humanitarian efficiency
This site shows my humanitarian and social design portfolio. I do process design, so optimisation of social and humanitarian processes, through system design and product design. I strive for Efficiency of humanitarian actors, through a needs based approach. I research, teach and talk about that.
humanitarian, process design, product design, social design, Frankfurt, international, German design, humanitarian Innovation, Germany, Human Centered design, community centered design, Thomas Jäger, design portfolio,
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Hum
anit
aria
n
Effi
cen
cy

Humanitarian
Efficency...

2021

…through empowerment and design

Humanitarian Efficiency through empowerment and design is the accumulation of theoretic research and the practical application of design in humanitarian settings. It got finalised in my theoretical diploma thesis.

 

It researches the potential future role of designers within, humanitarian projects, highlights the importance of the incorporation of designers in these, by showing clearly the benefits and combines this with the principals of localisation and empowerment. This resulted in the finding, that efficiency in the context of Humanitarian Innovation is only in reach, if the unique skillset of designers find their usage and become respected partners within the projects and overall network.

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sum
mary

Humanitarian innovation is currently being discussed and

first came in 2009, initiated by the UN

Working group on. The humanitarian sector worked

the last few decades using a top-down approach, i.e. help in the form of gifts.

As a result, social groups affected by crises and disasters have become dependent on organizations. So were

although it has an effect of alleviating suffering, it does

Crises not overcome in the long term. The previous

Approaches rarely worked efficiently with local circumstances and the needs of those affected. Aid organizations remained so to individuals

crises bound while global are numerous more appeared. Attempts were made to overburden this qualitatively determined, quantitative overburden with larger ones.

To deal with expenses. More funding was mobilized and the number of humanitarian projects in doubled over the past thirty years.

Under the topic of Humanitarian Innovation

are now new paradigms of work, such as help for

Self-help discussed and differentiated from this more qualitative

Hopes for projects that will sustainably overcome the crises,

meet the need and the person concerned empowers theirs

Solve problems yourself.

In order to make the sector more efficient, it is opening up

Humanitarian innovation is currently being discussed and

first came in 2009, initiated by the UN

Working group on. The humanitarian sector worked

the last few decades using a top-down approach, i.e. help in the form of gifts.

As a result, social groups affected by crises and disasters have become dependent on organizations. So were

although it has an effect of alleviating suffering, it does

Crises not overcome in the long term. The previous

Approaches rarely worked efficiently with local circumstances and the needs of those affected. Aid organizations remained so to individuals

crises bound while global are numerous more appeared. Attempts were made to overburden this qualitatively determined, quantitative overburden with larger ones.

To deal with expenses. More funding was mobilized and the number of humanitarian projects in doubled over the past thirty years.

Under the topic of Humanitarian Innovation

are now new paradigms of work, such as help for

Self-help discussed and differentiated from this more qualitative

Hopes for projects that will sustainably overcome the crises,

meet the need and the person concerned empowers theirs

Solve problems yourself.

In order to make the sector more efficient, it is opening up

Humanitarian innovation is currently being discussed and

first came in 2009, initiated by the UN

Working group on. The humanitarian sector worked

the last few decades using a top-down approach, i.e. help in the form of gifts.

As a result, social groups affected by crises and disasters have become dependent on organizations. So were

although it has an effect of alleviating suffering, it does

Crises not overcome in the long term. The previous

Approaches rarely worked efficiently with local circumstances and the needs of those affected. Aid organizations remained so to individuals

crises bound while global are numerous more appeared. Attempts were made to overburden this qualitatively determined, quantitative overburden with larger ones.

To deal with expenses. More funding was mobilized and the number of humanitarian projects in doubled over the past thirty years.

Under the topic of Humanitarian Innovation

are now new paradigms of work, such as help for

Self-help discussed and differentiated from this more qualitative

Hopes for projects that will sustainably overcome the crises,

meet the need and the person concerned empowers theirs

Solve problems yourself.

In order to make the sector more efficient, it is opening up

Humanitarian innovation is currently being discussed and

first came in 2009, initiated by the UN

Working group on. The humanitarian sector worked

the last few decades using a top-down approach, i.e. help in the form of gifts.

As a result, social groups affected by crises and disasters have become dependent on organizations. So were

although it has an effect of alleviating suffering, it does

Crises not overcome in the long term. The previous

Approaches rarely worked efficiently with local circumstances and the needs of those affected. Aid organizations remained so to individuals

crises bound while global are numerous more appeared. Attempts were made to overburden this qualitatively determined, quantitative overburden with larger ones.

To deal with expenses. More funding was mobilized and the number of humanitarian projects in doubled over the past thirty years.

Under the topic of Humanitarian Innovation

are now new paradigms of work, such as help for

Self-help discussed and differentiated from this more qualitative

Hopes for projects that will sustainably overcome the crises,

meet the need and the person concerned empowers theirs

Solve problems yourself.

In order to make the sector more efficient, it is opening up

In order to make the sector more efficient, it is opening up

under this umbrella term of „Humanitarian Innovation“.

It’s about means of new partners, to whom now

the affected population also belongs to that.

To provide services and / or products,

what overcomes the crisis most sustainably and with the greatest possible efficiency. The expertise like products

and systems are to be optimized, lives in the work

from the designer: inside. Still, they have been so far

in the studies of humanitarian innovation

not integrated in this ecosystem. So it stays closed

Discuss which role designers can potentially play within the project and sector, and which role

This adds value to the humanitarian ecosystem and

can generate especially for those affected.

The factor of helping people to help themselves is currently considered a principle, which could relieve the sector.

Here, power relationships between organizations and those affected are discussed. Power must be a fluid potential and result of the empowerment process

be understood. This is the only way people can get into the

Process of the humanitarian project started and

be empowered. For this you have to support them multidimensionally. All five types of qualification:

Economic, psychological, educational, political and social skills must be taken as a unit

be understood.

These empowerment processes must now be compared with design processes and organizationally combined.

Power relations in the design process are shown. These indicate that a process that the

Users should be able to empower, initially a participatory one who understands power as fluid potential and

is committed to the best possible result. A goal-oriented design process is neither top down nor

bottom up. The situational knowledge of the users: inside and

the expertise of designers and organizations

must be symbiotic in a process on an equal footing

be united. This process takes place on site and

sees the use of the design as part of the design. To get the best possible results, you should

Designers: as many as possible in this process

Have interfaces in the ecosystem of the project

and directly into the mission cycle of the organizations

to be involved. Klaus Krippendorf lists that

The success of designers lies in their communicative ability. By means of this they can do it

To build consensus between the partners‘ expert knowledge,

to discuss the best possible practicable and the

To make the wishes and fears of those involved heard in the process. So they are just the ones

which are in the process of finding a new ecosystem,

become the mediators of innovation.

Here, by means of an iterative design process, they enable new solutions to be found that overcome the previous status quo. This can be done on both

the restructuring of humanitarian innovation,

as well as applied to the projects themselves.

Designer: inside enable a general added value for the entire, as well as project-specific

Process of finding efficiency.

A holistic efficiency of the sector is also

not only through the participation of users and the

enabling and meeting the

Possible as required. It also requires standardized reproducibility, the outdated notions

overcome by neocolonialism. This fear of

Neocolonization keeps people from what

them to a life of dignity or a survival

need because you don’t see western culture

want to impose.

However, the effect of drafts in relation to form and context can be scientifically evaluated and if so

the needs of homo sapiens are thereby satisfied

a possible global application,

to which we as a society are morally obliged,

occur. This is exactly where the greatest added value lies

the involvement of designers. You can

to imagine contextually adequate solutions

and to give them reproducibility. Around

ensure that these can really meet local needs

for example, on the smallest possible intervention, such as

Burkhardt describes him, or the provocation of the

Adaptation, available from Bredies.

This creates standardized solutions that

not for every context with immense effort

have to be redeveloped and yet despite

Reproducibility in participation developed and

being checked. Designer: inside are exactly those who

Make the efficiency of the sector holistic. To do this too

must enable cooperation between

Organizations and designers: promoted and

further researched.

Humanitarian Efficiency, concretely searches and finds the role of designers in this context. They are the ones, being professionally educated in innovation-, and socially transformative processes. Therefor they are an important player rearranging the humanitarian sector, seeking needs based solutions of service and product deliveries in an efficient way.

Following the definition of both sectors: design and humanitarian, those are the same. The creations achieved by design are primarily established to enable a safe life in dignity, for human beings. This is also the overarching goal of humanitarian projects.

These aspects lead me to focus on this evolving sector as a new field for the application of professional and strategic design methodologies: This could be called Humanitarian Design and is described in this 30 pages essay.

Design
+
Human
itarian

EMpo
wern
ment

One paradigm of a new humanitarian sector seems to be clearly overcoming the long-term executed top-down approach. Nowadays there is a believe in Empowerment.  By means of achieving this on various levels to work more:

  • needs based
  • create resilience
  • limit logistics
  • decrease the workload for external humanitarians

 

Beside of providing  more qualitative humanitarian assistance, it also is the basis of an approach that allows to limit efforts from  outside actors achieving efficency.

Humanitarian Efficiency highlights this paradigm, gives an insight in how this is executed in humanitarian missions, looks at power imbalances and concludes with the description of an empowerment process, that is neither bottom-up, nor top-down: equal footing.

 Even in traditional humanitarian projects designers, their tools and the benefits they can create should have a place in humanitarian projects.

Nevertheless this Essay focuses on the future role of designers in a sector that is open for innovation looking at the current discussion of Humanitarian Innovation.  Humanitarian Innovation describes a total shift of paradigms, methodologies and cooperation partners within the humanitarian sector. It maps out different cooperation networks for designers, and mirrors their principles and methodologies with humanitarian innovation principles, as well as on humanitarian methodologies. Furthermore it describes how designers, with their way of experimenting, can really overcome the current status-quo and what this could add in the search for that new innovative humanitarian sector.

Human
itarian
Innova
tion

A new player in the
network

Current research of humanitarian innovation highlights some kind of innovators, connecting the different stakeholders and facilitating innovative processes.  These should be professional designers…

Looking at the currently discussed humanitarian innovation network, many new partners are now incorporated, hoping for cooperation and cross-ferilisation achieving private sector adaptation. Humanitarian Efficiency now adds designers in various roles, with various co-design partners. They can be part of research institutions, service providers as private sector companies, or even part of humanitarian organisations. Also on the level of politics they can be incorporated, aiming to find new systems and services.

Who they are always co-designing with should be the affected population. Their skill as the mediator of innovation, by creating the consensus out of all stakeholder fears and hopes, and the facilitation of metaphorical spaces, where people are enabled to communicate their opinions, allows them to do so substantially.

Bringing basic methodologies
in line

An innovation cycle and the response cycle are so similar but today still so far from each other…

Looking at the standardised humanitarians response cycle, we find phases of analysis, ideation, resource mobilisation, implementation, testing and adjusting.

Looking at innovation cycle models we simply find the same just named differently. Nevertheless humanitarians and designers still believe that their processes are not fitting each other.

Humanitarian Efficiency proposes to integrate the designers work directly in the humanitarian response cycle by expanding the time used for the innovation phase and adding iterations.

This way they become part of a globally applied process and get enabled to communicate their processes with humanitarians.

Looking integral at
the phases of crisis

What is still humanitarian and what is development and how do the needs change?

By firstly defining humanitarian work, Humanitarian Efficiency proposes to follow the continuum model. This model tries to combine emergency response and the development field, to create a holistic look at the different phases of crisis following a catastrophe. This way solutions can be designed and implemented that keep their credibility in each phase of the crisis, which equals a more efficient mission.

Even though the needs shift, it is possible to create a solution that is directly implementable and gets reused repurposed, adapted or similarly their use effectively prolonged.

Ideating solutions, while having the entire product or service value chain in mind is particularly a skill embodied in professional design.

Having positive impact instead of creating harm

Do Humanitarian Innovation Principles fit the design process?

Looking at UNICEF’s and OCHA’s innovation principles it gets obvious that tose design cooperations would be different from working for private sector companies having a focus mainly on financial income generation.

Humanitarian Efficiency highlights which principles are already incorporated in the design theories applied since 1970’s.

Others like „Open-Source“ already gives hints on how the results of the design processes should be distributed.

Some are new, but nowadays incorporated in Human-Centered-Design principles. Their importance gets underlined in this essay and approaches to do so proposed.

Locally adaquate,
but scalable

How to be needs based but still globally applicable and therefore efficient?

As a matter of facts, according to the core humanitarian principles, we owe those in need of humanitarian assistance support to overcome their suffering.

But currently solutions get tailormade designed for one particular context and one particular group of people. This is motivated, by the fear of doing harm, through neocolonial work approaches. This way these solutions are difficult to fit in another context, which creates the need for an entirely new design process.

Humanitarian Efficiency builds up on the idea of the utilization, of local knowledge, expertise and infrastructure, to deliver solutions that really fit the local context and needs, following HCD and CCD principles.

But it goes one step further and evaluates design, that allows adaptation to a new context within short time, using the benefits of a temporarily limited design process and standardised implementation and or production.

This is one main benefit that designers can add and that would eventually make the humanitarian response locally adequate effictive and therefor efficient.

RES UME

After long years of isolation from innovation, the humanitarian sector has recognized that it has to reinvent itself and find partners facing the increase of  need and outdated, top-down response. This is called humanitarian innovation, which should result in efficiency of the responses, delivering the right service at the right time to appropriate costs.

There, exploring empowerment is seen as a target-oriented basic concept. After people in need for humanitarian assistance were kept dependent on organizations and projects for a long time, humanitarians now seek ways to enable those affected to overcome crises themselves.

Empowerment is a first approach enabling the required efficiency to keep up with the increasing need and to overcome crisis long-term. 

According to its definition, this refers initially to the contextual needs of the users, for offers that correspond to their everyday lives.

This means that solutions can be implemented and used confidently by those affected. The need for external humanitarian intervention would be already decreasing. In addition, efficiency also refers to the needs of the organizations and partners who need solutions with little effort and costs.

By means of this, offers with improved delivery and a more efficient implementation, would decrease there workload again.

In this process of improving humanitarian response, I see the added value that designers can achieve as immense.

Their general ability to give shape to social, transformative processes and to weigh the proportions between product and service is an expertise that they have and is needed to ideate the most efficient and appropriate solutions.

This is based on a way of working that other professions rarely use. The exploration on which the iterative design process is based.

It opens up spaces that exceed the previous status-quo. Others disciplines tend to reproduce, quote or slightly improve the status-quo as they tend to test hypotheses for their credibility, instead of firstly exploring what hypotheses there could be. 

[…]

Designers are able to place themselves in a project network with numerous touchpoints. This is necessary for their work, as the best possible result lies in dialogue with all actors. The competence to decode complex systems, to form a consensus from the opinions of those involved and to apply their expert knowledge to the project characterizes designers as mediators of innovation. The needs of the partners involved are reflected in those of the others and a practicable, optimal, and therefor efficient result can be achieved.

At best, designers are in dialogue with every actor. […]

The increasing need and the characteristics of crisis and catastrophes demand quick solutions, that still fit the local needs.

This creates a tension between participation and reproducibility. This is exactly where I see the greatest added value of designers in humanitarian projects.

They are able to design standardized solutions by decoding the overall system into principles without ignoring the individual interaction between the offer and the user. For example, they can  provoke appropriation in standardized products and services.[…]

A process aiming to identifying the parameters needed to sustainably implement solutions, services and products, through design research, allows enables this further. […]

Designers are therefore precisely those who initially make the empowerment process of humanitarian projects more participatory and then combine them with reproducibility. In this way, the desired efficiency becomes achieveable and holistic.

Request the full
Thesis

Just  send me a quick message and I’ll forward the essay in German, or English to you.

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