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Designing a better world

Designing for "the other 90 percent." Inventions created to improve the lives of millions who live in poverty.

Good design fits like a round peg in a round hole—it not only fulfills its purpose, but does so elegantly, using the bare minimum of parts. Unfortunately, the genius of good design is reserved for the wealthy people who can afford to ooh and ahh over a cappuccino machine that gets the foam right every time. Imagine what would happen if we married good design solutions to real-world problems—like the need for potable water and durable shelter. Enter “design for the other 90 percent.”

The phrase derives from an exhibition recently held at Cooper-Hewitt’s National Design Museum in New York City, which highlighted inventions created to improve the lives of the 4 billion people around the world who live in poverty. The event featured innovations like the Q-Drum, a rollable, doughnut-shaped water container designed to replace the cumbersome jugs women in rural Africa use to carry water over long distances. Carting jugs in your arms or on your head causes physical strain, while the 50-litre (13-gallon) Q-Drum can be pulled easily by an 8 year old. Another invention, called the “treadle pump,” allows small farmers to access groundwater during dryer months, extending the growing season—and therefore the farmers’ incomes and food-production capacities—by a wide margin. According to the exhibition, more than 2 million treadle pumps have been installed all over the world.

The growing interest in so-called “pro-poor” technologies is part of a larger movement within the business community to reach “the other 90 percent”—people who make purchases based not on style or extravagant appeal, but need. According to Paul Polak, founder of International Development Enterprises, this group represents an enormous untapped market; indeed, the World Resources Institute says its members’ combined purchasing power is more than $5 trillion.

But isn’t there something a bit dubious about making profit from people in dire straits? Not any more dubious, claim supporters of the approach, than dropping charity from the sky. As Robert Davies, CEO of the International Business Leaders Forum, writes in his blog, seeingthepossibilities.com, “The challenge is to stop paternalistic top-down aid from undermining the self-help capacity of the poor.”

Whether the pro-poor design initiative can make a significant dent in the poverty crisis has yet to be seen. But you don’t have to travel to Africa to find out if it’s working. The exhibit featured several ideas designed with New Orleans—the city hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005—in mind. For instance, the Katrina Furniture Project is a series of neighbourhood furniture-making workshops that allows residents to build saleable furniture with debris left from the storm. It goes to show that the other 90 percent isn’t so “other” after all.