East Africa (EA), a region facing food shortages, has very little irrigation adoption compared to the rest of the world. Increasing irrigation has been shown to increase food cultivation, so governments and private organizations have been attempting to introduce irrigation products into the EA market. Despite this support, irrigation adoption rates remain low, reflecting that existing solutions do not meet the needs of medium-to-small-scale farmers. Meeting these needs is challenging due to the diversity of farmers in EA and the minimal exploration of these differences in the literature. This study sought to elucidate some of these differences and explore whether new opportunities exist for irrigation products targeting EA farmers. An interview-based market assessment was first conducted to identify key market segments and unique values that farmers in each segment may hold for an irrigation system for each segment. Then, a techno-economic feasibility analysis was used to reveal which combinations of irrigation methods and energy sources present promising opportunities for each segment. Four distinct market segments were found. Broadly, the traditional smallholder would likely most value a system that uses photovoltaic (PV) power and manual irrigation. The semi-commercial smallholder may find promising opportunities in a system that uses PV power and butterfly sprinklers. Both the medium-scale contract farmer and the remote farm owner would likely value PV panel- and drip irrigation-based systems. These identified opportunities can guide innovation for irrigation designers as they create new systems to directly serve the needs of specific market segments, with the aim of increasing irrigation and food security in EA.

As freshwater supplies decrease, adopting sustainable practices like water- and energy-efficient irrigation is crucial, particularly in resource-constrained regions. Here, farmers often cannot purchase precision irrigation equipment, which achieves high water and energy efficiencies via full automation. Currently, no irrigation methods exist that combine automatic scheduling of events with manual operation of valves, familiar hardware on low-income farms. This work synthesizes functional requirements for a tool that could address efficiency needs while integrating into current manual practices. Then, a design concept for an automatic scheduling and manual operation (AS-MO) human–machine interaction (HMI) that meets these requirements is proposed. Two design stages of the AS-MO HMI were evaluated by farmers and market stakeholders in three countries. Results show that farmers in Kenya and Jordan valued the proposed AS-MO HMI because they could increase efficiency on their farms without the cost or complexity of automatic valves. In Morocco, a possible market was found, but a majority of participants preferred full automation. Interviewees provided feedback on how to improve the tool’s design in future iterations. If adopted at scale, the proposed AS-MO tool could increase efficiency on farms that otherwise cannot afford current precision irrigation technology, improving sustainable agriculture worldwide.

The data created from virtual communication platforms presents the opportunity to explore automated measures for monitoring team performance. In this work, we explore one important characteristic of successful teams — Psychological Safety — or the belief that a team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. To move towards an automated measure of this phenomenon, we derive virtual communication characteristics and message keywords related to elements of Psychological Safety from the literature. Using a mixed methods approach, we investigate whether these characteristics are present in the Slack messages from two design teams— one high in Psychological Safety, and one low. We find that some usage characteristics, such as replies, reactions, and user mentions, might be promising metrics to indicate higher levels of Psychological Safety, while simple keyword searches may not be nuanced enough. We present the first step towards the automated detection of this important, yet complex, team characteristic.

Introducing irrigation to smallholder farms in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) can increase food security, improve nutrition, and reduce poverty. To explore the possibility of using drip irrigation on smallholder farms in SSA, we introduce a feasibility study that views the design space from both a user-centered lens, explaining how drip might be successful in the future, and from an engineering lens. With a first-order model, we compare estimated capital costs of drip and sprinkler systems for various farm profiles and show that drip has the potential to be a viable technology for many farms in SSA.

East Africa (EA), a region facing food shortages, has very little irrigation adoption compared to the rest of the world. Increasing irrigation has been shown to increase food cultivation, so governments and private organizations have been attempting to introduce irrigation products into the EA market. Despite this support, irrigation adoption rates remain low, meaning existing solutions do not meet the needs of medium-to-small scale farmers. Meeting these needs is challenging because the types of farmers in EA are diverse, and these differences have not yet been elucidated. This study sought to do so and to understand if new opportunities exist for irrigation products targeted at this range of farmers. We first conducted an interview-based market assessment to reveal which market segments exist and what each values in an irrigation system. Then, we conducted a technical and economic feasibility analysis to reveal which irrigation methods and energy sources are most promising for each segment. Four distinct market segments were found. The traditional smallholder would most value a system that uses photovoltaic (PV) and manual irrigation. The semi-commercial smallholder’s most promising system uses PV panels and butterfly sprinklers. Both the medium-scale contract farmer and the remote farm owner would value PV panel- and drip irrigation-based systems. These identified opportunities for innovation can guide irrigation designers as they develop new systems that directly serve farmers’ needs, with the aim to increase irrigation and food security in EA.