Sex Work Is Real Work: HCD in Kenya

This case study covers a project in Kenya to understand the latent motivators, decision-making pathways, and behavioral norms that can be optimized for HIV prevention among female sex workers (FSWs).

To gain these insights, the team designed a research strategy not only at the individual level (using aspirational messaging to encourage adoption and retention) but also designing at the broader peer group and community level (stimulating long-term social norm change). Human-centered design is predominantly a qualitative process, which seeks emotional understanding of the users for whom it is creating value and drives an action-oriented, creative process from this strong emotive foundation.

The team engaged FSWs very early in the process, and even trained some of them to conduct research in an environment that was familiar to them and their peers. Complementarily, behavioral economics supported a more data-driven approach to understanding the psychology behind human attitudes.

In the process, the researchers gained qualitative insights by exploring the contexts in which FSWs expose themselves to risk and make decisions. This research phase informed the creation of a quantitative tool used for segmenting the target population into clusters based on self-reported sexual behaviors, decision factors and objective-subjective risk levels. Following which, they defined the identified personas in the quantitative data to make population level inferences and provide clues on ideal intervention strategies.

Source: ThinkPlace Kenya

Date of Publication: March 25, 2019