The Hand
Hygiene Project

February 28, 2016

How can we build better hand hygiene products for developing world?

Clean Hands Inc. is a joint venture with Val Curtis of LSHTM and Helen Trevaskis, innovation and behavior change consultant.

The task was to assist in the development of a new affordable hand cleansing technology and deliver it to low income consumers in developing countries via a sustainable scalable social business. The premise is that soap and water perform poorly in these environments and are part of the reason why behaviour change programs focusing on handwashing-with-soap, often fail to impact health outcomes in low income settings at scale.

Over a three-month period from March – May 2011, research and prototyping took place in five low-income communities around Pune. This enabled in-depth research resulting in defined principles and guidelines for product design and a short-list of product ideas. The final ideas considered variables such as: ease of use and packaging, storage, cost and refilling.

The potential for impact on health is considerable if the technology is widely adopted and used at critical moments such as after defecation and before eating.

Here are a few insights we gathered in our journey:

Here is a concept sketch and a quick prototype of on one of the ideas which was then tested within homes in one of the localities of Pune:

Project in collaboration with Teesta Das, Neha Agarwal and students from Strategy Design Management, MIT, Pune, India 

April-June 2011

Project Website: http://quicksand.co.in