

Design That Solves Problems for the World’s Poor  - jmonegro
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/science/29cheap.html

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gzp
"A billion customers in the world... are waiting for a $2 pair of eyeglasses,
a $10 solar lantern and a $100 house."

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.

~~~
egiva
By 2050 it's estimated that over 50% of the world's population will live in
"chabolas" - i.e. in semi-urban shanty towns with no formal infrastructure,
yet still very close to major city centers. So distribution is increasingly
less of a problem than you would assume, simply because population centers are
concentrating at a very quick rate.

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.

~~~
adbge
_By 2050 it's estimated that over 50% of the world's population will live in
"chabolas" - i.e. in semi-urban shanty towns with no formal infrastructure,
yet still very close to major city centers. So distribution is increasingly
less of a problem than you would assume, simply because population centers are
concentrating at a very quick rate._

That seems highly dubious. Citation?

~~~
egiva
Yes, I was only stating facts, and I really want to point out that if we want
to understand what the world will be like in the near future, we have to
understand what rapid urbanization and "mega cities" will entail - massive
urban populations living in slums (chabolas or favelas, there are several
terms).

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-...](http://www.newgeography.com/content/002170-the-problem-with-
megacities)

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Aloisius
With solar lanterns or houses, you can just make prefab ones and sell the same
one to everyone. If you can make them cheap enough, middle men will pop up to
make a profit selling them to help with the distribution problem.

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.

[1] <http://www.adaptive-eyecare.org/>

~~~
bbq
Do eyeglass prescriptions make a normal distribution? If you measured that you
could produce a whole bunch of lenses following the distribution.

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?

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ph0rque
_“A billion customers in the world,” Dr. Paul Polak told a crowd of inventors
recently, “are waiting for a $2 pair of eyeglasses...”_

How about $7 eyeglasses?
[http://www.zennioptical.com/?price[from]=6&price[to]=8](http://www.zennioptical.com/?price\[from\]=6&price\[to\]=8)

~~~
jws
Since you mention zenni… If you are using a 27" monitor and blended bifocals,
you really owe it to yourself to get a pair of $14 single vision computer
glasses tuned to your work distance. (anti glare pushes the price up from $7.)

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andrewflnr
I showed this story to my dad, and he said, "so in other words, he reinvented
the wheel." In all seriousness, though, this is cool.

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csomar
The solution is good, and this intelligent design is needed. The other
obstacle is scaling. Production and distribution are two issues. This one
billion might not have enough money to afford this cheap solutions; and the
average person has the money, scale distribution is still an issue.

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.

~~~
petervandijck
"improved culture to motivate them to work" - _cough_. Lack of motivation to
work isn't an issue for the world's billion poor.

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ams6110
_The Q-Drum, a circular jerry can, holds 20 gallons, and it rolls smoothly
enough for a child to tow it on a rope._

Until the child arrives at a downhill slope....

~~~
_djo_
I've seen both the old way of carrying water and a Q-Drum being used in a
rural village and was blown away by what a difference the Q-Drum makes and
what a fantastic idea it was.

It's inspiring how even seemingly-simple ideas can make a difference in
people's lives.

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Hitchhiker
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fortune_at_the_Bottom_of_th...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fortune_at_the_Bottom_of_the_Pyramid)

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juiceandjuice
I went to the cooper-hewitt last year and I was bummed out at how lame it was,
largely because the two exhibits at the time were fabric and jewelry. I spent
about 5 minutes going through the actual museum.

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.

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invalidOrTaken
Something I'd be interested in is where I could find these sort of items in
the first world.

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kitsune_
This is just horrible, we're living in a world of humongous wealth and this is
the solution? Really? That's the best we can do?

~~~
Groxx
Are you providing any suggestions, or just degrading the few successes that
actually exist at a sustainable price? These are relatively reasonable options
at almost incomprehensibly low cost, and are miles better than what existed
before.

