This NGO is using product design to save lives

What if you could save lives just by distributing birth control to a specific region in Myanmar? What if that same intervention strategy was applied to rural India?

For 50+ years, PSI has been tackling global health challenges through life-saving products, services, and information. Their model for measuring impact hid behind an outdated and glitchy interface. PSI tasked elefint with designing a more robust and useful product that could measure, compare and contrast the impact of PSI health interventions around the world.  

Our approach to product design for public health

Elefint started our design process by understanding the needs of PSI programming, field, and development teams; the intended users of this web-based product. Through design research we discovered usability flaws in PSI’s former calculation tool and identified the need for greater transparency around PSI’s models used to estimate impact.

Form meets function

The brilliance of the PSI Impact Calculator lies in its underlying mathematics. Elefint designed an intuitive calculator that measures DALYs averted, or disability-adjusted life year. PSI teams can now compare and contrast country data and download data for easy integration into donor-facing proposals and impact reports; contributing to greater efficiency. Users can also select additional PSI interventions (not currently adopted in a country) to make predictions around DALYs averted. PSI now has a responsive tool that offers a much broader and detailed analysis of their global interventions.  

How PSI teams use the product  

The PSI Backstopping Team uses the Impact Calculator to gauge how closely PSI is meeting their goals, and if additional funding will be required to extend a regional project. They can also run numbers without having to wait for a response from other departments. Field teams and network members find the addition of the “export to excel” feature especially helpful in reporting back to donors and pitching programming ideas. Learn more about their work here.