“The majority of the
world’s designers
focus all their efforts
on developing products and services
exclusively for the
richest 10% of the world’s customers.

Nothing less than
a revolution in design is needed
to reach the other 90%.”

We focus our resources (time, money) too often on solving problems and doing things for those who already have the resources
leaving out, literally, billions of people from the equation.

Just a few days remain for getting to the Design for the Other 90% exhibit at the Cooper-Hewitt museum in New York City … an exhibit that helps show how it does not have to be this way.

Of the world’s total population of 6.5 billion, 5.8 billion people, or 90%, have little or no access to most of the products and services many of us take for granted; in fact, nearly half do not have regular access to food, clean water, or shelter. Design for the Other 90% explores a growing movement among designers to design low-cost solutions for this “other 90%.”

This is an exhibit that I greatly regret not be able to make … yet the website was definitely worth the trip and produced less CO2 than a road-trip to New York.

You can travel far and learn much with a virtual voyage through the website. It covers critical ground and critical issues. Sections on Shelter, Health, Water, Education, Energy, and Transportwith a tremendous linkslist.

Each section is richly introduced and, well, uses the power of the internet extremely well. Let us take a moment with the Energysection page.

Fuel and power are needed for cooking, heating, lighting, communication, and income generation. More than 1.6 billion people lack access to electricity; and 2.4 billion people lack access to modern fuels for cooking and heating, relying instead on wood, dung, and crop residue. Increasing the availability of renewable energy is primary to reducing poverty in the developing world.

In other words, energy is a serious requirement for a decent life and a large share of the world’s population have inadequate energy supplie. And, by the way, much of the existing supply is heavily polluting, not what a Global Warming aware world wants to be being used.

Ideas range from low-cost, energy efficient, simple technologies are helping to connect remote and underserved “to the grid.” Rather than large, expensive public infrastructure projects, smaller innovations with broad applications are allowing people to harness energy off the power grid. University students are teaming with local communities, and local enterprises are partnering with rural banks to provide solar lighting which enables teaching, reading, and income-generating activities after dark. An easily installed virtual utility combines street lighting for safety with a Wi-Fi mesh network for communication and information. Solar dishes built from bicycle parts and vanity mirrors power an informal kitchen, reducing the cost of cooking and supplying a renewed sense of community for the displaced rural migrants who use it.

Note, there is no ‘single’ answer being presented here. There are ideas, thoughts, approaches, and options — real options that can work in the real world operated by real people. That not just ‘can’ work, but are working … real options exist that are being deployed, but the deployment can be hastened.

Up to two million people a year, primarily children, die from inhaling cooking-fire smoke. Clean cooking fuels and efficient portable stoves can reduce indoor and urban air pollution, potentially saving millions of lives. In addition, they spare women and children the chore of collecting wood