Project brief: Safe Agua is a unique combination of design education, design research and social entrepreneurship. Projects such as Safe Agua are changing design education and changing the design process itself to integrate field research as the driving component. Beyond responding to a preconceived design brief, students are now learning how to identify design opportunities and evaluate their largest potential impacts.

This is an animated short film that follows a water droplet named Harry Gota who embarks on an adventure, traveling through various water products that help bring clean water to people living in the slums of Santiago, Chile. This motion piece was part of the Safe Agua Chile project.

Approach: Our team of teachers, students and nonprofit partners combined multiple professional backgrounds and design disciplines. This new model deeply connects people across cultures and forges alliances across borders. Our design challenge began by asking the question, how can we work with impoverished communities in Santiago to develop new tools for using, storing and transporting water in order to help families overcome the conditions of poverty? Six transdisciplinary teams designed innovative solutions at a range of scales—product to system, community spaces to campaign—to address specific water-related needs identified through their field research. The teams worked together to complement one another and produce a result in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The retro-modern style helped emulate a “feel good” emotion and a sense of nostalgia. The narrator is used as a vehicle not only to fit the style but also to help shape the story around Harry Gota.

Effectiveness: The projects that emerged were interconnected by shared aspirations. Although each project specifically targeted water-related challenges, the entire class worked toward a larger, holistic goal to make an impact on the lives of families in the campamentos. More broadly, they fit into the longer trajectory of someone’s life and sought to help families make the transition from a temporary living situation in the campamento to a better life in the casa definitive (permanent social housing).

Hits all the right notes: amazing story, incredible graphics and illustrations, humor and education. Makes complex system understandable, speaking to a wide range of audiences with a relatable story.