The Amazonian Coloring Book

The story of a social venture in Peru that empowered female artisans and turned their ancestral art into a coloring book that improved their livelihoods and created a platform to foster their culture.

Venture: Koshi Studio
Domain: Indigenous Art & Culture, Social Innovation
My role: Founder & Principal Researcher  | Team: Thalía Rondón (Lead Product Designer), Slavia Salinas, (Anthropologist)
Skills: Generative research, participatory design, evaluative research, product strategy, business acumen
Timeline: 12 weeks

A book that fosters psychological and economical empowerment

As a founding member of Koshi Studio, a social venture that supports indigenous communities reimagining their ancestral artwork in new mediums, I contributed to setting the vision and general management of the venture, including marketing, sales, public relations, and legal.

As the Principal Researcher of the project I defined and executed a research strategy that encompassed explorative, generative, and evaluative research techniques, to guide and enhance product development processes.

I employed a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods given the ir relevance in the product life-cycle including user interviews, contextual inquiries, competitive analysis, surveys, and product testing.

My contributions

Our team's creation, the Amazonian Coloring Book, is more than just a coloring book. Showcasing 30 beautiful designs from unsold artworks, has not only boosted their income by 54% for every 50 books sold but has also given them a platform to share their stories and culture. With over 1,000 books sold in just a few months, the initiative also imbues the artisans with newfound confidence and pride in their work. It offers customers a therapeutic and educational experience, providing relief during stressful pandemic times. Owing to its overwhelming success, we plan to expand the project to include more indigenous communities and diversify the product range.

Context

Peru is home to over 50 indigenous communities that, in addition to their immense cultural value, share a significant activity: craftsmanship led by women. Most artisanal communities live in extreme poverty, relying on crafts as a vital income source.

In 2019, alongside Slavia Salinas and Thalía Rondón, I co-founded Koshi Studio as a platform to reduce the socioeconomic gap between indigenous and artisan communities by co-creating original products inspired by the artistic skills that make up their ancestral heritage.

Koshi Studio

The Shipibo are an indigenous community located in the central jungle of Peru. The migration of the first Shipibo to Lima, Peru’s capital city, began in the 90s, with more than 240 currently living in the Cantagallo up to date. Some of the challenges Shipibos face include inequality, social exclusion, and poverty.

From the jungle to the city

Shipibo-Conibo, especially women, found a means of subsistence and the main source of income for themselves and their families in the making of handicrafts. For the Shipibo-Conibo, art constitutes a space for expression, personal development, and social participation that allows them to transcend barriers and difficulties.

Shipibo-Conibo Art and Kené

The Problem

The Shipibo rely on the sale of their artwork as a means to support themselves and their families.

Their products are popular and mostly bought among tourists, which visit fairs spontaneously. However, the permanent consumers at their reach represent the people from Lima.

Due to the mismatch between what the Shipibo offer and what consumers in Lima seek, there is an unsustainable flow of sales.

Learn how to best support the Shipibo in developing marketable products that generate a steady and sustainable income, that aligns with the preferences of the Lima market.

Goal

Research

Research questions

  1. What is the role craftsmanship plays in the lives of Shipibo-Conibo women?

  2. How can the preservation of indigenous cultural practices and traditional artisan techniques be supported through new marketable products?

  3. How do consumers in Lima perceive indigenous communities and what are their expectations in relationship to their artisanal products?

Roadmap

Contextual inquiries

Given the early stage of the research process I opted to conduct contextual inquiries to continue building rapport with participants and immerse in their daily lives as artisans. I began by visiting the home of Olinda, an artisanal leader, where I learned about her personal immigration story, her relationship with craftsmanship and the role it plays in her life. Establishing that relationship further opened the doors to access the Shipibo women artisanal warehouse, considered a sacred place where women exchange inter-generational knowledge and create beautiful crafts together.

Olinda’s house

Shipibo Women Artisanal warehouse

I was ready to conduct my first interviews when the unexpected occurred…

The first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in Peru

How the pandemic affected my research process

Cantagallo became the area with most infections per square meter in the country, so we redirected efforts to a fundraising campaign to support hygiene and food needs.

Tourism and artisanal fairs stagnated, resulting in an abrupt cease of sales for the artisans, which is their main source of subsistence.

Social mobilization was prohibited , limiting our possibilities to physically approach the Shipibo community as we had planned.

My research questions were also adjusted, making them context-sensitive to the pandemic.

New challenges including building trust over phone calls

Given that there is no internet signal in Cantagallo, and most families share a flip phone, I had to establish trust with 10 participants over the phone.

This was a challenging experience given the historical precedents of discrimination and violence this community has faced.

  • Establish a horizontal dynamic from interviewer to interviewee to eradicate any preconception of power dynamics.

  • Build rapport and make the participants feel at ease by taking the pressure away of an interview and make it feel more conversational.

  • I avoided the use of certain words that were over-complicated or included slangs.

  • In the context of the Shipibo, giving your words means more than signing a document. Instead of sending an informed consent document, I acknowledged that an opted for an verbal consent.

A culturally-sensitive approach

The other side of the problem

Given that we were designing a solution that would be targeted to consumers in Lima, I conducted secondary research to learn how they were experimenting the pandemic.

Behavioral and emotional trends of the Lima population amidst the pandemic

Insights

1.
The absence of sales had a detrimental impact on the Shipibo people's livelihoods, requiring fast action.

2.
The morale and self-perceived value of the artisans' work was suffering adverse effects.

These insights served me to influence and prioritize the direction the design challenge would take.

3.
Pandemic-induced changes in Lima's consumers led to a shift from consumerism to selective buying focused on self-care.

Design challenge

How might we design a solution that:

  1. Facilitates rapid attainment of financial stability for Shipibo artisans

  2. Preserves and enhances the worth of their artwork

  3. Meet the needs and expectations of consumers in Lima amidst the pandemic

Ideation

Participatory design

In close collaboration with the product designer, I facilitated an ideation workshop through participatory welcoming members of the Shipibo community ideate and engage in the process with us.

Throughout passionate conversation and ideas, we were able to generate a valuable insight during our brainstorming session.

Shipibo designs have the potential to be digitalized and be applied to new mediums, providing artisans with royalties for the intellectual property of their designs; thus generating a sustainable source of income.

Ideation insight

Down-selection

Many ideas were shared through our ideation session, however the following down-selecting methods supported moving on with our final decision.

  • Relevance to the design challenge

  • Feasibility

  • Excitement & buy-in from the artisans

The idea

Ultimately, we opted to select the idea of a Coloring Book for several reasons:

  • Gave multiple unsold artisanal products a second life

  • Facilitated a scalable reproduction to accelerate sales by printing out multiple copies

  • Presented a medium for art therapy to ease stress

  • Catered to the artistic hobbies people in Lima were developing

Evaluative Research

After prototyping our idea through a digital version of the coloring book, we needed to test our concept and product with real end-users.

Survey

  • Identify competitors in the market and learn about users’ previous experiences buying coloring books.

  • Learn the design, quality, and content expectation of users’ in regards to a coloring book.

  • Evaluate users’ feedback on the concept and design of the book based on the prototypes.

  • Explore the appeal of the product to potential users, as well as additional motivations to purchase the product.

  • Learn about the estimated price users’ would deem appropriate for the product.

I designed a survey that was answered by 303 Lima citizens in the course of a week. This survey was distributed evenly between participants of diverse genders, ages, and locations in Lima.

Product testing & interviews

After analyzing the answers from the survey, and considering sociodemographic variables, we developed a segmentation of potential customers.

I selected eight users and handed them a MVP version of the book. Taking inspiration of diary studies, I asked them to integrate the book naturally into the course of their lives and report back after a week in an interview.

Through this, I wanted to evaluate the experience users were having with the product, as well as new behavioral insights we could have not considered yet.

Feature specific feedback

As I conducted our product testing sessions, I kept track of all the design feature related feedback to communicate back to the designer.

Insights

  • “I’d be interested to learn how they became artists, as well as the medium of art they enjoy the most. I’d also love to learn about the meaning of their iconography.” -P5

    “I would add a personalized story of community or a impactful phrase to each design, in order to get to know them better and make the purchase more intimate” - P2


    56% of respondants from the survey had limited to no previous knowledge about the Shipibo community.

  • “I’d like to see both complicated geometric and simple designs, so I can pick the one I like according to the occasion and my mood.” - P3

    “Toddlers up to age 6 need slightly simpler designs. Maybe there could be two types of designs, one for small children and another for the whole family.” - P8

  • “Although I don’t color often, I’d buy the product due to the component of social help. Difficult times like these ones are when we need to help the most.”

    -P8

The Amazonian Coloring Book

Taking into account all insights and feedback, we were able to curate a coloring book that was co-created with users and artisans. The Amazonian Coloring Book is a medium to diffuse the Shipibo-Conibo culture, introducing readers to their personal stories as artisans, and collective memories as a Community. 

This high-end book is composed of 5 chapters, and every chapter is a tribute to each one of the artisans, including information about their cosmovision and relationship with art.

This product shares an in-depth explanation of their kené (design in Shipibo). As well as their beautiful kené designs ready to be colored. The book has 30 designs in total, six unique kené designs per artisan. Additionally, we enhanced the experience by including the following value proposition:

Design features

Variety of designs

The Amazonian coloring book presents the user with a diverse set of designs, appropriate for different age groups, and moods according to level of difficulty.

Storytelling

The book serves as a platform for artisans to share their personal stories, as well as their meaning and relationship with art, a highly requested piece of information requested by users, and an important goal for artisans.

”Since I was a child I learned to do kené thanks to my ancestors, my grandparents, through ‘piri piri’ and through the vision of ayahuasca. Kené was very important in my life because it helped me to empower myself as a woman and to take my art to many countries, visiting cities, leaving my mark and that of my grandparents and their inherited knowledge.”

Upcycling Desings

Considering our commitment to the environment, we wanted to be able to give the designs in the book a second life. For that reason, we integrated an easy-to-tear-off pattern in all of the pages of the book. Thus, users are free to use their designs like posters, cards, or even wrapping paper, as some of them suggested during the interviews. Following user feedback, this is communicated explicitly at the beginning of the book.

A shared experience

Considering the wide age ranges in the target audiences that we learned would be interested in our product from our surveys and interviews, we decided to include, although subjective, a variety of designs in terms of difficulty and style. Complemented by the tearable nature of pages, the Amazonian Coloring Book is a product designed to enjoy individually or collectively.

Impact

Koshi Studio significantly increased featured artisans’ monthly income, successfully fundraised donations to benefit 400+ indigenous families, and was recognized in several media platforms fostering ancestral art and culture.

  • Over 1K books were sold between September and December 2020, successfully representing a 54% monthly income increase per every 50 books sold.

  • Fundraised $15k+ to benefit 400+ indigenous families during the COVID-19 outbreak. Our work was recognized by the National Institute of Civil Defense

  • The Amazonian Coloring Book was presented in a Culture and Literature event hosted by the Municipality of Lima and in a webinar that featured the artists.

  • The Amazonian Coloring Book story was featured in Peru’s most renowned newspaper, El Comercio, as well as Caretas and PuntoEdu.

After the Amazonian Coloring Book was published and hundreds of copies were sold and distributed nationwide, we continued to conduct feedback with our customers. 

Every time we sold the product directly, we would invite customers to fill out a feedback survey. Through this survey, we learned about their perception of the attributes of the book, their motivation to purchase the book, how they learned about the product, the things they liked the most, and the ones they disliked or would change. 

Some of the things we learned included gaining a deeper knowledge of the artists, including different communities per book and visualizing their geographical locations through a map.

Aftermath

Gathering continuous feedback

Given the successful collaboration with the Shipibo-Conibo and the positive impact the project had on them educationally and economically, we looked for other artisan communities in Peru experiencing a similar situation post-pandemic. We wanted to upscale our design process to impact more people.

Upscaling the design process

Reaching other communities

After experiencing the entire design process with the Shipibo-Conibo community, we were able to meet Rita Suaña, the president of the association of artisans of the indigenous community Uro. The Uro is a community of approximately 2000 inhabitants who inhabit the floating islands of Lake Titicaca. 

Expanding our product portfolio

Through the successful product development of the coloring books, we were able to learn about an efficient end-to-end design process, as well as our customers’ main demographics.

Learnings & Reflections

  • It's crucial to acknowledge our biases when collaborating with indigenous artisans. As outsiders, we subconsciously carry assumptions and preconceptions about their culture, which can impact our approach and communication with them.

  • We were self-aware and recognized the power dynamic in our relationship, as we hold some of the resources and opportunities that the artisans may depend on. We approached collaboration with respect, sensitivity, and a willingness to learn from their perspective.

  • By working hand in hand with artisans, we developed a product that was more authentic and reflective of their cultural values and traditions. It also created a sense of ownership and pride among the artisans, through their active contributions to the final product.

    Through this process we recognized their skills, knowledge, and creativity and empowered them to take an active role in the design process.

  • When asking artisans to share about their stories, we relied on open-ended questions and some of them felt shy to respond - which resulted in brief descriptions of each artisan in the book.

    Looking back, I would have experimented with other ways to talk in their language, like for example asking them to share their stories through their art as they usually do.