Project Hiu
Improving lives above and below the surface
Project Hiu helps find alternate income streams for shark fishermen in Indonesia and advocates to improve the living conditions of the locals on Maringkik Island (located off the coast of Lombok).
As part of my university experience, a small team of ten undergraduates flew from Perth, Western Australia to Lombok, Indonesia in December 2022 to co-design with our client, Project Hiu.
During our trip, we interviewed shark fishermen, their families, and many other community members on the island and uncovered that the issue of sharkfishing was deeply intergenerational and hard to escape without proper education, awareness and economic assistance.
After leaving Indonesia and throughout the entirety of 2023, we continued this project within the postgraduate course of Design Thinking and Service Innovation at Murdoch University. The project scope morphed from first having the aim of helping Project Hiu find alternate income for the fishermen, to later discovering the need to raise awareness for funds so that they can not only afford to escape the generational cycle of shark fishing, but afford access to clean drinking water, better healthcare and quality education. We then realised that education was at the root of these core issues - educating sponsors, the general public, the fishermen and future generations on the island about what was happening and how others with the resources could help.
How might we improve education for the people of Maringkik Island around sustainable living?
How might we help facilitate direct education for the children of Maringkik Island?
How might we create education for awareness?
How might we use education for sponsorship?
Through low and high-fidelity prototyping, we came up with some ideas that could help combat each of these problem statements.
We summarised all of the findings and co-design methods from this project in a 600 page document to help Project Hiu in their mission to improve lives above and below the surface.
You can read the full document here.
Through our interview findings and further ethnographic research, we found that the areas of waste management, womens’ health and education on Marignkik Island were interlinked with the main ‘wicked’ problem - sharkfishing.
We created a proposal for an awareness campaign that outlined facilitating sponsorship and grant opportunities, enhancing physical experiences (such as an interactive storefront and merch lookbook) and suggesting improvements to their digital strategy for website and social media channels.
You can read the full proposal here.