Engineers for a Sustainable World Conference (10/2/2004)

Helping Underserved Communities

Michael Eldredge, Director of the Stanford SNRC, gave a talk about the business aspects of a non-profit. He walked through the financial analysis that board members should do, digging past the balance sheets and income statements, looking at what was really going on with the money and budget, and how the monetary spend matched against progress toward goals. He also showed a recommended budgeting process that he advocated be done each year, starting from first principles of values and mission, leading down to the objectives that you plan to achieve for the year, and the resources (monetary and other) that will be required to execute on the plan.

Timothy Prestero, co-founder of Designs that Matter, described his goal as "building the service sector of social entrepreneurship." Their product design group is focused entirely on underserved communities, and their labor is all volunteer. He talked about a couple of successful projects (an improved IV drip, an incubator for premature babies that doesn't require electricity, and a portable toolset for producing cheap ($1 each) eye glass lenses that correct basic visual problems.)

The bulk of his talk was devoted to an example of a product designed for an adult literacy class in Mali. The inspiration was a photo of one of the existing classes: a dozen women hunched over workbooks straining to read by the light of a single lantern. Taking into account the needs and use case, the Design that Matters team came up with an alternative plan: rather than give each student a hardcopy of the materials, project the text onto the front wall, thereby turning the low-light conditions into an asset rather than a liability. They found that even a 5-watt LED gave enough light to read the material under a variety of conditions. A single battery (motorcycle battery) would give 3 years of usage. The material was photographed onto a microfilm roll, with capacity for 10,000 pages and a per copy fee of $5. After iterating several designs (over an 18 month period), they made a visit to Mali where they observed real users: not just students and teachers, but also technicians that might be asked to repair the device and local manufacturers that could perhaps build it.

Well into the project, they discovered a projector from Fisher Price that met many of their requirements, and was already in mass production for $16. After some further assessment, they decided that it didn't meet all of the needs, but they did talk with the designer, and found that Fisher Price could produce the lenses for $1 each in plastic. Not only did they use the Fisher Price design, but Fisher Price donated a run of thousands of lenses. Tim offered the reminder that toy companies have a lot of expertise in low-cost production of products designed to work in harsh conditions for users who may not be literate. He said that one of the biggest challenges was finding a client that had distribution channels in the local market. His view on intellectual property was that "IP is this poisonous cloud that has drifted into engineering."

Appropriate Design

Opher Yom-Tov, a product designer with IDEO, gave a more interactive workshop looking at the considerations that should go into the process of sustainable design. The focus was largely on the materials used, thinking where they come from, how much energy is consumed and undesireable byproduct created as those "raw materials" are extracted. Then, within the manufacture of the product itself, how much waste material is there? Once the consumer starts to use the product, how much energy and other "consumeables" are used? And when the product has reached the end of its useful life, how does the consumer dispose of it, and what is released into the environment as a result? As a group, we did the analysis for a vacuum cleaner. Opher said that in many cases, thinking about the full product lifecycle can result in a product that is not only friendlier to the environment, but cheaper to produce as well.

Poster Session

There were a couple of designated "poster sessions" during which those of us who had made posters (most of the RDVP crowd, and another 8 or 10 from elsewhere) had them on display. The Fellows were better about manning our posters than the others, and some of us (Carlos especially) had good luck recruiting people to help. I spoke with a dozen or so people, but did make a couple of key contacts: Felipe, who is a volunteer on Mo-ap (Microfinance open architecture project)and Oscar, who has worked on HP's microfinance effort.