Designing For (And Selling To) The Other 90%

Of the world’s total population of 6.5 billion, 90% (that's 5.8 billion people) have little or no access to things the rest of us take for granted - with nearly half not having regular access to food, clean water, or shelter. Design for the Other 90% is an exhibit on view at Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum through September 23rd, and it focuses on affordable and innovative products not geared towards the 10% getting Crate and Barrel catalogs in the mail.

While many go where the money is, there are designers aiming to create for the “other 90%,” and this exhibit addresses how they are doing so when faced with "basic challenges of survival and progress faced by the world’s poor and marginalized." In fact, not only are designers helping out, but engineers, students, professors, architects, and social entrepreneurs alike are coming up with inexpensive solutions to a huge problem that has been around for a long time (this movement "has its roots in the 1960s and 1970s, when economists and designers looked to find simple, low-cost solutions to combat poverty.")

However, not everyone is on board. The AP commented that "instead of advocating aid giveaways with uncertain results, these socially conscious designers hew to the profit motive and sell their products to the poor. They say their strategy fosters dignity, not dependence, and ensures sustainability." Building upon that thought, Art For A Change states:

Design for the Other 90% seems more an insult than a solution. Even the name stinks of privilege and imperial arrogance. "We," the 10%, can go on enjoying our luxury chrome plated Hummers and other accoutrements of a thoroughly unsustainable lifestyle, and we can do so guilt-free as we’ve devised consumer goods for the other 90% of the world’s population

Is it right to sell those in need a hand-powered laptop for $100? If you want to explore yourself, the exhibit is on view through September. Some of the other items you'll see: Pot-in-Pot Cooler, the portable water purification system: Life Straw and the Internet Village Motoman Network.

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By Jen Carlson in Arts & Entertainment, News on May 15, 2007 4:15 PM

Comments [rss]

Dude

I agree with #10, and the "Art for A Change" blogger's comment is naive and completely impratical. It's not about having more stuff and materialism, it's about inventions that make the lives of the poor safer and better. It's like saying Mother Teresa did what she did for selfish reasons (ticket to heaven/sainthood).

Also I refuse to feel guilty for staving people around the world everytime I have a nice piece of steak.

perryair

Ed,

Unfortunately the lack of things does cause poverty. When the 'stuff' in question allows for: Preservation of food (pot in pot), access to clean drinking water (lifestraw) and a cheap means of communication to family and friends (internet network) its pretty hard to make a case that peoples lives are somehow better without them than with.

Stop Wasting

India says no to One Laptop Per Child and they are developing their own USD $10 laptop (so far their costs is $47 compared to OLPC's $175)

www.informationweek.com/story/...

ari

Well, the critique doesn't really seem to stem from this statement:

"instead of advocating aid giveaways with uncertain results, these socially conscious designers hew to the profit motive and sell their products to the poor. They say their strategy fosters dignity, not dependence, and ensures sustainability."

This would seem to indicate that selling low-cost products is a novel approach that hasn't really been tried before, whereas the critique attacks this as opportunistic. Also, OLPC is a non-profit organization that is providing low-cost solutions for the developing world's governments, not a for-profit endeavor.

Stop Wasting

Next time before you eat a 20 bucks brunch or get that 5 dollars latte, think about this:

The richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of global household wealth according to a path-breaking study released today by the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University (UNU-WIDER).

The most comprehensive study of personal wealth ever undertaken also reports that the richest 1% of adults alone owned 40% of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the world total. In contrast, the bottom half of the world adult population owned barely 1% of global wealth.

The research finds that assets of $2,200 per adult placed a household in the top half of the world wealth distribution in the year 2000. To be among the richest 10% of adults in the world required $61,000 in assets, and more than $500,000 was needed to belong to the richest 1%, a group which — with 37 million members worldwide — is far from an exclusive club.

Here are some graphs:

www.tinkin.com/blog/?p=56

Hs

Re: Art for a Change quotation

I understand how it implies we the 10% are privileged. However, which has more dignity: selling products or giving them away?

Our elitism is implied in nearly anything we do, and the fact that they are practically saying it shouldn't deter a step towards a possible solution.

anonymass

I have to agree that the title needs to be rethought, though I do think that sometimes any solution to a problem is better than no solution, no matter what the motive.

Ed

There is something to the critique. The figures often given for annual wages in the devloping countries are misleading. Large parts of the world still don't have a cash economy, so the wages there are of course $0, that doesn't mean that the people who live in these areas are starving or don't live fulfilling lives.

In other areas, more items are shared communally -think one TV shared among an entire village- or the cost of living is much lower than in the US. Purchasing power parity at least covers the cost of living differential. That makes it critical for villages and towns to have good communal services, like safe drinking water. When a village does get surplus cash, its important that its not appropriated by corrupt government officials.

The problem with the Cooper-Hewitt exhibit is that poverty is defined as a problem not having enough stuff, which is a very American approach but of course things are more complicated.

perryair

Wow - the art-for a change writeup is about the most un-thoughtful, ridiculous and dangerous critique that i've seen in quite a while.

Depending on who you talk to, between 10 and 25 million people day every year from unsafe and unclean water. So, he would have me think that the folks inventing the lifestraw, a portable and cheap device that can provide safe drinking water to those in third world countries, are just out there hucking for a dirty dollar, and that the "only solution" to the world's problems are massive distribution of wealth.

It couldn't possibly be true that the billions of dollars of aid already redistributed to poor countries has been siphoned off to buy maserati's and veuve cliquot for the men in charge while all of their people starve due to a lack of basic human rights.

Give me a break.