A Better World by Design

Two weeks ago a few students from Brown and RISD put together a little conference called A better Word by Design hosted at Brown University. Some speakers of the event represented MIT, Ideo, and Architects for humanity, Better Place, and Harvard to name a few. After learning about the Kick start Water Pump last week, I have decided to focus a bit more on humanitarian design. I didn’t really believe I had an interest in the subject but that changed the more and more I research and read up about it the topic. Between ID history and my appliance studio, I am beginning to discover a little more about my own design goals and aspirations. Human power and helping others seems to be playing a large role in the environment and what I would like to continue on incorporating in my design.

While visiting the conference’s site, I stumbled upon Afrigadget. Afrigadget is a site dedicated to solving problems in Africa by Africans by solving their problems creatively, which is just want I talked about in my previous blog. Most of the founders grew up in Africa and have an interest in human or solar power processes.

There was an entry on their blog which sort of struck me. It is about a man and his cart. This man is a shoe shiner but what was odd about his cart was an old keyboard on top. The keyboard was stripped of all its keys and wires. Why did he have this old keyboard? He had told the member of Afrigadget that the keyboard was perfect lap table. A customer can put his foot on it and it would not slip off his leg and also hold on to the shoe polish. I am amazed at such a simple solution to a problem this man must have had to deal with for a while. How many pairs of pant did he ruin? How many bottles of polish had he dropped before he came up with this solution? Did he see someone else do this or was it his own ingenious solution?

Also I guess in Africa, there is a growing problem with monkeys crossing the street. With the highways in Kenya, monkeys are increasingly getting hit by cars as they cross the road. A group of locals designed a “rope” bridge made of pvc rubber and cable that is attached to a common tree on one side of the highway to another on the other side. One monkey was trained to cross the bridge and like the saying monkey see monkey do the other monkeys followed. There are about 23 bridges now and is used by over 300 species of animals including monkeys, possums, and other climbing animals. The bridge is another good example of people thinking up simple solutions to help out and solve an issue in a creative way. There is no technology needed for these solution just smart design and ideas.

Afrigadget