Metadesign and designing culture
Two extremely thought provoking pieces of writing found their way to me recently. The first was Designing Culture by Colin McSwiggen, where he writes about the role that material artefacts play in society and culture’s embedded messaging: This is a big deal because one of the main ways that people are socialized is through using, […]
Self centered design vs user centered design: Its good, but in what context?
I started this train of thought last night on Twitter with the title of this post, that arrogance did not make for good human centered designers if they thought they knew better than their end users and were not listening to them. Dirk Knemeyer encouraged me to write it all out in more than 140 […]
Time to plan the obsolescence of consumerism
Consumers did not exist prior to WW2. People did. It was after the postwar boom in the United States that a variety of existing professions evolved and morphed to meet the needs of Big Business as industrial production and wealth increased. Consumers were created to meet the unmet needs of the producers. The Waste Makers, […]
Why is design important?
Design is first and foremost a philosophy, based on a system of values, which seeks to solve problems. What are we creating? Why and for whom? Are we correctly framing the problem to be solved? These are the questions to which the answers are then manifested tangibly in the form of a new product, service […]
Rural India: On the tipping point of a boom or tremors of historic change?
It seems 2012 will be the year of Rural India’s ascendancy over the ubiquitous metros and urban elite in the minds of market makers and strategists alike. I was in New Delhi this last week of August and on my return I thought I’d write an update on my impressions of urban India today, starting […]
Deconstructing the solar lighting market hype
Nairobi solar lantern shop, July 12th 2012 The Economist’s Q3 2012 Technology Quarterly has a paean on the promise of solar lanterns replacing nasty, stinky kerosene once and for all. Of note is the careful mention of MKopa, a Nairobi based startup founded by Nick Hughes of MPesa fame, until now conducting pilot tests in […]
Published! Pathways Out of Poverty by iBoPAsia Project
Innovating with the BoP in Southeast Asia. The iBoP Asia Project has published the complete set of small grants funding innovation projects for those at the Bottom of the Pyramid in the ASEAN region. One of the first projects to win the Small Grants competition in 2008 was The Prepaid Economy Project: Understanding BoP household […]
Spain’s woes show behaviours reverting to patterns from pre-formal economies
This recent WSJ article on the emergence of coping mechanisms among the economically challenged in Spain caught my attention today for a couple of reasons. What struck me first was the fact that time (labour) was becoming a viable alternate to money (cash) and this made me come to this blog to look up the […]
Home cooking: Inspired by REculture
Inspired by all the creative hacks that I have come across in blogs like REculture, I was undaunted when I lost a tiny but critical part of my pressure cooker last month in Nairobi. Then I reverted to type and promptly documented self hack. Yes, the lamb keema curry came out perfect. This post […]
Informal Economy Problems: Chinese BoP in Africa
Market forces led to the increasing visibility of the street hawkers from China in the informal markets of Africa. Mostly lower income and uneducated, Chinese traders are rapidly becoming the bane of African markets, much like how cheap, Chinese goods disrupted the local informal trade in the early years of the century. An indepth look […]
