For a user with medium-size hands, Apple’s new iPod nano — 52.3 mm wide, 69.8 mm long and a mere 6.5 mm wide — settles right between the index finger and the pinky, the thumb perfectly positioned to control the click wheel. The colors on the screen are vivid and vibrant, and the colors of the aluminum face are enticing. It is, in short, a marvel of industrial design, an irresistible marriage of engineering, usability and aesthetics.
The nano, one of the latest additions in the line of Apple music players that have sold more than 100 million units, is a prime example of good design for the masses.
These days, excellent design is evident even in items as quotidian as night lights and wastebaskets. Cheap, as entrepreneur Paul Polak says, has become beautiful.
That might be chalked up to classic American consumer excess, if all we were talking about was music that fits neatly in your palm. But the opportunity is there for clever design and smart engineering to improve the lives of the world’s poor.
“Ninety-five percent of the world’s designers focus all their efforts on developing products and services exclusively for the richest 10 percent of the world’s customers,” Polak said. “Nothing less than a revolution in design is needed to reach the other 90 percent.”
Polak’s not-for-profit organization, International Development Enterprises, has been in the business of designing and selling low-cost, high-impact products since 1981. A $20 treadle pump can improve irrigation and allow rural peasants to dramatically increase their farming yields during the dry season. A small-scale drip irrigation system has been a hit in Nepal and India.
Some of the world’s best and brightest are working on designs to improve the lives of the world’s least fortunate.
The UK-based Audi Design Foundation, which just celebrated its 10th anniversary, has been on a similar mission — spurring, for instance, the development of a paraffin loop that can cut down on cooking-fuel fires.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, under the leadership of Nicholas Negroponte, designed a high-resolution, wireless-enabled, energy-efficient laptop that costs about $200. The machines are rugged enough to survive conditions in rural villages, use less than 10 percent of the energy of a conventional laptop, and can communicate with each other using peer-to-peer technology. Mass production will begin next month.
Earlier this year, MIT hosted the International Development Design Summit, which brought together 50 inventors and tinkerers from around the world. Among their inventions: a bicycle-powered grain mill, a cooler powered by wet fabric and a plastic backpack to help Tanzanian women transport water over long distances.
The Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York recently hosted an exhibit called “Design for the Other 90 Percent.” Highlights included a rolling drum to transport water and a drinking straw that kills bacteria as water moves through the cylinder.
The best part of using design to alleviate poverty — it’s not charity. Creations are meant to be locally produced and affordable. The idea is to offer tools to the world’s poor that gain them entree into the world economy.
The iPod nano is a cool piece of gadgetry. But in a world where 1 in every 6 people still lives on less than $1 a day, a drip irrigation system that can pump up a peasant farmer’s income is truly a thing of beauty.
