Will Harris
Before starting the clinical trials, RISD Alumni Will Harris double checks and cleans all aspects of Firefly.
Will Harris (BFA ID ’10) hasn’t wasted much time since graduating RISD over a year and a half ago. Already, he’s designed and helped launch Firefly – a medical product at Design that Matters (DtM) that uses phototherapy to treat neonatal jaundice in Southeast Asia, where the disease affects a disproportionately high number of infants.
The Seattle native was introduced to Project Firefly through an Industrial Design advanced studio that partners with MIT’s Sloan School of Management and Leaders for Global Operations called Product Design and Development.
The same year Harris participated in the studio, DtM sponsored a project that would later become Firefly. He took on the project, helping them design solutions for the phototherapy device. This created an internship opportunity for him, which eventually led to a full-time position as a product designer at the Cambridge-based non-profit design firm.
DtM is a three-person company, which has allowed Harris the opportunity to work on every part of the product design process, from initial inspiration boards to complex CAD (computer-aided design) models of Firefly.
He has been actively incorporating knowledge of manufacturing into his work while working in a collaborative environment with people from entirely different backgrounds.
Harris stresses how important it is to know how to communicate with non-designers. “A lot of times in advanced studios, people are working on their own or working in a two-person group with another designer. And to really have a sense of what it’s going to be like in the world once you’re working at a studio, you need to work with engineers, business people, to understand their mindsets,” he says.
Because Harris works at such a small company, he is often given responsibilities and opportunities he would not otherwise be able to have.
Harris has traveled to Vietnam twice while working with DtM, helping them with field research and more recently, clinical trials, which began December 5th at the National OBGYN Hospital in Hanoi, Vietnam. He says, “Being able to go to Vietnam and see the response and see how excited people were – I think just made everything worthwhile.”
A nurse at Dai Tu District Hospital uses the Firefly bassinet to place the infant back into treatment, after changing their diaper.
The product still has to be tested at other district hospitals, but if all goes well, it will soon be rolled out in many areas in the region.
Doctors and nurses have already remarked at how intuitive the product is. Dr. Nguyen Thanh Ha, NiCU Director at National OBGYN Hospital, says, “Firefly provides very good access to the infant for bottle feeding, diaper changes, and even blood tests. We performed blood tests on each of the four infants treated so far without removing them from Firefly.” It has also allowed mothers to sleep next to their infants and supervise them throughout the treatment.
Though Harris understands form and function, it is clear that he is passionate about what Firefly really means to people.
“I think there’s a really strong power of having good aesthetics in any kind of device and really making people feel comfortable, but [I’m] really trying to work on just making a device that’s going to help someone and do something positive for the world,” he says.
To find out more about Design that Matters, visit their website.
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