Engineering students develop ‘clicker’ tool to help humanitarian workers in field
Harvard Humanitarian Initiative team worked with Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences class on project
Humanitarian workers in the field often need to quickly count and categorize people—for example, individuals fleeing a disaster crossing border checkpoints—to help assess a population’s needs. Doing this with pen and paper is inefficient but using a phone or other digital device can be impractical in certain settings.
Over the fall semester, 15 students at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) took on the challenge of coming up with a new solution, working closely with their “client” Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI). They were enrolled in the course Engineering Problem Solving and Design Project, which is offered twice a year and gives students the chance to apply their engineering know-how to a real-world problem.
“As HHI is an inter-faculty initiative, we are always looking for ways to engage with various schools and teaching hospitals throughout our Harvard ecosystem to advance interdisciplinary collaboration,” said Irini Albanti, HHI executive director and lecturer in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Harvard Chan School. She worked closely with David Mooney, Robert P. Pinkas Family Professor of Bioengineering at SEAS, to plan and coordinate the course.
Students spent time with HHI faculty, staff, and visiting scientists to learn about their research and programs, and challenges facing the field. They then worked through a design process under Mooney’s guidance to develop a deliverable.
Prototype unveiled
On Dec. 8 at SEAS, the students presented their work. They said that they explored ideas for aiding HHI’s mission from multiple angles, considering solutions such as educational tools for humanitarian crisis response training and pop-up shelters that could be used in the field. They ultimately decided to develop a rugged programmable box that helps with data collection. It’s operated with simple buttons but integrates with the sophisticated data platform already widely used by humanitarian workers called KoboToolbox. The students dubbed the small blue device the KoboClicker.
“They turned a tough engineering challenge—designing an easy-to-use clicker for demanding environments—into a workable solution that answers a real need,” said Patrick Vinck, who founded KoboToolbox with Phuong Pham. Both are faculty members of HHI and associate professors in the Department of Global Health and Population at Harvard Chan School and at Harvard Medical School.
KoboToolbox was created in 2008 prior to Pham and Vinck joining HHI and is now being developed and managed by Kobo, the nonprofit organization they created in 2019. It is a free and open-source and is used by more than 35,000 humanitarian aid and other organizations around the world, including United Nations agencies and the International Federation of the Red Cross.
KoboClicker is designed to record multiple pieces of information at once, more than other clicker-type devices currently used in the field. It can store data until workers are able to upload it to KoboToolbox, where the data can then be analyzed and managed.
“The students did a great job understanding the problems, developing quantitative metrics to select the right options to tackle, and creating an impressive prototype—all within just four months,” said Pham. “I can’t imagine what they could accomplish with a full year.”
Potential uses
Pham, who worked with the students during the course, gave an example of how the clicker could be useful: “After Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, the city wanted to know how many people had returned, as well as their gender and whether they were over 60 or under 18 years of age. This clicker could be used to conduct a rapid population count while also capturing these additional details,” she said. She added that there are other potential uses in clinics, shelters, and aid distribution sites, for example, to track people with symptoms of a disease or to categorize the needs of people seeking assistance (such as food, water, shelter, or medical care).
The KoboClicker is truly practical, Pham said. “We plan to have the students present their work to the Kobo team to support further development and explore ways to test it in the field.”
