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Fenix International

In Africa, more than 80 percent of households lack access to energy.&nbsp;

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Many people light their homes with homemade candles and kerosene lamps that are dangerous and smoky, causing house fires and respiratory problems.&nbsp;
The lack of light and power is also a roadblock to economic and societal development, limiting the ability to work, study, and communicate digitally.
<a href="https://www.fenixintl.com/" target="_blank">Fenix International</a>, a Silicon-Valley startup, sought to tackle this problem with a pay-to-own, personal solar-powered grid. They partnered with MTN, Africa’s largest telecommunications provider, to enable micro-payments using MTN’s Mobile Money digital payment system. In rural Uganda, customers can access lighting and phone charging using the ReadyPay Solar Home System for installment payments of as little as 20 cents a day made through their mobile phones. Fenix has provided affordable power to more than 120,000 people in Uganda in just a year. They are now expanding into Zambia.

Delve was asked to improve upon the first-generation base unit to make it more user friendly – smaller, lighter, easier to use, aesthetically desirable and more modular. Keeping production costs low to keep unit prices down was a critical component of the work. 
Through Fenix staff located in Uganda, we learned that their customers desired the clean lines of iconic American design. Most rural residents of Uganda have very little disposable income. The ReadyPay system is an important investment in their future and something that they are proud to display in their homes. The design needed to live up to the product’s high promise while maintaining an extremely low cost of goods to manufacture to remain within economic reach.

06 Case Study Fenix Hero

For the base unit, we designed a gently curving plastic enclosure that’s attractive and easy for people to move around the home. The design features MTN’s signature yellow color with black accents, adding branding value for Fenix’s partner. 
Designing the embedded digital interface was a central challenge of the project. The type of technology, placement of the screen and information displayed were all carefully considered. The display space is only 1 x 2.5 inches and must communicate battery and solar charging levels, cellular network signal strength and activity, ReadyPay status, errors, and device connections such as a cell phone or light.
The team ended up turning to an old technology, segmented LCD, as the basis of the display. It was a tradeoff of low-cost and clarity versus flexibility that was informed by the need to keep the unit affordable.

06 Case Study Fenix 2

Our Interaction Design&nbsp;team worked within the technology’s limitations to create an attractive, modern and accessible interface. Making sure it was understood by users despite wide variances in language and education was critical. To design the device status iconography, our research team developed a field study that Fenix staff in Uganda used to test what people understood while interacting with the interface. After three rounds of testing, an approach that combines a status bar on the top of the screen with larger symbols around system function and account status on the bottom was selected and refined. 
All the electronic components have been engineered to mount to the bottom, meaning technicians need only remove the top to be able to rehab the unit. Our engineers worked to design parts that could be easily and cheaply manufactured to keep cost of production, and thus ownership, very low. 
This was a project that spanned teams in San Francisco, Madison, Wis., and Uganda. The combination of rethinking old technology, client-conducted field research, and a constant focus on the end user is now helping to light up the night in Africa.

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06 Case Study Fenix 3

In Africa, more than 80 percent of households lack access to energy. The lack of light and power is a roadblock to economic and societal development, limiting the ability to work, study, and communicate digitally.

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Fenix International: ReadyPay Solar Home System

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In Africa, more than 80 percent of households lack access to energy. The lack of light and power is a roadblock to economic and societal development, limiting the ability to work, study, and communicate digitally.

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Fenix International: ReadyPay Solar Home System

Using the sun to light Africa’s nights

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