WFP | Designing complaints and feedback mechanisms for internally displaced people in South Sudan
Humanly led an international human-centred design process conducted over 13 months to design new forms of dialogue between the World Food Programme (WFP) and internally displaced people in South Sudan.
At the initiation of the project, WFP was providing emergency assistance to approximately 4 million people throughout South Sudan, including housing over 200,000 civilians in 6 Protection of Civilian (PoC) sites across 5 regions.
With an ambition to amplify the voice of the people it serves, WFP South Sudan commissioned the development and testing of new complaints and feedback mechanisms for the populations of 2 Protection of Civilian sites which together housed more than 38,000 people.
An international consortium was led by M&C Saatchi World Services to tackle this challenging brief, with Humanly leading on the application of the human-centred design process and working in close partnership with Forcier Consulting’s team of local researchers to conduct fieldwork activities with PoC site residents.
The Process
Humanly began by working closely with M&C Saatchi World Services and Forcier Consulting to co-create a design research approach that would be culturally sensitive and inclusive.
This included visually engaging creative activities such as mapping people’s journeys to register for, collect, store and cook the food provided by WFP, as well as mapping people’s social networks and who they would go to when experiencing different problems. Ethnographic methods were also employed, including asking PoC site residents to give researchers a guided tour of the camp, and shadowing staff members. Humanly then supported the Forcier Consulting’s team of local researchers to carry out these research activities, providing training and coaching throughout.
The results were co-analysed to generate key insights and opportunity areas, and brought to life through the development of personas and user journeys to reflect the real-life experiences of people living in the Protection of Civilian sites.
These acted as a springboard for a collaborative idea generation process in which a number of concepts were developed, representing potential new touchpoints for dialogue between WFP and the people it serves. Two of these concepts were then taken forward into the prototyping phase, in order to test what worked and didn’t work in practice. These included a physical feedback wall that could be moved around PoC sites to gather people’s views visually, and a mobile hub where people could access vital mobile services such as phone charging for free, creating an opportunity to gather feedback and sign people up to take part in further SMS surveys.
Prototypes for these concepts were designed by Humanly and run on the ground by Forcier Consulting’s team, again with support and guidance from Humanly.
The feedback wall was tested over 6 days in 5 different locations within the PoC site, with over 1,700 people taking part by sharing their feedback and ideas, and voting for the concept they thought should be taken forward.
The SMS survey component of the mobile hub concept was tested with different variables, including sending messages in 3 different languages, testing quantitative and qualitative feedback questions, and exploring the impact of providing incentives. In total 262 SMS were sent and 87 follow-up interviews were conducted with participants, generating valuable learning about how people would be likely to engage with this as a feedback mechanism.
The Outcomes
Humanly generated pivotal insights and evidence around different potential routes to enabling dialogue with PoC site residents, leading WFP to recognise the importance of collecting feedback in person.
By building a local research organisation’s human-centred design capacity, Humanly contributed to a reduced dependency on international experts going forward.
A successful model of international collaboration across continents was designed and deployed, bringing together a diverse team with different expertise to achieve stronger results.
Human-centred design was successfully applied in a fragile and conflict-affected state, engaging over 2,000 internally displaced people in a meaningful and inclusive participatory design process.