Product design for effective development aid

Product design for effective development aid

van der Heijden, Stefan (TU Delft Industrial Design Engineering)

Jamsin, Ella (mentor)
Crone, Henk (mentor)

Delft University of Technology

Integrated Product Design

2018-04-25

During my master thesis, I developed a method for designers to establish self-sustaining product systems in third world countries. This journey started off with the quest to fight plastic waste pollution of the rural areas in Kenya. After thorough field- and technological research, I developed a toolset that allows locals to transform plastic waste into products that allow for clean rainwater collection. From this experience, I drew insights, which can be applied for product design for development aid in general. These insights are formalized in a framework for designers.

I came to understand that the easiest way to give locals an incentive to clean up their environment is to show the value that the plastic waste has as a resource. These resources could be used as building materials to produce products that are highly needed in the everyday lives of Kenyans, like rooftops, gutters and water pipes. The advantage of looking at local resources from waste in this way is that users have access to all resources, needs and production methods and can thus be self-sufficient.

As I argue in this thesis, this approach is opposed to the way many other Western aid initiatives are tackling problems for African locals at the moment. Through introducing a seemingly meaningful product, a social problem might be successfully solved. However, after this product’s breakdown, only Western knowledge and resources can be employed to repair it. Hereby, an ongoing dependency between Western aid initiatives and African users is created.

In the first chapter, I write about aid initiative in Africa and argue about their fallacies as local problems are not looked at from a local perspective. Product-based aid projects will be discussed in detail to understand what impact product design has and how it can be improved.

In the second chapter, I will look at the problem from another perspective. I show how plastic waste is harming the ecological system in Kenya and how this waste can be taken as resources to solve local problems.
As a solution to the social needs and the ecological challenges, I propose a model of Self Sustaining Product Systems (SSPS) in chapter three. In these systems, local Africans are the both the actors and beneficiaries. The SSPS model allows for solving local problems with local resources. In order to design and implement SSPS, I introduce a framework for designers called Ripple (Resource Innovation for Products that Promote Local Empowerment) in chapter four. In the Ripple framework, I explain how to analyse, ideate, conceptualize, prototype, test and disseminate self-sustaining product systems. Each step is accompanied by depictions of the rainwater collection project in Kenya for clarification.

Design
Development
Aid
Africa
Recycle
Plastic
Waste

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:55d7db92-4e5d-4236-97b0-980730664653

Campus only

0.2827307,34.75186310000004

Student theses

master thesis

© 2018 Stefan van der Heijden