Getting in the Loops: Using Adaptive Design Methods for Fall Armyworm Spodoptera frugiperda (JE Smith) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) Mitigation in Kenya, Nepal, and Bangladesh

Efforts worldwide have sought to lessen the agricultural and societal impact of the fall armyworm (FAW), Spodoptera frugiperda (JE Smith) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) mitigation in Kenya, Nepal, and Bangladesh by safeguarding affected regions’ food crops and livelihoods while preventing the spread of FAW to nearby areas. However, efforts to communicate and gain support for FAW control methods among local populations can have limited impacts. This study qualitatively explores “design looping” as part of three Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) campaigns in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Kenya for increasing community support for FAW mitigation. Such an approach not only potentially extends the reach and scalability of FAW control methods but also contributes to meeting Sustainable Development Goals for food security and community well-being. Findings of productive advantages for “design looping” in this study include (1) increased participatory access by project stakeholders and beneficiaries, (2) flexibility, as cost-effective and potentially continuous opportunities to refine ICT4D messaging to meet project goals, and (3) bi-directional learning between project producers and message recipients for improved message deployment. Limitations and directions for future research are also discussed. Plain Language Summary Using adaptive methods to design insect pest mitigation information Getting local people to participate in protecting food crops and livelihoods by stopping the spread of crop pests like fall armyworm (FAW) presents challenges. This study looks at how “design looping” was used in three information campaigns in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Kenya aimed at enabling more community support for fighting FAW using Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D). This design method can increase the range and effectiveness of FAW control and strengthen food security and community well-being. Results of the study found that “design looping” had several benefits: (1) it allowed more people to be involved in the design process, (2) it was highly cost-effective and allowed for adjustments and adaptation of the messaging to different contexts, and (3) it fostered better learning and message sharing between the message creators and those receiving the messages. Limitations and suggestions for future research are also discussed.


Introduction
This paper explores the productive advantages that ''design looping'' afforded three cases of information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) educational messaging to mitigate the invasive fall armyworm (FAW) Spodoptera frugiperda (JE Smith) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) a maize pest in Kenya, Nepal, and Bangladesh.These three locations are the subject of this paper because they were the areas targeted for interventions by a collaboration with USAID (as well as CIMMYT and IITA), which developed an educational video to regarding FAW scouting (SAWBO, 2018).
Specifically, this case study explores how those productive advantages of design-looping helped align the end work-product (an ICT4D educational animation) with the FAW mitigation project managers' envisioned goals.Achieving better alignment is essential and desirable because it affords a more productive use of project resources overall (as a greater return on investment through more effective project outcomes).However, it also provides the means for course corrections during the arc from solution development through post-deployment, which makes such realignment of project outcomes with project goals possible in the first place.
In the present case, others had previously developed a protocol for mitigating fall armyworm by scouting and spraying (Prasanna et al., 2018).Again, this study focuses on looping across the design-side production, translation, and adaptation phases of the ICT4D animation (after distribution by others).As such, it does not (and cannot) include measurement or assessment of any on-the-ground effects from the use of the ICT4D FAW animation (which may or may not be still ongoing).
Moreover, although ICT4D delivery strategies include PCs and laptops, television stations, radios, and other devices (Bello-Bravo, Payumo, & Pittendrigh, 2021;Bello-Bravo, Brooks et al., 2021;Odole-Adeyemi & Oni, 2022;Samoylenko et al., 2021), mobile phones (and Apps for them) have since 2017 become the primary digital access device type globally.However, the specific scope of this study focuses only on the creation, translation, and subsequent adaptation of the video postdeployment by others, not the means of delivery selected by the video's commissioners.Specifically, the commission called only for producing a video playable on ICT devices (including video-enabled smartphones).No mobile phone Apps are specifically discussed here for deployment of this content, although phone Apps are frequently necessary for farmer access to digital information and represent another path for uptake and deployment of content (Emeana et al., 2020;Okonkwo et al., 2019;Quandt et al., 2020).
Background Goergen et al. (2016) reported on the emergence of fall armyworm, Spodoptera frugiperda (JE Smith) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), an invasive species in west and central Africa.Since then, FAW has spread to become a significant agricultural threat to maize crops, food security, and social stability transcontinentally in at least 28 countries in Africa (now including Senegal) and countries in Asia including, but not limited to, Nepal, Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Thailand, China, Vietnam, and Laos (Babu et al., 2019;Bello-Bravo, Huesing, Boddupalli, et al., 2018;Bre´vault et al., 2018;Early et al., 2018;Guo et al., 2018;Li et al., 2020;Matthews, 2018;Sharanabasappa, 2018;Shylesha et al., 2018).While the socioeconomic losses from FAW run into billions of dollars, with as much as 70 to 100% of crops affected by this pest (Kirprop, 2017;Rwomushana et al., 2018;Shylesha et al., 2018), the extremely rapid rate of expansion over the past few years- Li et al. (2020) describe the speed as ''phenomenal'' (p.1)-and guaranteed increasing extent of that expansion short of decisive intervention to limit it (Li et al., 2020) portend devastating threats.Overton et al. (2021) document ongoing economic impacts due to FAW.
One answer to these calls was the development of the subject-educational video of this case study.The video, developed through an international collaboration between USAID, CIMMYT, IITA, and Scientific Animations Without Borders (SAWBO), depicted a protocol for practically and strategically scouting for and spraying FAW (Bello-Bravo, Huesing, Boddupalli, et al., 2018;Prasanna et al., 2018).Any method, or combination of methods, to solve a problem (like mitigating FAW) necessarily requires some means for effectively and actionably delivering information about that method; otherwise, errors and harms occur (De Costa et al., 2021;Wyckhuys et al., 2019).Such messaging also must reach sufficient numbers of relevant stakeholders or else solutions will be less than ideally effective.These stakeholders include farmers tasked with daily inspecting their crops and spraying for FAW at strategic times (Prasanna et al., 2018) and scientists and policy-makers striving to implement integrated pest management (IPM) methods in affected areas (Bello-Bravo, Huesing, Boddupalli, et al., 2018;Bello-Bravo & Pittendrigh, 2017).Shortfalls of messaging-including failing to deliver the message at all, failing to reach enough people with the message, failing to deliver the message in a timely enough fashion, or failing to discover that the message sent was ultimately inadequate or incorrect-severely impact project outcomes generally as a project outcome and for FAW result in proportionately that much more crop destruction, food insecurity, and social instability.

Scientific Animations Without Borders (SAWBO)
Anchored in insights from multimedia adult learning (Knowles et al., 2012;Mayer, 2002), since 2010, SAWBO has empirically researched and validated information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) innovation research, creation, and deployment loop (RCDL) strategies to identify and implement media elements supporting message recipient buy-in, solution adoption, and behavior change.Some of these design features include: use of generically appealing animated imagery (Bello-Bravo et al., 2010;Rodriguez-Domenech et al., 2019), translation into the locally most comfortably spoken participant dialect (Bello-Bravo, Dannon et al., 2013), and delivery using the most technologically familiar and available ICT, mobile phones (Bello-Bravo, Nwakwasi et al., 2013).
For FAW mitigation specifically, SAWBO created, translated, deployed, and adapted a mobile ESD animation, How to Identify and Scout for Fall Armyworm in 39 languages, with another variant for Nepal in six languages, and a variant for South Sudan in English.This video depicts for farmers the scientific-consensus, bestpractices protocol, developed by USAID/CIMMYT/ CGIAR, for mitigating FAW (Prasanna et al., 2018).

Research Questions
Using case study (Stake, 1995), this paper explores ''design looping'' for localizing ICT4D educational information around the mitigation of fall armyworm (FAW) in the project's target areas (Kenya, Nepal, and Bangladesh)

Data Collection and Coding
As qualitative research, this paper seeks ''to bring out unique characteristics and interesting differences in the situation under observation'' (Sammut-Bonnici & McGee, 2015, p. 1).Data sources consisted of available project documentation, including but not limited to emails and reports, from three gray literature cases of ICT4D FAW mitigation innovation messaging in Kenya, Nepal, and Bangladesh.These documents included a preexisting email interview by a third-party conducted with the production manager for the ICT4D animation, which afforded triangulation (Olsen, 2004) of data in other documentation.

Data Analysis
Thematic content analysis (Joffe & Yardley, 2004;Vaismoradi & Snelgrove, 2019) was used to code and analyze the assembled data corpus inductively for ''looping'' during the adaptation, translation, and adaptation phases of the ICT4D educational animation (after its distribution by others).Two researchers independently coded the data and conferenced when their coding did not agree in order to reach a consensus and 100% interrater agreement (Armstrong et al., 1997;Gwet, 2014;Lange, 2017).Codes were subsequently aggregated categorically as both a conceptual framework for, and any thematically productive advantages from, looping using constant comparative analysis (Glesne, 2006).Moreover, while conceptual frameworks are a fundamental and expected part of qualitative research (Anfara & Mertz, 2014), we refer in the Findings specifically to an RCDL theory of change approach to the phenomenon under study (''design looping'') and how it impacts the creation, translation, and adaption of ICT4D videos postdeployment.While no consensus exists for what ''theory of change '' entails (Stein & Valters, 2012), Weiss (1995) foundationally described it as ''a theory of how and why an initiative works'' (p.65), amplified by the ''minimalist definition of [theory of change] by Davies (2012) as ''the description of a sequence of events that is expected to lead to a particular desired outcome'' (p. 1).Such a description is indeed the object of our conceptual framework in this paper: namely, to offer empirically grounded insights into how a sequence of design events can be reasonably expected to lead to a better alignment of project outcomes and goals (in the present case as realized through the use of an ICT4D educational video to mitigate FAW).

Limitations
Two limitations of this study must be noted.First, limited accessibility to project documentation necessarily affects the corpus available for data analysis.While this is always a limitation of documentary analysis (Herdan, 1959), the third-party email interview with the project's production manager allowed triangulation of emergent data themes (Olsen, 2004) across all three cases examined.Second, this paper's scope does not (and cannot) include measuring or assessing any on-the-ground effects of the ICT4D FAW animation (much of which is still ongoing).Undeniably, the question of the ultimate fate of any designed ICT4D intervention addressing global Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) challenges is of immense importance (c.f., Bello-Bravo, Abbott, Mocumbe, Maria, Mazur, & Pittendrigh, 2020;Bello-Bravo, Abbott, Mocumbe, & Pittendrigh, 2020).However, how design-side implementation of looping helps align project work-products more precisely with the stated or desired outcome of a project is prerequisite to any such on-the-ground success or assessment and a legitimate research question itself.

Findings
This paper explored how, and in what ways, ''looping'' affected the creation, translation, and adaptation after release of ICT4D educational messaging for use by others in mitigating fall armyworm in Kenya, Nepal, and Bangladesh.Overall, thematic content analysis of the coded data disclosed a conceptual framework for answering Research Quest 2 (''What productive advantages can ''looping'' afford research and actions to address threats, such as the spread of invasive pest insects like the fall armyworm'').These three advantages specifically are: participatory loops (during the Research phase), translation loops (during the Creation phase), and learning loops (during the Deployment and postdeployment Adaptation phase).Answers to RQ1 (''How did design looping better align the end work-product with the broader FAW mitigation project goals'') and RQ3 (''At what scales does such ''looping'' operate, i.e., research structures, processes, and changes of strategy'') are highlighted throughout the Findings.

Conceptual Framework (RQ2)
The conceptual explanatory framework that emerged (as an answer to RQ2) discloses design-looping as a structurally supported (formalized, systems approach) use of feedback and organizational learning informed by a principled commitment to an RCDL theory of change approach.Three main elements in this include stakeholder commitments for (1) welcoming process-outputs as new inputs (feedback), (2) respecting collaborative and adaptive learning, and (3) trusting flattened decision-making hierarchies to support participation.
Welcoming Process-Outputs as New Inputs (Feedback).Feedback uses the output of a process-step as an input for the next iteration of that step.From the study data, design-looping afforded a kind of feedback that transformed the output-input loop into a ''difference which makes a difference'' (Bateson, 1972, p. 462) around how the design process operates.Design-looping included, but was not limited to, formal feedback loops or mechanisms that redirected a process (RQ1), sequential iterations of design trial-and-error (RQ1), comments from end-users, designers, focus group participants, and other (RCDL) stakeholders on a project (even after its formal end) (RQ1, RQ3), new reports of changes in conditions or contexts either pre-or post-RCD for the project (RQ3), and follow-up studies on past projects (particularly as the project moved from a focus on Kenya to Bangladesh hand Nepal) (RQ3).
Treating feedback as design-looping required stakeholders to welcome feedback as potentially processtransforming and to anticipate and incorporate such a possibility into the design process itself (e.g., in particular, imagining how video assets used in Kenya would remain relevant in other countries).
Respecting Collaborative and Adaptive Learning.Designlooping operationalized USAID's (2017) collaborative, learning, and adaptive (CLA) framework.This points to times when stakeholders allowed a temporally or managerially prior step to be changed by the above processoutputs going forward.This principled allowance highlights CLA's adaptive and learning aspects, to the extent that the design-process itself changes its protocols and behavior in light of that output.
From the study data, such adaptive learning-similar to Piaget's notion of accommodation as a form of adaptation (see von Glasersfeld, 2014)-altered both the process' concepts as new information emerged as well as the structures that generated those process-concepts in the first place (RQ1).In theory of change terms, accommodation (as adaptive learning) involves alterations not only to what a process has as its goal but also how the goal will be realized (Santana, 1995).It is necessary to emphasize this distinction because how a process is conducted integrally affects stakeholders' participation (Dare´et al., 2014).
Trusting Flattened Decision-Making Hierarchies to Support Participation.From the study data, design-looping strengthened the collaborative aspect of CLA precisely by flattening decision-making hierarchies and affording broader participation.Collaborative work generally implies a less steeply hierarchical, more egalitarian arrangement of agents within a knowledge-and work-production process (Andersson, 2009;Lutomia, 2019).From this study's data, this meant recognizing collaborators at all point along the design-chain not simply as means or tools to an end but as participants with equal agency within a process (Lutomia, 2019;Naik, 2018).More broadly, the processes of participatory innovation design in this study afforded a sufficient variety of empowered voices, identities, and worldviews to capture both the educational protocol and relevant concerns around its depictions in its design (Bousquet et al., 2014;Douthwaite & Hoffecker, 2017;Lineberry, 2019;Mocumbe, Abbott et al., 2016)

Themes in Productive Advantages for Looping
For clarity, we first summarize three productive advantages afforded by design-looping below and then discuss them in more detail in later sections.The three productive advantages are that design-looping (1) structurally accommodated process outputs as inputs, making it more participatory, (2) afforded a built-in, highly cost-effective, and potentially continuous process of innovation refinement, making it more flexible post-initial release of the content, and (3) leveraged the flattened hierarchies of collaborative, learning, and adaptive (CLA) contexts, making it a bi-directional and participatory learning process.
First, design looping structurally accommodated process outputs as inputs, making it more participatory.This emerged most frequently when the artists producing the animation could provide (actionable) inputs to those supervising its production (Bello-Bravo, Huesing, Boddupalli, et al., 2018) (RQ1).These were design suggestions as potential improvements to the educational video that aligned better with the projects' goal-solutions overall.Incorporating this kind of ''bottom-up'' looping afforded changes in what and how the design processes' work-flow operated and better enabled an alignment of the work-product animation and the FAW mitigation project's envisioned solution overall.
Second, design looping afforded a built-in, highly costeffective, and potentially continuous process of innovation refinement, making the content more flexible postdeployment.This emerged most frequently in cases of retranslating the existing audio portion of the ICT4D animation into additional languages (in Nepal and Bangladesh) (RQ3).The SAWBO design process builds in and anticipates the re-translation of videos to accommodate different linguistic settings.To date in Nepal, the video has been translated into six languages.However, translation is not always only linguistic.In Nepal, different animated visuals were requested.Again, having built-in looping capacities as part of the SAWBO design process afforded making these changes in a cost-effective and timely manner (RQ1, RQ3).

Bello-Bravo and Pittendrigh
Third, design looping leveraged the flattened hierarchies of collaborative, learning, and adaptive (CLA) contexts, making it a bi-directional and participatory learning process.As seen especially in the case of Bangladesh (below), this emerged most frequently in the ways that that distribution strategies for the video changed in light of deployment experiences (RQ3).This involved how people sharing a finalized video could learn from its reception and adjust their delivery strategies accordingly.This can be built into design processes as an anticipation.That is, at the front-end of a design chain, the use of focus groups, proofs of concept, and end-user participation can enhance the relevance, appeal, and usability of a designed innovation (Mocumbe, 2016).SAWBO also built in a flexibility to modify the work-product after its finalization and deployment, but without such planning, such modifications are often prohibitively expensive or simply impossible.
Overall, RQ2's three elements of (1) welcoming process-outputs as new inputs (feedback), (2) respecting collaborative and adaptive learning, and (3) trusting flattened decision-making hierarchies to support participation manifest as themes across the full research-creationdeployment design process.
The following summarizes those themes as participatory loops (during the research phase), translation loops (during the creation phase), and learning loops (during the deployment phase).However, in actual practice participatory and learning loops manifest at different scales over the entire process; that is, one can always ask ''who is being invited into the process'' and ''in what ways are processes changing in light of new information.''Consequently, translation loops tend seem to drop into the background, because they concretely involve both literally translating the content of a video and re-tooling and adapting it for a different context.In this way, translation loops actually reprise elements of the entire RCDL process at a smaller scale (RQ3) and with an aim to align existing material with a new goal (RQ1).

Participatory Loops During the Research Phase
Background.This case focuses on design-side looping during the production of an ICT4D educational animation commissioned to mitigate FAW's effects.Titled How to Identify and Scout for Fall Armyworm (SAWBO, 2018), part of the rationale for commissioning this animation arose from a need for more effective educational materials and messaging around rapidly expanding FAW infestations in Kenya (Bello-Bravo, Huesing, Boddupalli, et al., 2018).Farm Input Productions Africa noted, ''Previously, we had relied on traditional training under a tree with visual aids and practical demonstration.This was effective, but there were two critical gaps in understanding (1) how to distinguish the FAW from other caterpillars and (2) how to scout effectively'' (Bello-Bravo & Pittendrigh, 2019b).
In early 2019, FIPS-Africa tested How to Identify and Scout for Fall Armyworm with 2,513 farmers across western and eastern Kenya.While the FAW animation filled the gaps noted above-especially by allowing real-time zooming with the animation otherwise ''difficult to show in live-trainings or in a conventional video''-Bello-Bravo and Pittendrigh (2019b) also reports, ''For the first time, our farmers really understood the point of scouting and were keen to run to the field and search practically for the caterpillar!''Design-looping.Part of the success of the animation derives from its media, which employs generically appealing animated imagery (Bello-Bravo et al., 2010) voiced over in the locally most comfortably spoken participant dialect (Bello-Bravo, Dannon et al., 2013) and delivered via ICT in a facilitated discussion context (Bello-Bravo et al., 2019;Bello-Bravo, Nwakwasi et al., 2013).As noted in the Introduction, the animation itself represents a culmination of prior efforts to characterize a FAW scouting protocol (Prasanna et al., 2018), namely: a scientific consensus and various best-practices solutions for mitigating FAW, the abstraction, condensation, and simplification of one of those best-practices solutions to a scouting and spraying protocol for use by all stakeholders, and the production of the animation itself, including script development, character design, voiceover, and translation.
While the first two steps above involved considerable looping between project stakeholders (e.g., CIMMYT, IITA, and the funding agency) (Bello-Bravo, Huesing, Boddupalli, et al., 2018), the present study focuses on the third step only.We refer to the stakeholders of this ''inhouse'' research phase of SAWBO's fall armyworm animation as the ''production manager,'' ''script-writers,'' and ''animators.''Nevertheless, this points to two aspects of scale (RQ3) and bi-directional learning (RQ2), where the ''input'' to the beginning of a project is already clearly laid out.In this case, the input for the project is one of several possible scientifically validated FAW mitigation techniques, specifically selected for its likely ease-of-use by end-recipients.As such, macroscale discussions and prior work affect the microscale work to be accomplished by narrowly parameterizing it.The critical importance of looping here ''builds in'' the ability to check back with the macroscale level of decision-making (RQ3) if needed.This is not always the case.
Like many artistic processes, the relationship between the animators (who physically realize the animation itself) and the script-writers (who refine an understanding of the animation's intent) involves continuous dialog, revisiting, revision, and bi-directionality.After scripting and storyboarding the protocol: The script-writers [hand] off the script to the animators, who turned the storyboards into animations. .If something's not clear, [the animators] go back and forth with the script-writers, making suggestions a lot of the time about which direction to go with, which gets into the final animation (Production Manager Emails, 2020) With respect to how decision-making occurs around which direction to go with: Basically, it boils down to both of them collaborating to figure out a solution to whatever's at issue, big or small.It's not often that I get called in to settle things; we all trust each other to come up with good solutions (Production Manager Emails, 2020, emphasis added).
Other looping process occur informally.
This back and forth goes on formally at work, but also informally, over drinks after hours, through text messages, whenever's convenient.Communications are constantly going back and forth to get what's being animated to faithfully reflect the script (Production Manager Emails, 2020).
Here, the script represents the critical site where steploops between the script-writers and animators intersect and interact.Where this genuinely involved looping, the interactive process meant that the animators' outputs became inputs for further script modifications and the design process generally; that is, they actively contributed to what was being depicted not just how.This is an in-house version of the scaling capacity to check back with the project initiators noted above (RQ3).This is critical, because ''sometimes a script-writer doesn't even really understand what they have asked for until seeing it in animated form'' (Production Manager Emails, 2020).This bi-directional iterative process links to the sense of accommodation as part of adaptive learning with the CLA framework (USAID, 2017).
There's a lot of back-and-forth initially, roughing in what character frames we can reuse, ideas for modifications, etc.We have a great team, but it's really about listening to the strengths and suggestions that each person brings and putting them into practice (Production Manager Emails, 2020, emphasis added).
The bi-directionality of feedback also encourages stakeholder buy-in generally.''For us, we have an ethos that it's merit of the idea proposed, not who says it, that can have decision-making force'' (Production Manager Emails, 2020).This increased buy-in helps produce a better end-product (RQ1): So, no, it's not like everyone can say anything all the time about anything.In-or out-of-house constraints can limit the range of suggestions, but around things where the floor is open, the best idea wins (Production Manager Emails, 2020).
Building in design-looping can afford ''buffers'' against later demands to drastically change the work product, such that (1) the cost-effectiveness of (re)producing media, even ''from scratch,'' is less infeasible, while (2) still assuring that the new effort still aligns the intent and output of the research process with the goals of the innovation overall (RQ1).This means there is less chance of having to ''live with'' errors, shortcomings, or simply missing newer information because there was no means to change the product; importantly, this will include the ability to scale the product after distribution (RQ3).
A long time ago, we realized the cost-effective advantages of animation over doing live-action video.And when it comes to having to modify (or redo) an animation, those costsavings really increase.We can usually ''recycle'' large portions of the already animated material; sometimes, it only involves changing the voice overdubs.It's a highly flexible strategy (Production Manager Emails, 2020).
At all levels of the design-process (both in-house and in base-touching with the video's commissioners), trust played a key role: trust that each collaborative partner would follow-through on their parts of the process but also trust in the skills and competencies of each partner (Gambetta, 1988;Lutomia, 2019).While the scientific consensus on best-practices strategies for FAW mitigation highly constrained any variance in the final script, how the script-writer dramatized that consensus (and how animators realize that content) remained open.
Like with technical writing, we were given a pretty strict set of ''steps'' to present in the animation but had lots of leeway in terms of how we depicted those steps.There was always back-and-forth to make sure we'd stayed on the right track, but they trusted us to get it right (Production Manager Emails, 2020).

Translation Loops During the Creation Phase
Background.This case focuses on design-side looping when translating and retooling the previously completed ICT4D educational animation for use in Nepal.In 2019, Bello-Bravo and Pittendrigh a collaborative CIMMYT team in Nepal began to respond to FAW's then-recent emergence.Aware of SAWBO's fall armyworm animation, the team requested linguistic and imagistic localization of the video for use in Nepal.Having built-in loops explicitly makes scaling (RQ3) and aligning this request with project goals (RQ1) possible.Once completed, the revised animation was initially shared on YouTube and viewed by 1,500 people and then subsequently aired on Nepalese TV stations during the second half of June 2019 to approximately one million viewers (Bello-Bravo & Pittendrigh, 2019a).
Design-looping.Translation rarely, if ever, involves a mechanical transposition of meaning from one language into another (Ajiboye, 2016;Bello-Bravo et al., 2023), especially when internationalizing learning materials for people with less access to technological, educational, and even linguistic resources (Bello-Bravo, Lutomia, Abbott, Mazur, et al., 2020).As such, one must translate culture, not simply language (Ferna´ndez Guerra, 2012), a process that Brac xaj (2015) underscores as a most challenging part of translation.In fact, as part of adapting the FAW video for use in Nepal, a request was made to modify the imagery in addition to providing a local translation.Again, by building in loops, meeting this request becomes costeffectively possible and feasible because resources are already in place (RQ3).
We have learned that translation is never only linguistic.In some contexts, it becomes necessary to make sure the content is both acceptable to the target population and remains accurate.A disease like tuberculosis may not have a specific local name as such, may be lumped together under one malady, or be framed and understood as a spiritual affliction.You cannot always just walk into a village and start promoting ''germ theory'' and expect people to automatically accept it.It does have to be explained in a way that is correct, but also in a way that the local population will understand it.Both are achievable (Production Manager Emails, 2020).
Dialectally localizing existing SAWBO educational videos is an integral part of SAWBO's design process and media effectiveness; such translation enhances credibility (Hoffman, 2011).In this case, as in others, the process involved first identifying a local speaker fluent in the video's original language (English) and the target language (initially Nepali, later others for use in Cambodia and Pakistan).The script and video were shared with the translator, who then drew on culturally local information to linguistically and experientially provide a recorded translation (on a mobile phone).The audio was then dubbed into the original video.This iterative back and forth (RQ3) mirrors the fine-scale iterations between script-writers and animation producers in the previous section.
Building-in and anticipating re-translation as part of design-looping affords widely scaling up the reach of individual animations at decreasing costs per unit (RQ3).Moreover, because generating a new translation of an existing video for use in a new linguistic area can be done quickly and easily (compared to generating a video from scratch), this dramatically increases the timeliness of the response.For example, the response time between the initial 2019 identification of FAW in Nepal (PQPMC, 2019) and the animation's mass deployment in the second half of June was less than one planting season.
As during the Research phase, the value of trust (Gambetta, 1988) can be even more critical in this context.Project teams often draw on local speakers' cultural and linguistic expertise with little to no fluency and few to no means for confirming the local translators' work independently.In the present case, more than one speaker of Nepali was available to conference on the translation and enhance its accuracy by resolving any discrepancies (Gwet, 2014).
This built-in anticipation for culturally and linguistically (re)translating animations for different settings explicitly links to USAID's (2017) collaborative, adaptive, and learning approach.''We absolutely rely on this kind of local expertise to finish a last-mile of the work that no one else already on the team can do.We couldn't complete this work without looping them in'' (Production Manager Emails, 2020).

Learning Loops During the Deployment Phase
Background.The previous cases in Kenya and Nepal involve FAW mitigation efforts during, or at the point of a, dangerously widespread extent of infestation.The present case in Bangladesh explores a preemptive deployment of the ICT4D animation to prevent FAW infestation from reaching dangerously high levels.As of the end of May 2019 in Bangladesh, in a news article summarizing a meeting by leading experts on FAW published by Jahan et al. ( 2019) on CIMMYT's website, the authors reported, ''Even though the level of infestation in Bangladesh is still relatively light, .crops have already been attacked in 22 districts within just a few months.''For forestall FAW prophylactically, a team in Bangladesh-consisting of USAID initiative partners, CIMMYT, the Bangladeshi Agricultural Advisory Society (AAS), the Bangladesh Wheat and Maize Research Institute (BWMRI), Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), and Michigan State University-collaborated to organize 283 showings of SAWBO's FAW animation to 17,124 farmers over 38 days in six districts in Bangladesh (Bello-Bravo & Pittendrigh, 2019a;MSU, 2020).Besides views of the animation on YouTube, postings on Bangladesh's sixtyfour district websites were increasing by 500 views per day (Bello-Bravo & Pittendrigh, 2019a).In addition to this digital deployment of the animation, governmentsponsored ''training of trainer'' efforts taught and resourced 400 extension agents for redistributing mobile ESD FAW content to communities across Bangladesh.Unlike the case in Nepal, no visual reconfiguration of the animation was needed, only looping for translation (into Bangla and other local dialects).
Design-looping.While SAWBO did not directly participate in the physical deployment of the video, many knowledge loops ''with national, regional, and local actors key went into finding ways to make the video go viral'' (Production Manager Emails, 2020).''A key challenge was coordinating, in the fastest and most efficient kind of way, identifying channels for getting the animation to the most people'' (Production Manager Emails, 2020).These again reflect scaling capacities (RQ3) that help align the product with project goals (RQ1).As part of design-looping that takes outputs as difference-making differences as inputs (Bateson, 1972), this involved learning from end-user insights that changed how the (deployment) process worked (i.e., taking seriously suggestions by participants for times and places to show the video) (RQ2 bi-directional learning).In terms of adaptive learning, this meant taking information from locally informed people as alerts for ''upstream'' managers around opportunities, channels, and resources that would not have otherwise been visible to managers (RQ2 increased participatory access).This resulted in high message exposure rates (as reported) for comparatively low deployment costs.''The project leaders [who commissioned the animation] had an idea, when they started, what some of the outlets for distributing the animation would be, but there was a process of learning overall what other outlets existed.Local people were key to that'' (Production Manager Emails, 2020).This design-looping for deployment allowed goal-setters and deployers to be resilient, flexible, and adaptive (Gunderson, 1999) about meeting the situational complexity of delivery on the ground with a sufficient variety of strategies that matched project goals with project efforts.
At the end of the day, you never really know where opportunities will arrive.You just have to be, I don't know, open, attentive .keep your eye out for things that might help, even if you didn't know about them in advance-and then being able to flex with it when you find them.It's one of the neater things that can happen.Usually really feels like a breakthrough (Production Manager Emails, 2020).

Discussion
Propositional integration (Lucas, 1974;Yin & Heald, 1975) of the above case studies answered Research Question 2 in three central themes for a research-creation-deployment loop (RCDL) theory of change approach for better aligning ICT4D innovation workproducts with desired project outcomes: structural process supports accommodating outputs as inputs, that is, organizational affordances from looping that utilize outputs as difference-making inputs for future iterations of the process and scaling at all levels (RQ3), flexible opportunities for outcome-goal matching, that is, meeting situational complexity on the ground and during the process with a more refined (resilient, culturally competent, and adaptive) requisite variety in an innovation (RQ1), and bi-directional learning, which heightens stakeholder process commitment and buy-in by stakeholders at both the product-recipient andproducer levels.
In the most general way, building in design loops can afford flexibility at all scales of a project (RQ1, RQ2), from initial discussions to parameterize it, to post-distribution requests to modify or adapt it.For animated videos, this involves having resources like an assets library that easily afford adapting visual material and relationships that readily afford translation of existing animations into other languages or dialects as needed.However, besides an ability to do this work, there must also be a willingness to undertake it in good faith; this is the bi-directional learning component (RQ2) (again at all scales, including project leadership).Organizationally, this is likely one of the most difficult loops to maintain, because it can require fundamental changes of direction even to institutional practices as well as the egos invested in those directions and practices.Any weaknesses in this link have further negative effects when they impact what new inputs can be introduced into the project; above all, this affects participatory access by people not previously a part of (or recognized as part of) the design stream or intervention overall.Thus, while the three key advantages of design looping (RQ2) are increased participatory access, flexibility at all scales, and bi-directional learning to best align educational interventions with project goals, successful deployment requires these of leadership as well.We embed these findings within our discussion that follows.

Participatory Looping During the Research Phase (Accommodation)
Beyond a potential capacity for design-looping to enable more economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable innovation outcomes and impacts (E ´tienne, 2014;Schweikert et al., 2018), looping also more strategically grounds the possibility that a sufficient number of relevant stakeholders are reached with respect to maximizing innovation outcomes relative to intended goals (Easterday et al., 2014).Mahmoodi et al. (2018) describe this as matching a setting's situational complexity with a requisite (sufficient) variety of responsiveness in the innovation itself.Design-looping presupposes and implements an openness of process, a willingness to adapt as needed and to add or subtract (or to add back) functions in the RCDL process as needed.As such, design-looping is highly qualitative and heuristic, in that it expressly involves the concrete time, place, and stakeholders involved in the interaction (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011).
While looping has a wide-ranging applications in research for psychology, sociology, and RCDL theory of change strategies (Hacking, 1995), it becomes especially prominent in research and design that aim to increase participation (Barab & Squire, 2004;Easterday et al., 2014).This matters because a diversity of participation itself improves outcomes (Dickinson et al., 2012;NASEM, 2018;Pateman et al., 2021;Woolley et al., 2010); specifically, this effect of diversity ''is not strongly correlated with the average or maximum individual intelligence of group members but is correlated with the average social sensitivity of group members, the equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking, and the proportion of females in the group'' (p.686, emphasis added).
Feedback.Design-looping describes a particular type of organizational infrastructure and attitude toward project outputs that allow those outputs to be taken up as information learned.This learned information has the potential to change either the organization, its processes, its goals, or all of these (Barnaud et al., 2014;Gunderson, 1999).Although this kind of information learned classically describes a scientific attitude toward experimental empiricism (Fischer, 2014;Merton, 1957;Valenzuela & Soriano, 2005), it also reflects the emergent processes of artistic creativity, revision, and reimagining that can occur as part of goals-oriented processes at both the personal and organizational levels (Barreteau et al., 2014;Bruner, 1962;McMahon & Ford, 2013).Richmond (1984) expressly argued that scientific and artistic approaches are ''functionally interdependent'' (p.81); indeed, both domains bulk large when designing artistically realized embodiments of scientifically validated best-practices for ICT4D educational animations.
It is necessary to stress this information learned, because organizational feedback is more often used to neutralize or dampen potential needed changes in order to maintain its current behaviors, goals, and processes (Moradi et al., 2021;Munck Af Rosenscho¨ld et al., 2014).Instead, design-looping (as in both art and science) captures a commitment to an end-product that agrees with reality, that matches the observed facts on the ground.In this way, it motivates an organizational commitment to ensure that innovation outcomes ultimately align with intended project goals.This commitment involves an organizational willingness to be ''surprised'' by a given outcome, for example, to set aside what Gunderson (1999) called a ''spurious certitude'' in order to adaptively learn and correct any earlier misunderstanding or inadequate understanding of what is needed to arrive at a given organizational goal.
Listening.Such feedback also involves the willingness of project stakeholders (but leaders and managers especially) to listen to and give credence to unexpected and unwelcome information and reports from non-leaders (Andresen & Potter, 2017;Jordan et al., 2017).While this echoes models for global-scale, community-based/participatory change as well (Barnaud et al., 2014;USAID, 2017), it also describes another instance of the accommodation of outputs as inputs that make a difference for collaborative and management processes overall (Folke et al., 2002;USAID, 2017).
Listening manifests clearly in all three cases above: during Creation, ''We have a great team, but it's really about listening to the strengths and suggestions that each person brings and putting them into practice'' (Production Manager Emails, 2020); during Translation, ''We absolutely rely on this kind of local expertise to finish a last-mile of the work that no one else already on the team can do.We couldn't complete this work without looping them in'' (Production Manager Emails, 2020), and during Deployment, ''The project leaders had an idea, when they started, what some of the outlets for distributing the animation would be, but there was a process of learning overall what other outlets existed.Local people were key to that'' (Production Manager Emails, 2020).Each of these ''moments'' reflect where the RCDL processes changed as a result of listening to feedback.
Listening also has affinities with design-based research (DBR).DBR uses actual learning environments to allow researchers an iterative and ''systematic tweaking of theoretically inspired aspects of the learning environment'' (Barab & Squire, 2004, pp. 156-157).Here, the ''theoretically inspired'' aspect refers to whatever central learning phenomenon the DBR researcher is examining while iterative (looping) research tweaks that bring to light that phenomenon's empirical characteristics.In this study, the ''theoretically inspired'' aspect referred to iteratively tweaking an animation's esthetic and linguistic characteristics (sometimes based on feedback from ''in the field) such that it ideally embodied the FAW-control bestpractices protocol.
Translating Looping During the Creation Phase (Outcome-Goal Matching) In the cases above, design-looping to abstract, condense, and ultimately simplify an otherwise intractable complexity of FAW infestation in the field represents an instance of scientific abstraction (Fisher, 1916).Scientific abstraction requires ''translating reality'' from its empirical actuality to a scientific representation (Caruana, 2007;Katan, 2014).This process of abstraction plays a key role when translating videos into locally comfortably spoken languages (Bello-Bravo et al., 2022).
Abstraction.Conceptually, a basic abstraction had already been accomplished by boiling down the situational complexity of FAW mitigation into an actionable scouting and spraying protocol for farmers (Bello-Bravo, Huesing, Boddupalli, et al., 2018;Prasanna et al., 2018).The task then was to translate that protocol into a culturally and linguistically comprehensible and appropriate ICT4D animation accessible to and useable by end-users (Bello-Bravo & Pittendrigh, 2018;Ferna´ndez Guerra, 2012;Hoffman, 2011).
Translating non-generic nouns (like ''fall armyworm'') into languages without any available analog presents the challenge of either introducing new vocabulary into the language or attempting to supplant some already-extant generic term (e.g., ''worm'') with a more exact term.In this case study's videos, this was overcome by accompanying the audio description with graphic images of fall armyworm and its damage to maize leaves, consistent with the enhancement media learning.
For multimedia learning in general, this kind of redundancy ''is not repetition, but rather .a means for abridging time in reaching one's objective'' (Nardone & Portelli, 2007, p. 928, paraphrasing Bateson et al., 1956) in this case, abridging time by simultaneously presenting information on FAW in multiple sensory channels.However, while the use of multimodal imagery and sound to convey information generally heightens confidence that the correct message will be received and learning gains achieved (Ljubojevic et al., 2014;Mayer, 2002;Moreno & Mayer, 2002), in the present case, the images and words for FAW are likely being linked together for the first time for video recipients.A verbal/visual redundancy is helpful (if not essential) for making this linkage, without which efforts to scout and spray for the specific pest in question cannot occur.
Stance.The ''movement'' of translation often seems horizontal-from one language to another.This horizontality links to a committed attitude or stance for interpersonally non-hierarchical relations between collaborators, like the equally empowered participants in design-based research and stakeholders within companion modeling (Easterday et al., 2014;E ´tienne, 2014;Lutomia, 2019;Lutomia et al., 2020;Madela, 2020).In other words, the sorts of techniques, strategies, and mutual respect for cultures that verbal translation needs to negotiate and navigate a text from one language to another become apparent as qualities of interactions between stakeholders in an RCDL theory of change approach for design-looping.
Fundamental principles shared among these several approaches include cross-disciplinarity, the ''formalization of a diversity of viewpoints, scientific knowledge considered as one point of view among others in the consultation, [and] priority on the iterative consultation process rather than on its products'' (Bousquet et al., 2014, p. 4).This is not a prioritization of process to the detriment of product but a recognition that how one conducts a process affects the outcome (MacLean, 1962;McLuhan, 2009).
Because ''every stakeholder in a social system has his (sic) own view of the reality of the system .built up on what he (sic) has experienced during his (sic) life trajectory in the physical and social space'' (Bousquet et al., 2014, p. 2), it becomes necessary to respectfully negotiate and navigate a beneficial diversity of worldviews on a project (Bello-Bravo, 2020;Levett-Olson, 2010), to translate the values and intentions of all participants for the benefit of the endeavor.One cannot rely on this to happen fortuitously or automatically but requires a committed stance to it in advance (Dare´et al., 2014).This also underscores once more the vital importance of trust (Barreteau et al., 2014) and dialog (Barnaud et al., 2014) among stakeholders-as an open, mutually respectful, bi-directional conversation between the life-domains and experiences of stakeholders (Bakhtin, 1981) rather than a dominating or top-down communicative approach (Fry & Souillac, 2017;Nelson et al., 2017).In the present case, this stance is signaled by, ''We have a great team, but it's really about listening to the strengths and suggestions that each person brings and putting them into practice'' (Production Manager Emails, 2020).

Bello-Bravo and Pittendrigh
Learning Looping During the Deployment Phase (Stakeholder Process Commitment) In Kenya, one team-member with FIPS-Africa noted, ''For the first time, our farmers really understood the point of scouting and were keen to run to the field and search practically for the caterpillar'' (Bello-Bravo & Pittendrigh, 2019b).In Nepal, another team member was inspired by the success of FAW control efforts to become a goal-setter for mycotoxin awareness.In Bangladesh, a team-member and senior scientist and systems agronomist with CIMMYT stated, ''The [SAWBO animation] is starting to go viral.It seems that views are growing by almost 500 per day right now.We are very excited by this'' (MSU, 2020).
Process Buy-In.Beyond the self-evident successes suggested by these statements, they are also notable for an enthusiasm that seems to parallel the Kenyan farmers' eagerness.While pride at sense of a job well done can powerfully drive team members' engagement, buy-in, and work commitment (Jansen, 2010), seeing the consequences of one's contribution to a process can also generate work commitment, group cohesion, and closer alignments of work performance with work policies (Bateson, 1972;Cheng, 2005;Henningsen & Henningsen, 2018).This helps to make work seem meaningful and not alienating (Bailey & Madden, 2016;Soffia et al., 2022).Feedback, listening, and a committed stance to less hierarchical participation by stakeholders help support and empower these kinds of process outcomes (Bailey & Madden, 2016;Barnaud et al., 2014;Dare´et al., 2014).
Design-looping powerfully opens up and potentially enables all stakeholders to feel this sense of having contributed a difference that made a difference (Bateson, 1972).One of the arguments for front-end focus grouping and participatory inclusion of end-users in the decision making and design processes for innovations is precisely that they may be more inclined to use the innovation simply because of participating in its development (Cheng, 2005;Mocumbe, 2016;Revere et al., 2014;Sanders, 2008).
Organizational Learning.Looping in this sense enables bi-directional learning contexts not only for managers (when they give credence to, and accommodate, new information or work outputs as inputs) but also for nonleaders (as they realize that their contributions, skills, and insights are not just acknowledged but valued as inputs to the project as a whole) (Naik, 2018;Whiting et al., 2008).As the decision-making hierarchy becomes flattened in collaborative, and especially scientific collaborative settings (Lutomia, 2019), the importance of looping increases because it opens information channels otherwise not available to decision-makers (including critical participatory commitment channels for shepherding any ongoing process-oriented goals and goal-oriented processes).The result-as the hoped-for end of all innovation diffusion (Rogers, 2003)-is an increased likelihood of innovation diffusion efforts concretely matching that innovation's goals.
While the notion of learning presents an intractable number of definitions (see discussions in Alexander et al., 2009;De Houwer et al., 2013), De Houwer et al.'s (2013) functional definition positions learning as ''changes in the behavior of an organism that are the result of regularities in the environment of that organism'' (p.633).Relatedly, Hollingworth (1932) underscores faster response times to repeated (familiar) stimuli as evidence of learning.As such, learning involves not only individual people's changes of behavior due to experience (De Houwer et al., 2013;Lachman, 1997) but bi-directional learning within the (workplace) environment itself.While the above-mentioned stance of trust, emphases on process, and flattened hierarchies draw on design-looping to empower a willingness to change behavior, processes, and even goals for the work, increased efficiency also can enter into the work process environment when the faster response times to familiar situations occur.''Eventually, pretty much with any project, we get into this flow [of interactions], almost like a habit, that just makes things move forward really smoothly and efficiently.I really like the work then when that's happening'' (Production Manager Emails, 2020).
Ultimately, a willingness to learn (on the part of a person, a process, or an organization) may be the most critical factor in all of this.This willingness can be built in to a design process by a principled commitment to a ''priority on the iterative consultation process rather than on its products'' (Bousquet et al., 2014, p. 4).For example, while the characterization and utility of feedback loops in engineering, organizational, and psychological contexts are long-established (Ashby, 1957;Bateson, 1972;Horowitz, 1984;Scott & Davis, 2015), unless that process commits to putting feedback to use through a collaborative and adaptive ''difference which makes a difference'' (Bateson, 1972, p. 462) approach, then the learning called for by USAID's (2017) CLA will not occur (or will occur only by accident, unintentionally).
Pragmatically, this willingness to learn helps buffer against the unforeseeable.That is, Cooper et al. (2002) acknowledge that because ''we have yet to discern how to systematically extract and disseminate management lessons as we move from project to project, and as we manage and execute portfolios of projects'' (p.213), they advocate for ''learning to learn'' (p.213).In practice, this means turning the lens of the CLA process (USAID, 2017) on itself.Learning to learn in the present cases of this study involved a principled willingness to reflect on the premises and assumption of any current design process while remaining open and attentive to unanticipated and unforeseeable alternatives.''You just have to be .open, attentive .keep your eye out for things that might help, even if you didn't know about them in advance'' (Production Manager Emails, 2020).This involves a ''looking for opportunities'' even in crises (Brubaker et al., 2021).

Conclusion
In this study, propositional (qualitative) integration of three case studies disclosed a trio of productive advantages that design-looping afforded for educational messaging efforts to mitigate fall armyworm in Kenya, Nepal, and Bangladesh: structural accommodations of process outputs as inputs, which generated differences around what and how various processes operated, thus enabling more closely aligning innovation outcomes with innovation goals, built-in design capacities for highly cost-effective and potentially continuous innovation refinement that allowed the design processes to remain relevant and useable for projects and innovation endusers, and a principled commitment to flattened decisionmaking hierarchies and bi-directional learning, which opened up collaborative and adaptive innovation channels otherwise not available to the innovation designers.
As with other participatory approaches, the productive advantages of this RCDL theory of change approach for sustainable development especially arise more as an attitude and mode for approaching the work than through any concrete assemblage of techniques.While this shift may seem subtle, the empirical consequences are analogous to getting more and more exact outcomes from experimental science.In an era of tightening budgets, withdrawal of support for humanitarianism's 2016 Grand Bargain, and the diversion of trillions of dollars to mitigate COVID19, design-looping to better assure more effectively matching the resources of project outcomes with project goals has a distinctly economic advantage.However, it is also more and more apparent that ''our'' well-being is implicated in the well-being of ''others.''Given the existential threat of worsening climate extremity and the potential for future pandemics, ensuring that critical life-saving information is actually delivered to people most in need of it brings in a critical moral and self-interested imperative as well.

Limitations and Future Research
Like all qualitative research, this study is limited in its generalizability by the specific time, place, people, and documentation drawn on.In particular, the general success of the anti-FAW efforts in this case study may obscure other relevant issues.Future research could investigate ways that design-looping bogged down design processes or added overhead (especially at the front end) in excess of any gains.Consonant with the principle of design-looping itself, developing methodologies for following-up and measuring the alignment of project goals with project outcomes would not only provide insight in themselves but also inputs for future iterations of design-looping.
In general, scalable uptake of innovations requires the right partners, at the right time, with the right access to resources both in terms of deployment tools and the financial mechanisms to realize those deployment tools.Future research is needed for identifying adaptations of design-looping for systematic application across all topic areas, languages, and scales of location (e.g., villages, towns, cities, districts, countries, and continents).More generally, pre-/post-intervention studies with a control group for stakeholder buy-in and qualitative reactions to design-looping processes would add both to the employee process buy-in and end-user solution adoption literature.Comparisons based on organizational size and type (public/private, universitybased or privately held, corporate or non-corporate) would add further insight.
You can't just put messages on blast and then cross your fingers.You need ways to loop back reports that tell you if what you're sending out is getting to people.With digital means, like website hits, we can see numbers of people accessing the video, but this still doesn't tell us what they're doing with the message (Production Manager Emails, 2020).