Designing for the Other 90%
Objective: Analyze three of the most significant social, psychological, economic, and/or political obstacles to designing for "the other 90%." Explain some social redesigning that could reduce those obstacles. Your paper should use numerous quote and examples from
Planet of Slums, the Cooper-Hewitt video/exhibit/reading, and our class discussions.
Paper summary: In today's world, most of the products are designed for the richest ten percent of the world. These products are designed with a focus on the aesthetics rather than cost. Therefore, designers are beginning to design towards the other 90% of the world. However, there are obstacles that every designer runs into when designing in this direction. The three obstacles that I chose to write about were the high prices of products, the low level of education in slums, and gender roles within impoverished communities.
Title: Designing for the Other 90%
Due Date: October 09, 2007
Word Count: 1,925
As Paul Polak writes in Design for the other 90%, "nothing less than a revolution in design is needed to reach the other ninety percent" (Smithsonian Institution, 19.) Most products are designed for the richest ten percent of the world and created with emphasis on cost, aesthetics, and functionality and are designed to make a profit. Now, some designers are shifting their focus to the other ninety percent, sacrificing aesthetics and functions to dramatically lower the cost, but many of the products are still too expensive to be built, and the people that the products are intended for cannot afford them. Another obstacle that must be taken into consideration when designing for the other ninety percent is the low level of education in many of the slums. Many impoverished people consider education a low priority because it takes away time from work and earning money. Also, designers must understand the gender roles within a community before implementing any new products or programs. According to Mike Davis in Planet of Slums, throughout the world's free trade zones, women make up ninety percent of all the workers and sometimes play a huge role in what happens in the community. Before we can even create new products for a community, we must first understand its economic, psychological, and social obstacles and take steps to improve them.
Half the world's population faces difficult choices every day. The money they have is so limited that they are forced to choose between necessities such as food, water, shelter, health, and education (Smithsonian Institution, 11.) One of the reasons that poverty has become so widespread is the rapid expansion of urbanization. As more and more cities appear, the number of slums increases as well. One surprising statistic listed in Planet of Slums states that in 1990, 90 cities in the Gulf of Guinea had a population over 100,000 and 3,500 cities with a population over 5,000. In just 30 years, this number will rise to 300 cities with a population over 100,000 and 6,000 cities with a population over 5,000 (Davis, 6.) Also, the gap between the rich and the poor is constantly widening, as the rich invest on larger plots of land and the poor are forced to live in densely populated slums. An example of the extent of urban inequality is in Nairobi, where the rich own about 90% of the land, forcing the poor to live in the remaining 10%. In Dhaka, the government squeezed 70% of the population into 20% of the land. This leads to a concept known as urban segregation, where the rich and poor live on different areas of land. However, urban segregation is not a "frozen status quo," but actually a system in which the government draws and redraws boundaries to benefit the rich (Davis, 95.)
To begin to design for the poor, the designer must look at the people that they are designing for, interview them, and try to look at life through their eyes. It is one thing to read about a Third World country, and another to experience it firsthand or hear it told from someone who grew up in that environment. Polak gives an interstnig example in his essay to teach a lesson between affordability and quality. He bought a stock of good quality British lug wrenches which he offered for $12 and cheap Chinese wrenches for $6 each in Somalia. The Chinese wrenches "sold like hotcakes," while he failed to sell a single British model. Later, he talked to several donkey cart owners and learned that an operator earned about $120 a month, but if he did not have the money at the moment to purchase a British lug wrench to fix his flat tire, he would not be able to make any money that day. This story shows that for the people that live on less than $2 a day, "affordability rules" (Smithsonian Institution, 20.) A designer must figure out the needs versus the wants of the consumers, and find the balance between cost and durability.
There exist many ways to help these people rise out of poverty. As mentioned before, the poor are forced to live in densely populated areas while the rich enjoy large, spacious plots of land. We must take steps to inform the rich of this situation and to convince them that they can do something to help fix this problem While the government can't ask the rich to give away their land, they may try to convince them to sell their land for a lower price, and later resell it to the people living in slums for a very low price or for labor. The government can offer the rich tax breaks for selling their land, which would benefit both sides. The poor can use the land for agriculture and pay for it through labor and by selling a fraction of the produce from the land. The benefits of selling the fruits and vegetables produced are twofold: it pays for the land, while providing space to produce more food for the farmers' families.
Polak teaches new designers how to listen to the farmers to learn how to develop new "low-cost products that will increase their agricultural output" (Smithsonian Institution, 12.) The products must be designed in a simple, easy to use way that can be readily explained to the potential users, which may become a big problem. People in Third World countries have under-par education, so they may not understand new technologies and think that they operate by magic or witchcraft. Therefore, it proves essential that we focus some of our efforts towards improving the standard of education in these countries.
Education is a large factor that must be taken into account when designing for "the other ninety percent." However, the problems in education differ from location to location. For example, the slum-dwellers in the United States are much less productive in their daily lives. They are "crammed into government housing projects and ghetto neighborhoods, isolated from the rest of society by freeways and railroad tracks." (Sall, 1990.) They live off of welfare checks and food stamps, and there exist very few job opportunities (Sall, 1990.) According to the United States Department of Agriculture, in Fiscal year 2004, about 10.3 million households and 23.9 million individuals use food stamps every day, a number which has risen in the past few years (Food and Nutrition Service.) In contrast, the people living in Haiti are very productive and are always doing something important. Because the Haitian government does not provide welfare checks to its citizens, the Haitians must work hard to survive. Education is key in Haiti, as more developed education leads to higher-paying jobs with a full-time contract (Sall, 1990). This shows that education is a huge factor in employment, and there is a direct relation between higher education and better jobs.
One way to redesign the learning system in the slums is to implement methods of informal education into the teaching system along with formal education. Informal education curriculum is defined as "the lifelong process whereby every individual acquires attitudes, values, skills and knowledge form daily experience and the educative influences of the environment" (Bray, 1985.) This curriculum consists of a large scale of activities including, but not limited to, "adult literacy projects, agricultural extension schemes, community development programmes, women's groups and apprenticeships" (Bray, 1985.) This way, the students have the opportunity to gain a primary formal education, but they would also learn new techniques from the informal education curriculum, making them more well-rounded and suitable for a larger variety of jobs upon graduation. This solves the concerns that parents have. Many of the parents refuse or are reluctant to send their children to school because the courses are irrelevant to their jobs or the classes are too long and take too much time away from work. One successful example that has been implemented is the Secondary Schools Community Extension Project (SSCEP) in Papua New Guinea. It has academic standards that rival primary schools while teaching practical skills on the side that students can take back to their villages when their education ends (Bray, 1985.) Another factor that must be taken into consideration is giving students a continuous education. There needs to be a system in Third World countries and slums that does not allow for gaps in education. With their new education, they can earn more money doing higher level jobs, while having the knowledge to do work in the fields or with agriculture. Also, if designers created a product that they wanted to teach the consumers how to build themselves to save production costs, they would need to be trained. If the consumers had a good education, they would learn quickly compared to if they didn't go to school. Otherwise, the designers would be pressured to create simpler, and perhaps less effective products.
Another large social issue in slums and Third World countries that designers must understand is gender roles. According to Davis, women "work harder both inside and outside the home to compensate for cuts in social service expenditures and male incomes… poor women and children are expected to lift the weight of the Third World debt upon their shoulders" (Davis, 158.) This puts an unnecessary burden upon the shoulders of women, as society expects them to work hard outside the home because the men cannot earn enough. The gender roles make society expect women to work harder inside the home to keep the family situation stable. According to Gora Mboup of the Global Urban Observatory (GUO), women residing in slum areas are more likely to get married and have children than women in Third World countries. These women gain more family and household responsibilities, and they drop out of school as their jobs and duties change. Because of this, they earn a low salary and have an insecure job, which slowly puts them further into poverty (Mboup, 2004.)
When designing new programs or products, designers need to take this important factor into account. Because women are constantly present in slums, they are more aware of the dangers that the degrading qualities of the slums present to their families. Therefore, women have a larger interest in improving living conditions and will be more willing to help out with the new projects. This shows that when gender roles are understood, women have the potential to be "central stakeholders" in improving slums and other poor communities (Abril, 2007.) Also, as women and men both have different, but very important roles in their societies, designers should look into creating different versions of products. A product that works well for a man may not work as well for a woman, and because of the gender roles, a woman may possibly have to use the aforementioned item in her daily routine. For example, suppose that a water carrier was designed for the strength of men. However, women are usually the ones to retrieve water, so this new product becomes ineffective and too heavy for her to carry quickly and efficiently. A designer must find out the different gender roles and jobs in a certain place before designing for those people.
The problems within a community hinder its growth and development, so creating new products is not always necessarily effective. As designers, we must look at the obstacles in the economy, education, and gender roles and fully understand those standards before moving on and creating new products. Understanding what people in slums and Third World countries are going through is the necessary first step to improvement.
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© Copyright 2007
Tiffany Hu
Product Design and Innovation 2011
