--- The FlexShield: Develop a new solution for Indian tea farmers’ personal protection
/Project info
Project length: 4 months
Project type: Group work
Teamwork role: Project manager
Design role: Creative facilitation, visualization, rapid-prototyping, sewing, modeling &rendering
#Product development
#Co-creation with stakeholders
#Product rapid prototyping and testing
#Product implementation strategy
#Project management
#Crowd funding
#Co-creation with stakeholders
#Product rapid prototyping and testing
#Product implementation strategy
#Project management
#Crowd funding
The project is in collaboration with Rainforest Alliance, a nonprofit organization who helps local farmers in developing countries to produce sustainable food products.
The goal of the project is to design protective equipment for tea farmers in India, as well as providing a feasible implementation strategy. These farmers are exposed every day to chemicals used to protect tea leaves from pests. Because the farmers currently lack good work attire, their skin is exposed to these harmful chemicals, since the available attire are too hot to wear in India or too inconvinient to use duing work. The project team wants to find a short term solution so that they can work more safely in the future, which should be able to be produced locally.
The design process included a pre-research and sprint process in Delft, NL, as well as two-week research study and co-creation in India with local tea farmers, taking place in a tea estate in Dibrugarh, Assam, a rural part of India. Activities there included observational studies of the working procedure in the tea fields, user tests with risk assessment, and interviews with the managers and employees.
Based on a comprehensive evaluation with stakeholders, it is concluded that the design is a large improvement on the current situation and thus
worth investment.
To be able to develop the shield prototype into a product that can be distributed among tea estates in India, Kenya and China, new partners need to be found that are willing to develop, manufacture and repair the products. Rainforest Alliance can decide to find a new partner to develop the design, or collaborate with Protect. Possible dutch partners to collaborate with are 3M (3M, n.d.) , MAPA Professionel (MAPA, n.d.) or ChemDefend® Co Ltd (ChemDefend, n.d.). Indian partners could be Dupont (Dupont, n.d.), Samarth industries (Samarth, n.d.) or Udyogi (Udyogi, n.d.). The suggestion of the possible steps and timeframe can be seen below. According to the implementation plan, the first batch of shields can be manufactured in October 2021.
