I would like to share a little bit of what I am experiencing here at IDDS and what I can extract from here to excel in the health field.

My name is Tymo and I am currently taking part of the program that is called IDDS, a program founded by the D-Lab of MIT, by the idealization of Amy Smith.  It is a program based on Design Thinking in a community and it has gone through many countries as Ghana, the USA and currently Brazil. So our approach is using the best design created in a limited time to offer an authentic, practical and useful product to the community.

So what all of this has to do with health? Well, this process of identifying , undergoing the real needs and proposing the solution that are creative, easy-to-use, beautiful and combining efficiency and effectiveness has to do all about thinking the other’s needs.

Either you aim working with high-, middle-, or low-income families, you must feel the real need of the population, you must listen to the users, you must create hypothesis and prototypes, and you must keep on testing. One thing we were warned in this program is that there is no FINAL solution; instead, it is a process of always polishing up, and so on.

Well, now that I could encourage you to keep reading this IDDS report, here it goes!

These 3 days were made for integrating the participants, which consists of 15 different nationalities and so many different background, which is one of the goal of the IDDS, so you can see a designer talking with medical student, that interacts with mechanical engineer, that interact with architect student, and so on. This experience exchange is so meaningful and significant. Although, honestly, I feel somewhat small and somehow overwhelmed with such people with spectacular background, universities or occupations, I feel, at the same time, extremely honored to take part in this program and I would like to learn and absorb the best I can from those “wow” people and then contribute the way I can to the society.

We had to make two prototypes so far, which I’d say was pretty amusing and funny, one was making with 2 sheets of paper a device that can support most banana as possible, lifting from the ground, the other was to make a device that makes a ball fall from between 30 seconds and 1 minutes, going through a board (which was amazingly difficult, particularly due to the limited material resources and time).

Tomorrow we are going to learn about technologies, technologies that took part in the previous IDDS program, as pedaling system, cell-phone charger with no electricity supply or high-reaching mobile phone. So I am pretty excited about it!

So I hope that this month is going to be wonderful, and full of awesome and stirring experiences! Hope I put the next posts and contribute with the overall learning of you guys too!

Tymo