Although most of this week’s
examples exhibited strong examples of human centered design[1],
I was most impressed with Better Shelter. UNHCR outlines the user testing
process for Better Shelter, highlighting many of its design testing wins, such
as working with anthropologists to understand the needs of refugees[2].
This process centered around a taskforce called Desert Rose, “a team of experts who conduct anthropologic
fieldwork in refugee camps. Like UNHCR, it believes that the people who live
with challenges are often best placed to address them.”[3]
Desert Rose embedded at refugee camps in Dollo Ado, Ethiopia, and relied on
team members Somali fluency in order to make innovative improvements to Better
Shelter based on the design needs and design flaws refugees brought to light.
As a former sociology major, the Desert Rose team’s fieldwork made me
really excited, because most of my sociology classes focused on ethnography and
embedding in a culture as a purely academic pursuit, not on ethnographic
innovation. While, academic ethnography is useful as a way to gain intimate
knowledge of a group, culture, or region, in this capacity it is exciting primarily
to other ethnographers. Using ethnography to build a strong foundation for user
design has potential to diffuse more widely than academic ethnographic work due
to its applied nature and ability to shape the design process behind consumer
goods.
[1] One
exception is SOCCKET. This item attempts to crucial user need (access to
electricity/ ability to create one’s own power source) in a way that does not
seem user friendly. Also, the crowd funding (Kickstarter) campaign for this
item was a complete failure. The product did not work as promised and it
appears that the remodeled version never made it to customers. One of the key
components of social innovation is financial sustainability, and SOCCKET was
clearly not financially sustainable if backers never received a product.
SOCCKET’s parent company website, Uncharted Play, highlights a jump rope called
PULSE that harnesses kinetic energy in a similar fashion as the SOCCKET, and
its energy ratio is much better (1 hour of play 12 hours of light versus the 1
hour of play 3 hours of light for SOCCKET). One way the idea behind SOCCKET
could be made more feasible would be to take the user generated energy idea and
channel it towards an activity that users complete on a regular basis. Energy collectors that harness power
from daily activities like burning firewood or washing clothing would make more
sense and would probably diffuse more easily than SOCCKET.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.