Update from the Netherlands

Our team has been reunited in the Netherlands for two weeks now. Together, we are working on the solutions, according to the findings of our research. This Friday, the second part of our group: Wilco, Jaimie and Paulien will go to Kenya, Irma and Myrthe will stay in the Netherlands to finish the report and work on the implementation of the solution we found.

We decided to divide the final solution into three parts:

• Communication from weather data to the factory; we developed a computer program/app for this. A factory employee should manage this computer and decides on what data is worth spreading and what data should be presented at the factory.
  
• Communication of that data from the factory to farmers on the factory; this will be a large sign at the gate of the factory or inside, this will be decided during the research of the second visit. This sign presents information about the rain and temperature for the coming two days.
  
• Communication of the same data from the factory to farmers, not present on the factory; this will happen through a wireless service send to the phone of the farmer. During the first visit, we found that all famers have a phone in their possession, which they use on daily basis. This service will allow push messages, but also pull. This means the factory employee can send messages when necessary, but the farmer is also able to request information himself.

We have come up with several concepts, which we will present to our coach and one of the companies tomorrow. This provides the ability of adapting the concepts according to the feedback before the prototypes will be taken to Kenya.

In Kenya, the prototypes will be tested with a cooperative board, several factories and farmers. We will try to inform you as much as possible on this blog about the findings, but as mentioned before, we have to be careful due to confidentiality.

We will keep you posted!