The easiest way to talk about my obsession with human-centered design and what motivated me to pivot my creative lens is through its technical origin. Of course, as a hybrid Nechari3000, I grew up with both a rotary phone that I was fascinated with and a white box computer that allowed me to explore every world possible, all within a few clicks. But technology was always a tool to be used for other foci: term papers, presentations, research data entry, and booking cheap bus tickets to and from New York (or anywhere within a 7-hour radius). It wasn’t until I challenged myself through a maternal health Peace Corps role, where I was seconded to the Center for Disease Research in Zambia for a global maternal health initiative, that I learned how to integrate tools, systems development, and heart in order to design with and for people.

Dirt will teach you a lot of things. When the rain begins to fall and it turns into mud, you know that’s one less health facility you’ll get to in order to talk to mothers about their health and their newborns’ health. The cruiser you’re privileged to ride in will get stuck if you push too far (that’s another story for another day). And you mark it on your custom map that you’re also drawing in real time. Because maps never show the fidelity of information you’re looking for. Like which facilities can’t be accessed during rain season because the hippos and elephants meet by the river that forms. A village cut off for six months, with only stores of flour and sugar, doesn’t have time to prioritize maternal health. “We see more alligator bites than mothers at the clinic,” the clinic in-charge says.

I nod my head and ask to continue our interview outside. The district health officer passes me a mango, and I commit the researcher faux pas of eating during the interview so that I wouldn’t pass out. No one cares because they understand my survival needs. We’re sitting under a tree that’s next to the skull of a buffalo.

“That tiny window in the front. Is that your only window in the clinic?”

The in-charge nods. He confesses that he sometimes has to step outside himself. There’s no space on this 56-page assessment for this. Real life is recorded on the margins.

Moving through the district reveals patterns you’re looking for in the numbers because you work for measurements, and measurements get legitimacy, and legitimacy keeps your funding. But your body tells you a story when you record the numbers every night, over holidays, and weekends. Every cell you enter on the spreadsheet is a memory: a clinic in-charge you talked to about what matters to them, especially when resources are strained and people coming into the clinic are plenty. We sat with a clinic worker and interviewed him after the physician on our team patched up a patient that came in with a snake bite moments before. He had on no shoes while he was tilling the field. You enter that as “1” on the spreadsheet. You enter the GPS points. You enter the clinic name. But the people are lost to the numerators and denominators.

You know what you see. And you know others see it too. So, is it time to start the fire? I don’t mind blame as long as we stay out of the cold.

I’m sure troglodytes and I are known for bashing technology into what we need for it at the time. Such is the life of a tinkerer. My ability to hyperfocus on iterating on things I’ve developed is less about perfectionism and more about fulfilling this gnawing within my gut that tells me there’s more here.

Keep searching.

I’d do this by helping the research organization on multiple quests: database design and testing, GIS mapping, website development, and even creating a 24-hour toll-free hotline with the major telecommunications companies. The last happened once I downloaded the code from one of the first community mHealth apps at the time, translated it into a paper prototype, translated and back-translated, and piloted it with my colleagues into the health districts we operated out of. And the closer you are to the source of the data, the more you’re able to pick up.

For those designing the app in theory, they were developing the information flow based on common protocols developed in ivory towers. But I sat on a small wooden bench with the paper of the same data collection tool in my hand, looking into the eyes of a mother sharing the pain of losing her newborn. What was the next question, really?

The form asked her: “Stillborn? Yes or No?” I could only sit with her in the presence of this grief. Death is just a number on the form. It isn’t a child that will never use the clinic. It isn’t a parent that will never see their child eat chicken and shima. It isn’t a child that will go to the local school and bug their mom for a ream of paper. The answers were all around me.

“Speak English,” the form on the computer says. This country has over 70 indigenous languages and dialects. “Ah ah, you speak Nyanja, eh? How can we help you?” That language showed respect to the chiefs and chieftainesses, which opened up community investment in our maternal health initiative. Culture and heart were our gateway. When our vehicles came into the clinic area, the clinic personnel knew we were there recording their truths through understanding and not just assessment. The numbers were the backing we used to speak multiple languages of research and development, but our primary language in the field was love, which showed in how we showed up to help communities beyond the scope of work.

To carry that love forward in systems that were intentionally not designed for it meant creating a bridge where systems and people could meet without getting lost. Each serves its own purpose. It is our responsibility and duty to translate as much as we could observe to change people’s lives for the better. Every smile, every worker that felt affirmed by our visits, every hug with a mother in the village as we held her baby: the feeling that gave me could never be replaced by the additional letters behind my name. And it could never be fully translated by a sterile, robotic system. The soul of change is the merging of both head and heart: human-centered design is the engine that powers this train. For now at least. These initial experiences changed my life forever, and I pay it forward every chance I get, especially in systems that I discover are resistant to designing their authentic truth.

I do this for people because that’s all we have at the end of the day. We are all designers of this world in our own right. And if you take on the responsibilities that come with this label, we can unite to make things better, even and especially with dirt.

This is only the technical side of the story. More to follow… like a diamond in the sky.