Design and poverty: a review of contexts, roles of poor people, and methods

Abstract

Design is essential to fulfil unmet or under-served needs of resource-poor societies, supporting their social and human development. A great deal of design research has been undertaken in such low resource settings, and is discussed under different names, such as 'community development engineering', 'humanitarian engineering', 'appropriate technology', 'design for development', 'design at the Base of the Pyramid', etc. This has created an important need to know what has been examined and learnt so far and to plan for further investigation. To address this, we review a broad range of literature, with close examination of 30 design studies in this field. This reveals a multifaceted picture, showing a great diversity in investigation and reporting of attributes of context (income, rural and urban, design sectors, countries, and gender), the roles of poor people (consumers, producers, and co-designers), characteristics of research methods employed (e.g. descriptive and prescriptive, data collection methods, qualitative and quantitative aspects, and unit of analysis), and design topics. Based on the review results, we offer recommendations for further research, identifying concerns that researchers ought to have about this field and suggesting ways in which research in this field can be undertaken and reported. Keywords Poverty • Design process • Design research • Developing countries • Frugal innovations 1 Introduction Forty percent of the world population subsists on less than 2 dollars a day, and twenty percent on less than 1.25 dollars per day, living in extreme poverty (World Bank 2010). Although poverty is decreasing, it is still a widespread and tenacious problem with causes, effects and potential solutions at individual, institutional, and structural levels. Whilst Mahatma Gandhi called the problems faced by these resource-poor people as 'the worst form of violence', Amartya Sen defines them as lack of freedom and inability to make life choices (Sen 2001). Others again define them in terms of high mortality rates, ill-health or as a monetary issue (e.g. Jönsson et al. 2012). These marginalised people generally cannot change their living conditions and livelihood opportunities, as their access to financial and other resources is weak, with pressing need for immediate consumption (Karelis 2007, Jerneck 2014). They often face significant challenges to satisfy basic needs, such as food, shelter, and clothing, and lack access to basic facilities, such as public health (Maxted 2011; Zurovcik et al. 2011), education (e.g. Gordon 1997; Gustavsson 2007), safe drinking water (Baumgartner et al. 2007; Matlack et al. 2011), sanitation (e.g. Chaplin 1999; Burra et al. 2003; Lopes et al. 2012), infrastructure (Prahalad 2004), and security (Jerneck 2014). Design is imperative to satisfy unmet or under-served needs of marginalised people living in resource-limited societies (Papanek and Fuller 1972). Appropriately designed products have the potential to create significant impact, contributing towards social and human developm...

Humanitarian makerspaces in crisis-affected communities

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