Changed by Design

MIT senior lecturer Amy Smith’s TED talk begins with the best thing a design presentation can share: failures along the path to successful solutions.

Smith wanted to design a locally producible fuel that would eliminate Haitian preference for wood-based fires. Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, is 97% deforested but families continue to rely on wood fires in the home for cooking. Smith saw that these families would eventually have to buy imported fuels, which would likely be unaffordable. In addition, wood-burning produces smoke inhalation in the home, which Smith discovered is the #1 cause of death among children under five years old in the developing world.

She reveals that the first version of locally producible charcoal briquettes did not actually burn, nor were they produced from locally available materials!

When you compare her 2006 TED talk to the 2004 DIY charcoal production manual, it’s clear that Smith has also learned to change how she presents the problem she solves. Rather than focus on the environmental issue (deforestation), which local families don’t have the luxury to consider, she opens her talk with the impact on childhood mortality – a much more compelling reason to switch to her fuel.

This is a great example of design-for-DIY: rather than create an invention that you intend to manufacture then sell to the developing world, create a way to teach the local communities to make and possibly sell the solution themselves. Design-for-DIY solves two needs: the original problem, and the economic challenge. Smith’s instruction manual is written such that anybody with access to agricultural waste and an empty oil drum can become an entrepreneur, producing and selling home-safe charcoal to the local community.

Imagine how powerful this could be if someone from the MIT Sloan School of Management teamed up with her?

You may remember the fairy tale of the Three Little Pigs: when threatened by the big bad wolf, each chose to build a shelter to shield himself from the wolf’s huffing and puffing. The house of straw and the house of sticks fell away, but the house of bricks stood strong.

These days, the global “big bad wolf” is earthquakes. Unfortunately, most homes built on fault lines continue to be rebuilt with the same materials and the same construction techniques that crumbled with some seismic huffing and puffing.

Build Change, a nonprofit from San Francisco (quite familiar with earthquakes), is working to change that. The amazing thing is, they impact the developing world without providing funding or materials – only consultation and training. Founder Dr. Elisabeth Hausler (pictured at left) realized after one earthquake with 20,000 casualties: “it’s not the earthquake that kills people, it’s the building collapsing.”

Build Change works with international agencies and local experts to help each region identify best practices that meet its needs, source locally available materials, and test low-cost construction methods. Once they have developed a model, Build Change conducts training and distributes construction manuals so the region can permanently change how it constructs buildings. From project to project, Build Change collects and disseminates a repository of earthquake-resistant building techniques.

The Indonesian island of Sumatra has suffered three of the world’s top 10 largest earthquakes since 1900, and all three of those earthquakes have occurred in the past five years. For perspective, SF’s two famous earthquakes don’t even make the list. Build Change works in Northern (Aceh) and Western Sumatra, and is seeking support to rebuild the area damaged by the May 2008 earthquake in the Sichuan province of China.

Build Change’s methods remind us of another adage which should be remembered in all developing world projects.

Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime. — Author unknown

Every 30 seconds, a child dies of malaria – a totally preventable disease – and more than 80 percent of malaria infections occur in Africa. Each kid gets malaria 2-5 times a year!

We’ve had a hard time finding design objects for MDG #6, the fight against HIV/AIDS and malaria. As it turns out, the solution is extremely straightforward: every home in a developing country needs to have an insecticide-treated net (ITN) for mosquito-free sleep.

Bednets are the most effective way to prevent malaria, but millions of families in malaria-plagued countries do not have them. These nets, however, are not without room for improvement. Nets can be treated with insecticide, killing mosquitoes on contact and making it less likely that they can penetrate the nets. But the insecticide on traditional nets fades after 3-5 months, and most families won’t deal with the cost or hassle of getting their nets re-treated.

A to Z Textile Mills in Tanzania and Sumitomo Chemical in Japan teamed up to manufacture the Olyset Net, which retains its insecticide for 5 years, guaranteed – helping us make forward progress in slowing down malaria. They have also reduced the cost of a bednet from $7 to $5 and made them tear-proof by improving the weaving technique (pdf). Props especially for local production in Africa, thus reducing shipping costs to distribute the nets in the region that most needs them.

The Tanzania factory has created 3,200 jobs. Each net can safely sleep up to 3 people under it, and distribution is prioritized for children under 5 years old and pregnant women. Most of the nets are provided free of charge, as recommended by the World Health Organization, through aid programmes like Roll Back Malaria and UNICEF.

George W. Bush visited the A to Z Textile Mills factory last year as part of his $1.2 billion, five-year program to reduce malaria deaths in sub-Saharan Africa.

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