
Everyone Deserves Great Design - ztratar
http://www.everyonedeservesgreatdesign.com
======
camperman
Disclaimer: I grew up and live in the third world, I'm a co-author of a book
on innovation in the third world and I have two inventions that didn't work
under my belt, with a third on the way that might just change the world.

This is a wonderfully provocative piece that has made me think, although I
disagree with parts of it. Some random thoughts:

\- First check you're not trying to solve a social problem with technology.

\- Design can be as much a result of accident or trial and error as careful
thought upfront. To paraphrase Edison, good design is 1% following the Four
Principles and 99% bloodymindedness.

\- Design for the community rather than the individual, be they a single
person or the President. 70% of the world's population lives in group culture.

\- Products that use components which are valuable as standalone items (such
as solar panels) will be stripped of those items quickly if they don't deliver
an order of magnitude more value.

~~~
enoursa2
Author here. Great thoughts and addendum! I absolutely agree with your points.
Thanks for sharing. I am hoping to only make the website better over time and
add more resources. Feel free to get in touch with me through the site.

~~~
blauwbilgorgel
>I am hoping to only make the website better over time

Have a look at making your site work without JavaScript support or offer a
<noscript> warning why you need JavaScript (and why the page has to be blank
without it). Also look at adding fall-backs to your font stacks. If you use
Ghostery then Typekit is blocked, which will render all fonts in the default
browser font.

As for the content: Coca Cola and a 40$ soccer ball as an example of good
design and cheap wheelchairs or prosthetic arms as an example of bad design
confuses me. I won't form an opinion on this, as the only thing I could be
sure of is that such an opinion would be misinformed, but that was the moment
you "lost" me.

I do think this debate is welcome. I would probably be on the side of those
that say: intent alone does not make a great product, but the intent is still
good. I'd rather see 10 more people try and fail to bring mediocre products to
the 3rd world, then to see 10 more sites like this and nothing really
happening.

If your vision is so counter to the market, that for it to work it has to
change the entrepreneurial mindsets of a majority, then that vision is not too
compatible. Is that because the vision is not pragmatic and realistic, or are
these entrepreneurs really all building shitty products? It seems like it
willingly creates a chicken and egg problem where the rest does not even see
one.

~~~
mdisc
Yes, just so you know the site gets blocked by corporate browsing filters- I
viewed it at home, but now can't see it at work. I think maybe it has to do
with the fact that there no page title... or maybe not, I can't see it
anymore!

~~~
enoursa2
author here. That is odd that it didn't show up at work. It is a Squarespace
website so some of those things are out of my control.

------
hspain
I stopped reading at this bit about the Free Wheelchair Mission:

"Over 700,000 have been distributed in 90 countries - they could have easily
and affordably produced a more appropriate and desirable wheelchair."

Not only did you inaccurately describe the product they deliver (which is
constantly increasing in quality), your critique minimizes this example of
what is actually fantastic design that has helped nearly a million people.

Would you rather those million people live without mobility while waiting for
your mythical designer to build the perfect wheelchair?

~~~
enoursa2
The Free Wheelchair Mission is a very nuanced example. The organization is
great and the version 2 of their wheelchair I think has embraced the mindset I
am discussing. They have learned from their mistakes.

Generation 2 of their design:
[http://www.freewheelchairmission.org/site/c.fgLFIXOJKtF/b.64...](http://www.freewheelchairmission.org/site/c.fgLFIXOJKtF/b.6470573/k.82E4/GEN_2_Design.htm)

I wish they they had maybe distributed 1000 of version 1 before they went to
version 2, not 700,000 of a cut-up plastic chair attached to wheels with
bolts. I think in the long run they will do great.

~~~
hspain
That's an interesting way of describing a non profit that you have listed
under the heading "Examples of Useless Design."

The point is, they got _something_ out there and while it may have just been a
"cut-up plastic chair attached with wheels and bolts", it gave mobility to
hundreds of thousands of people who would have otherwise not had it. I can't
see how anyone would categorize that as useless.

It was only through creating that original wheelchair, then watching them
being used in the field and getting feedback that they were able to get the
knowledge and funding to continue to serve that community.

I think that the Free Wheelchair Mission has had a fantastic feedback loop
with its wheelchair recipients which has allowed them to design and distribute
their Gen 2 chairs.

------
DangerousPie
I think this makes a valid point in describing a problem with nonprofits.

However, other than that I find this very unconvincing. It seems to me like
they don't really have any concrete solution or message. They do mention these
four points, but I would assume that these are already followed by most
nonprofits anyway. They do of course not always succeed (as the examples in
the beginning show), but I don't think this is for a lack of awareness.

I also don't really understand what their point is with the "Great Design for
Everyone" paragraph. What does the fact that Coke is popular around the world
have to do with anything? I would argue that this is much more a question of
marketing than product design.

~~~
enoursa2
Author here. Thanks for the comment. You are absolutely right about the Coke
example relating strongly to marketing. Marketing is about ideas and the
powerful idea with Coke is that a homeless person on the side of the street
and the president of the USA purchase and consume the same product. What is
even more powerful is that the president can't buy a better Coke. What if more
products were like that? What if more products were that equitable?

~~~
analog31
Coke and bottled drinks in general, if consumed at the rate they are produced,
is toxic.

~~~
enoursa2
Absolutely true. Almost everything in an extreme fashion is toxic.

------
Goopplesoft
> DIGNIFY EVERYONE We are all human. Do not discriminate based on geography,
> culture, or economic status. A homeless person and the President should be
> treated equally.

From an economic perspective I find this very inefficient. The notion of
'universal' design would neglect the fact that there are very specific design
requirements based on said discriminations. By designing one 'universal'
product for say the rich/poor instead of one product for each, in most cases,
you'd end up with a portion of the rich unsatisfied by an inferior product
respective to expectations and an unsatisfied poor because its too expensive
for them. In fact I think the cases where this does and should hold true
(things like 'soda') are a rarity.

A market exists for designing things specifically for a certain demographic,
and markets are where capitalism thrives. Why this this one-size-fits-all
model better than a call to designers to start exploring neglected markets and
making unique products for said markets?

~~~
gdubs

         ... things like 'soda'
    

Funny -- before I got to your part about soda, I was reminded of this Warhol
quote:

"What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where
the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can
be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke,
Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a
Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on
the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.
Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know
it."

~~~
enoursa2
author here. Absolutely! That quote by Warhol was a huge inspiration. I have
to see if I can fit that somewhere on the site.

------
pestaa
So those prosthetic arms and wheelchairs are of useless design, but let's
praise Facebook and Google for treating humans as humans?

------
slavik81
That's a nice read on what can happen when incentives are misaligned, and what
proper charity should look like.

This mirrors some of what I've heard about public housing. Designers tend to
get more leeway for weird, artsy designs when they don't have the pressure of
having to sell it to the people who will be living there. The poor, however,
just want a normal place to live. Most want to live life just like everybody
else.

------
chewxy
I wonder what OP thinks about things like the NeoNurture?

I find the site quite disingenuous - it really feels like a First World
Problem kinda thing. Yes, the prosthetic arm is lame and a poor design, but
compared to having no arm, it's much much better.

OP argues that design should be for everyone, and lays out 4 foundations of
good design. He/She missed out the most important one: economics

Take for example the NeoNurture. Prior to the invention of the NeoNurture,
expensive, well-designed baby incubators would be given as aid to the poor
countries, and after a while they stopped using them because the incubators
broke down and no one had the knowledge to fix it. You could argue that the
modern design of modern baby incubators are poor designs for the poorer
countries.

So the guys created NeoNurture, a baby incubator made of motorcycle parts. The
design is GREAT for the poor countries, but arguably not great for say, US or
Australia. This invalidates the universality argument.

The whole website just rubs me wrong.

~~~
tonylemesmer
This would also be true for the example given of what NOT to do: "the free
wheelchair". Using readily available components allows these products to go on
being used well beyond their initial design life. What could be more
appropriate or desirable than a working repairable wheelchair?

I can't remember clearly, but when I first started working at Dyson I think we
got a talk from the chap that worked on this project.

------
enoursa2
Hey HN! I am the author. I've found that the most misleading proposition is
the notion that offering a shitty product or service for free to people in
shitty situations will save the world. The problem is that no one wants a
shitty product! We have to change the mindset of designers, makers,
entrepreneurs, nonprofits, donors, and everyone!

~~~
vanderZwan
The main point you seem to be going for reminds of
[http://www.africafornorway.no/](http://www.africafornorway.no/) in a way.
While I agree with the overall goal, I do have some criticism when reading the
whole thing. Basically, I feel like it needs a bit more fleshing out here and
there.

First, I'm surprised that there is no explicit mention of participatory design
in the part where you lament the lack of feedback with non-profits:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_design](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_design)

Then again, I'm studying design in Malmö, Sweden, and maybe it's not that
well-known outside of Scandinavia, and the movement was targeting design in
general, not this specific issue. Still, it seems to apply to the problem, and
the point is that there is an established design approach trying to address
it.

Also, I can't say I'm too fond of the four examples you give near, with the
exception of the Giradora. The price point seems to violate your own principle
of constraint. In places where drinking water and lack of electricity are an
issue, these solutions are just very expensive stopgaps.

Furthermore, it does not mention the problem that just donating stuff locally
can undermine the local development of better solutions. Does sending life
straws over to Africa give them the means to build a more sustainable
solution? This ties in to that participatory design I mentioned earlier: the
design should be with the target audience, and if possible the end product
should be produced _by_ the developing nation.

Finally, these two websites would probably be relevant to your interests:

[http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/)

[http://www.notechmagazine.com/](http://www.notechmagazine.com/)

... although for some reason they seem to be down at the moment.

------
jotm
Well, I can say that the iPhone 5c doesn't sell because it's too expensive
_without_ a contract - it's like $600, slightly less than an iPhone 5s and the
same as a good iPhone 5 or 4s. Contracts are generally unfavorable.

Same goes for Chromebooks - they cost the same as a good Windows netbook or
Android tablet, while offering less features.

In my experience, people in developing countries want the most for their
money, and they're not stupid. In fact, they have to be smarter with their
cash in order to have any.

Which is why upgradeable/unlocked and used devices are very popular, along
with the maximum-hardware/minimum-support devices (most often clones of
existing successful stuff) from China.

~~~
Pxtl
Also, consider that the value of time vs features is different depending on
your lifestyle. If you buy a PC and you have time but not money, you want the
most featureful machine that may involve more waiting and maintenance.

The Chromebook is designed with "less is more" in mind. It's a zero-
maintenance machine, at a cost of features.

------
john254
As someone who has worked on the volunteer end of the ln-4 prosthetic hand I
find the author's criticism of it lacking. It implies the hand is fairly
useless and flimsy, but I would check out this short video:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpfeWpy0l2A](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpfeWpy0l2A)
to see otherwise. People can write, ride a bike and eat food quite
successfully with the hand.

Looking at its financials (through 2010):
[http://www.ln-4.org/documents/89_Use%20of%20Funds%20v002.pdf](http://www.ln-4.org/documents/89_Use%20of%20Funds%20v002.pdf)
the foundation has donated one hand for about every $80 total it receives. I
would be quite surprised it is possible to do much better than that for this
type of device.

Yes it may be somewhat difficult to take it on and off, but how often do you
need to remove a prosthetic hand?

------
Theodores
This happens time and time again. 'Band Aid' \- a generation ago - was a
'product', i.e. a record with concerts and sport events. They did not invite
anyone from Africa to be performing on the record or at the concert - an
oversight. The money went to the war lords, the starving were patronised, the
food rotted in the harbour, Bob Geldof made millions from the career uplift
and everyone felt smug about doing good. It should have been seen as a
scandal, but no, we did not want to hear that. Someone will point out to you
someone - they don't know their name - who owes their survival to Saint Bob
and portray you as worse than Hitler for criticising.

Design is one lens to look at what happens, an interesting lens at that,
however, the bigger picture is told all the time with things like Band Aid.

------
bresc
I can't see how some of the examples are "great" design. Yes great for a
consumers wet dreams, but there are other "situations" you hadn't thought of.
Coca Cola yes great... for Diabetes... the ONE WORLD FUTBOL super awesome for
lasting a very long time and polluting the environment while it slowly falls
apart for a super long time. What I am trying to say: This is all good and
nice but consumerism shouldn't be the main "desire" to satisfy when thinking
about design.

------
Pxtl
I guess that's the advantage to more generalist orgs like the Red Cross.
They're not trying to design a tool for a job, they're trying to get a job
done and are procuring tools as needed for the job. If there's a need for
wheelchairs and the weird upcycled one does it well, they'll buy those. If
conventional wheelchairs will do the job, they'll buy those.

------
frankydp
The use of current viral/ad-speak techniques in the article greatly
depreciates the argument presented.

Design is iterative. Nearly all non-profit design will originate from the
gifter not the giftee. This is suboptimal, but any solution created via social
obligation or charity will require a feedback loop in the support tree first
in order to allow for a iteration in the recipient loop.

------
jonah
If you're interested in contributing your talents to solving problems for the
world, check out [http://reallocate.org/](http://reallocate.org/) and
[http://hacktivation.org/](http://hacktivation.org/)

------
mromanuk
Coca-Cola as a good example and good design...WTF, nobody NEEDS sugary water
is really frivolous to show that in a non profit organization. That 4 pictures
says to me "select the bad thing: a chair, a watch a pen or diabetes err..
coke".

------
hidden-markov
Meanwhile, someone should design logos for those GNU projects.

~~~
Raphael
What, you don't like the smug gnu head?

~~~
hidden-markov
[http://www.gnu.org/graphics/package-
logos.html](http://www.gnu.org/graphics/package-logos.html)

------
nnq
Ugh. Great message, _horrible presentation_. The information density is so low
that it makes reading _pure pain._ It feel like trying to eat bamboo to
satisfy your hunger for steak :)

~~~
gravity13
You like your steaks cooked well-done, don't you.

------
dredmorbius
In a separate conversation over this article, I noted that NGOs (and in the
case at hand, research labs) often face a problem of inherent indirection.

The ideal competitive for-profit firm exists in what's effectively a two-body
world:

    
    
        Producer <- (goods>)  (<payment) -> consumer
    

That is: a producer manufactures goods, for which they get payment from a
consumer.

Many NGOs operate in what's effectively a three-body world:

    
    
        Sponsor -> producer -> consumer
    

There's a lack of a closed loop. Or rather, the loop-closure is in feedback or
services provided to the donor: positive press, status reports, sponsorship
opportunities, etc.

Of course, not all for-profit businesses operate in a closed-loop fashion. Two
classic instances are military spending and traditional healthcare insurance:

    
    
        Taxpayer -> Military vendor -> Military Purchasing Officer
    
        Ratepayer -> Healthcare Provider -> Patient
    

Note that in the military case, the purchasing officer who makes the "buy"
decision isn't actually _using_ the materiel acquired. A more complete view
would be:

    
    
        Taxpayer -> Vendor -> Purchasing Officer -> Grunt
    

Where the grunt might or might not be receiving hardware suitable to the task
at hand.

That is, the obligation for spending money is separated from the decision to
spend, and from the recipient of the proceeds. Loans to third-world dictators
are another classic example, though I'm not sure this market is necessarily
competitive (other than for the bankers):

    
    
        Oppressed taxpayers -> (taxes)-> Corrupt Government -> (interest)-> Big Bank
    

More interesting are businesses with an indirect consumer model:

    
    
        Advertiser -> Publisher -> Subscriber/reader
    
        Advertiser -> Google -> Web User
    

In both cases, the party _paying_ for the service (at least the bulk of it)
isn't the apparent consumer. It's the old "if you're not paying for it, you
_are_ the product" quip.

Of course, apparently for-profit businesses can fall into similar traps.
Microsoft rather famously doesn't really sell to end-users, its primary
customers are OEMs and corporate purchasing agents, generally a CTO:

    
    
        OEM -> Microsoft -> End user
    
        CTO -> Microsoft -> Worker
    

In both cases, the person using the software is several stages removed from
the decisions which go into preparing it. Microsoft began running into serious
quality issues as its focus on end-user experience slipped in the 1990s, from
which it's never recovered.

There's model in which the two or three or four body world tends to get
reduced to what's effectively a zero-body world: free software development.

Though not all _users_ of free software are developers, a great many
developers are users. And often a major perk of the development is the use of
the product itself. The result is that you have a relationship where the same
person or organization is effectively, sponsor, producer, and consumer. In the
case of projects such as Debian or OpenBSD, both of which have a clear and
explicit end-user mandate, the result is exceptionally high-quality (defined
in terms of the goal) results. ASCII art diagrams start breaking down here,
but effectively:

    
    
        person.sponser <-> person.developer <-> person.user
    

... where the loop has been closed, because the three roles are filled by the
same party (or parties).

It's not ideal of course -- with large projects, each individual developer
typically only plays a limited role. Hell, I've head there might even be
disagreements at times. But _in comparison to alternative incentive alignment
structures_ the result is excellent, especially given the capital requirements
of the projects.

Yes, a company such as Apple which puts an explicit focus on end-user
experience and positions itself to sell directly to the user can come close,
though it too can drift from this. But the requirements are vastly higher in
terms of capital, and the results aren't _all_ that much superior.

