Design That Solves Problems for the World’s Poor
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Interestingly, this article doesn't even touch upon the real challenge: It's not in mass producing these items at low cost; it's in gaining widespread distribution to those one billion customers -- across different countries and cultures, to thousands of groups of people each motivated by different things.
Motivation is key. It's hard to figure out what motivates people, and it differs enormously across cultures. You could have the most effective $100 house around, and you could even have a way of distributing the physical product to hundreds of thousands of people living in poverty. But what happens when no one wants to live in your house -- because, as it turns out, your house is foreign, not cozy; it just doesn't feel like home.
Does that seem like a silly example? It's not. The poor are not as easy to figure out as some people think. Understanding their motivations -- immersing yourself in their cultures and understanding what they really want, what really drives them to make certain decisions -- is the key to good design.
And, unfortunately, it's an aspect of good design that's not easily scalable.
Obviously, there are pockets where you can start and grow from. But saying that a billion people are waiting for $100 houses -- as if the only issue is designing that damn thing to get the price down! -- strikes me as not being the best way to begin a dialogue on poverty alleviation.
It's an antique method of thinking about these things, but one way to conceptualize "third-world" countries is that they lack a middle class. However, these aren't entirely "urban poor" people either. The movement to these poor slums also has a large degree of private innovation and some leap-frogging that brings millions of these new urban dwellers into a "pseudo-middle-class". They have cell phones, they organize informal water and electricity for their dwellings, improve them, and basically begin to see an slowly improving standard of living.
So, there really is a billion people who aren't well off, but not too-badly off to not afford a $2 pair of eyeglasses. They're working, and moving up socially, and this new class of people need affordable products. There's an enormous, growing market for this stuff.
Anyhow, just my two cents.
That seems highly dubious. Citation?
Usually in these areas I just cite United Nations estimates - here are the facts from the UN:
http://www.unfpa.org/pds/urbanization.htm
If you want more info regarding "mega cities" and "mega slums", look here: http://www.itt.com/waterbook/page80.pdf
For people who want to know the other "downside" of this massive urbanization, then here's a GREAT link to an article. This website also a ton of forward-thinking articles about economic trends with larger implications:
http://www.newgeography.com/content/002170-the-problem-with-...
The poor are as easy to figure out as any other human being, they are not different from us. These are people laboring away in sweat shops and farms for 2 hours a day in hope for a better life. How is motivation a problem here?
The problem is that the current economic system is one of exploitation.
Eyeglass lenses on the other hand, need to be made for a person and often changed every couple years.
The problem is not making $2 glasses, but determining the prescription of 1 billion people with limited access to an optometrist.
Adaptive Eyecare[1] has done some interesting things with liquid lenses which solves both of the problems for people with spherical ametropia. Unfortunately, it won't work for people with astigmatism which is quite common (upwards of 30% in people over 30 according to some studies).
A portable device that allows someone with minimal training to determine a person's prescription, even if fairly expensive, would go a long way to solving the problem.
Then I wonder if you could loosen tolerances in your production process so that the lenses produced follow the prescription distribution in the population. If you can loosen tolerances like that you can potentially save $$$.
Now you have a bunch of lenses whose distribution matches the population. At this point, could the people who need these lenses not simply walk up and try on glasses until a matching pair is found?
Netra is an MIT Media Lab project ($2 attachment that attaches to a cameraphone) for measuring prescriptions. Huge market.
They're in the process of making it into a company and putting the team together. If you send them a friendly email, might even get you a job/consulting position.
How about $7 eyeglasses? http://www.zennioptical.com/?price[from]=6&price[to]=8
A needed (and obviously better) design is how to make these people help themselves. Access to education, and improved culture to motivate them to work. The designs are good to get them starting with cheap solutions that just works.
Until the child arrives at a downhill slope....
It's inspiring how even seemingly-simple ideas can make a difference in people's lives.
Then I spent 45 minutes in the Gift Shop, which was actually super awesome. They had rad books on typefaces, architecture, Bauhaus and everything related to design.
This exhibit would be cool though.