Design Research for Global Health

PhinisheD

 I got this today (it reads "Phinally Done"):

Ten years to the day I filed my Bachelor's thesis.  1,948 days after starting at Berkeley.

Economist: Cookstoves and "user focused design"

From The Economist Technology Quarterly (4-Dec-2008): Better stoves for the poor | Fresh cookers, "Technology and development: The humble cooking stove is being overhauled around the world with the help of 'user focused' design".

Bryan Wilson, Kirk Smith, Dan Kammen, Ashok Gadgil quoted.  Thanks to Nap Hosang for sending this to me.

From the article:

Even if they get the thermodynamics and materials right, designers must also make the devices compatible with local foodstuffs and cooking habits. A lot of the initial stove projects failed this test, says Daniel Kammen of Berkeley’s Energy Resources Group, who has worked on several stove projects in sub-Saharan Africa. 

...

Other findings from the Darfur project shone new light on cooking habits. The original stoves had been designed to boil water, but researchers found that for each meal, two-thirds of the fuel was used to make sauces by frying onions, a process that requires a more intense, continuous heat. One criticism of BP’s Oorja stove is that it does not get hot enough to make traditional Indian breads.

If such cultural factors are not taken into account, people will not use the stoves. Dr Wilson says just 3% of chimneys provided as part of one project in India were being used, according to a later survey: the rest had been either sold or reused as irrigation channels.

On that note Jessica Granderson and I published this article with Kirk Smith on fuel use and stove design from a user perspective - still in press, but available online: Fuel Use and Contextual Design Analysis of Improved Woodburning Cookstoves in the Guatemalan Highlands, Granderson J, Sandhu JS, Vasquez D, Ramirez E, Smith KR, Biomass and Bioenergy, 2008.  (If you do not have journal access and would like a copy, contact me directly.)