editing to 5 AM shoots.
As a team we interviewed and observed users, mapped motivations and values, created personas and narratives, synthesized research, identified areas of opportunity, ideated, built sketch-model prototypes, observed user interactions, accepted user input, revised ideas, and created final models and interaction stories.
User Values: After interviewing users, articulating both their and our beliefs allowed us to understand the underlying values behind our project. We returned to these values for guidance throughout the process.
User Personas: After shadowing and interviewing several photojournalists, we created user personas to give us concrete, aggregate identities that we could refer to throughout the design process.
Idea Generation: We used several different ideation strategies during the project. The image to the left shows an organized board of our ideas after we had sorted them at the end of a session. The unmarked post-its are leftover from a voting process.
Digital Business Cards
"I do all of my own publicity, and I'm always looking for more ways to get my name out there" - 'Bruce'
Allowing photojournalists to take a picture in the field and immediately set it as the background of their business card would provide new and more personalized ways to approach and communicate with potential customers. Since most photojournalists self-promote, they appreciated the new spin this emerging technology placed on the age-old business card.
StableCam
"Yeah, they give me a hard time since I don't have very steady hands, and I can't carry a tripod everywhere, so I'm always looking for something to prop against." - 'Jill'
Shadowing 'Jill' one afternoon, we noticed that she would often lean on table tops to steady her camera. Our solution was a gyroscopically stabilized module inserted in place of a side grip to provide momentary stabilization of the camera.
About Ashoka's Change Your City Initiative
Change Your City is an Ashoka initiative aimed at accelerating social innovation in cities. Ashoka acts as a neutral convener that brings together Government, Business, Philanthropic, and Social Sector leaders in order to build an environment that celebrates and enables social innovation. Drawing upon the assets of its global network, Ashoka provides knowledge and resources to inform local programs in each city.
My Role
On board from the beginning of the program, I had the privilege of being involved with shaping local and national strategy and helping coordinate our pilot efforts in Denver. I helped design and organize a national conference that brought together city leaders from across the country, and I lead the research and synthesis of our ongoing knowledge collection of what makes for an effective enabling environment for social innovation in cities.
Brief Program Summary
The following document is a short overview of Change Your City that I prepared last month, shared here with the permission of Ashoka. Created to be a resource and starting point for a summit of city leaders in New York, it explains where the program has been and presents some of the key themes that Ashoka has repeatedly heard make for an ideal environment to encourage social innovation.