You can build a well, but will people come? You can build a well, but will it be safe? You can build a well, but will it build livelihood? You can build a well, but will it create a sense of aspiration?

When our RO plant arrives it is an event in the community. It provides WHO standard water in places that wells cannot provide. It provides livelihood to our franchisees. People look to both our plant and our franchisees and suddenly feel the positive influence it provides to the community.

As we continue to find ways to enhance our plant, we come upon several conflicts. People understand things they can see. Introducing too much technology in a rural setting can cause the technology to be rejected; people don’t know how to use it and don’t understand it. When people see things happening in front of them that don’t have some physical attribute (like mechanical technologies), people have a general sense of fear. Computer based technologies especially do this. People begin to fear the technology, or don’t know what to do when something goes wrong.

Our franchisees and their customers were excited by the controller during the first round of field testing. After the excitement subsided, a general fear grew in their inability to understand how the controller works.

As we learn from the lessons of the first round of field testing, we are developing business practices and design queues to make the controller easier to understand. These strategies will help introduce technology to better the lives of the rural communities. At the same time these technologies allow us to better understand our franchisees’ market and maintain the machines more effectively. We work with our franchisees to teach them how to operate the machine, but also include a manual on what to do in certain scenarios. We’ve also automated a lot of the processes for them, but let them know what exactly the machine is doing at a given point in time. When errors occur, instead of verbally telling them the error, we also show them graphically what is going on in the system that is causing this issue. These queues will help the franchisee better understand the machine, and manage it more effectively. The biggest hurdle in this whole process was taking western technology and finding ways to “Indify” it. In a sense, we needed to create a cultural connection. This was not something western that had been plopped in front of them, this is something built for them. By creating a connection with them they begin to accept and appreciate the product more. At the same time we didn’t want to remove all western elements. By providing services from an already “developed” western community, but still connecting and teaching the eastern community we build user acceptance in a community not used to such betterment in their lives.

The Controller with the RO Plant

With these new enhancements the controller is much further along from where it was a month ago; we’re nearing completion of the 1^st iteration. We will keep reiterating the controller. It will continue to be revised and enhanced, so we can perfect the connection we desire, the water safety we guarantee, and the simplicity we want everyone to feel when using our technologies so anyone can manage it.

We’re taking the lessons learned from our controller development and testing and implementing it with our Dispensing Unit technologies. Instead of having technology drive our business we’re having the business drive our technology. We came up with a technology design to make dispensing water easy and manageable by nearly anyone. What we’re now looking to develop is the entire customer experience – pulling the design ideas together. How do we create a full experience for both our franchisees that evokes a message of ease, simplicity, aspiration, durability, and security in one experience? How do we find the balance between form, function and familiarity? How do we do all of this to a population that is largely illiterate, and of various dialects or written languages? The design of the interfaces we develop is critical to connecting further with customers. This isn’t just functional development. Our products will need to find the balance between simplicity and security. We’re working to find out just how.