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Radically Affordable Solar Energy

 

Simpa Regulator & Family

Image: Simpa Networks

 

The need for financial innovation in technology access is clear, and within the labs of innovators like Simpa Networks fresh perspectives are brewing on how affordability of other empowering technologies can be realized. Their model may very well offer a hand up out of the poverty trap, but with many other hands reaching up  there are is a need for further creativity and action in this space. Mobile money, alternative purchasing schemes, microfinance, gifting, and even new currencies (see bitcoins) have their potentials, impressive results, and sometimes bitter aftertastes/side effects…but the exploration continues…and it is making everyone from the mightiest corporation to the greenest startups take a step back and question the economic paradigms that create our existing boundaries of distribution. It may not require the blatant economic revolution that some predict (see Zeitgeistthemovie), but it will require a sidestep rather than one back, a lateral take to how we all (not just distant markets) buy, own, and share. Simpa Networks are not framing themselves as revolutionaries (not yet anyway) but like they say their approach is radical, and we expect that this is just the beginning of their ventures into access innovation.

Simpa Networks sells high quality solar energy systems on a progressive purchase basis to underserved customers in emerging markets through a network of authorized dealers. Consumers take home a system for a low down payment, then purchase energy service (kWh) in small user-defined increments using a mobile phone. Each payment also accumulates towards the final purchase price and once fully paid, the system unlocks permanently and delivers free solar energy (taken from Simpa Networks).

Simpa Networks commissioned us to assist them in designing their pilot, and in creating a kit that could be used to train and guide their staff  on data collection techniques, with a strong emphasis on Human Centered Design methodology.  We imbued the same HCD principles, that Simpa Networks wanted to train it’s staff on into the design of the pilot itself. We mapped the people, hierarchies, environment, constraints and agendas involved to get a grasp on how to simplify, streamline and optimize the pilot process.

Simpa Pilot Kit

Pilot Kit Prototype

`The documents that framed the approach had to be useful and legible to all levels of staff and stakeholders, and had to work in both digital and printed state. The training tools were designed to work as guidance for the Simpa Networks staff throughout the process, helping them stay consistent in their methodology, and synchronized in their deadlines and duties.

'Meeting of the Minds'

The ‘Meeting of the Minds’ session…discussing Pilot methodology

Catapult collected insights from a broad range people experienced in the challenges of piloting, and have compiled this wisdom into an open resource (Pilot Planning Words of Wisdom) which is soon to be available on our publications page. Having access to a rich network of professionals experienced in the testing of innovation really benefited our process.

Simpa Staff at work

Image: Simpa Networks

The Human Centered Design element was custom fit to the requirements of the Simpa Networks pilot, and the desired quality of data that they would ultimately collect. Decades of literature helped us inform this, as well as our own experiences of observation and user connection techniques. For more info check out our project page.

 

Simpa SHS

Image: Simpa Networks

Simpa Networks have now  begun their pilot, our relationship continuing deeper into the process, to help them communicate, prototype and gain insight to ensure their data is as rich  as possible, to properly inform their next steps.

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Catapult’s new distributors in Guatemala, Ecuador and Nicaragua

A CES entrepreneur tries a pair of VisionSpring eye glasses on a customer in Guatemala

Catapult announces a new distribution partnership with Community Enterprise Solutions (CES) in Guatemala, Ecuador and Nicaragua!  CES has a  unique and innovative microconsignment distribution model to create access to essential products and services in rural villages through sustainable entrepreneurship.  Their entrepreneurs deliver essential products, services, and information at affordable prices that have a positive economic and health impact.

Last year we announced our first distribution partnership with Great Lakes Energy in Rwanda with the intention of adding more partnerships in 2011.  We’ve recognized that one of the primary struggles in getting products and technology into impoverished regions is the lack of distribution and marketing infrastructure.  So we’ve spent the past few months searching for and vetting rural distributors to help our clients get their products into the hands of the end-user.  Our distribution partners also offer our clients pre-production services such as field testing of prototypes, market input, and user feedback, all essential to developing quality products.  Check our Picasa feed to see the latest photos from our visit with CES entrepreneurs.

Stay tuned as our list of distributors grows!

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Design process blown wide open by Global Village Construction Set

The Open Source Ecology crew are pointing towards an open-source revolution in the design process, and well beyond it, into autonomous economic alternatives that side step current paradigms of scarcity in our society.  But before the revolution must come the experiments that exemplify its necessity; enter the Global Village Construction Set, 50 co-created open source machines to build and maintain a small autonomous village community.

 

Global Village Construction Set Tractor

Image: http://openfarmtech.org/wiki/File:Lifetrac2.jpg

 

Picture a modular set of appropriate low cost but high-tech machines parked next to a workshop capable of not only fixing but making all of them, with a laptop in the middle of it offering an online live portal to all 50 machine plans and their successful adaptations, all evolving daily through a global network of grass roots user communities, and each set being used daily to sustain a village worth of people.

The design of these devices has been kicked off by OSE, but is open to contribution from the world of specialists and enthusiasts that are wiki and tech savvy. To avoid too many cooks spoiling the broth OSE have set precise guidelines (check them out) for project protocol, user input & feedback to contain the chaos and keep the open-source open. Leadership through action, task responsibility and realistic time commitments are all requested from potential contributors before they join up, to further promote quality & timely work. They work with open-source software as much as possible, use the wiki platform for documentation, conduct most all communications are online (email, wiki, forum, project management platform), and have just launched opensourceecology.org.

The nature of their open-source design approach has the potential to create families of adaptations (dependent on user environments) fulfilling a level of ‘appropriate’ technology beyond the capacities of most contemporary commercial products. This design process requires patience and organization, but welcomes the magic of a many mentors and the skills and experience of many more. Patience and deadlines are not easy bedfellows, but OSE have set themselves the challenge of having the 50 machines ready for production by 2012 with a budget of 2.4 million US$ (dubbed the 50/2/2 goal) so that they can then test the set as a whole. By this time hundreds if not thousands of people’s ideas and visions will have been infused into the GVCS, becoming a pretty damn impressive example of crowd sourced design methodology put into practice.

I didn’t get much response when I offered up my analogy of ‘burning man meets biodome’ when I spoke to Nikolay (OSE Media Officer), but he said that the ‘Lego set’ for humanity has stuck, giving reference to the aspired modularity of the GVCS collection, one of the many requirements that are thoroughly laid out in the GVCS development strategy. The set of 50 Machines have been determined through many criteria: not currently having adequate open source plans, having immediate significance to a village economy, having production power, and the obvious: having the ability to be produced locally (they also share a longer list of attributes which capture the OSE ethos well). The machines also fall into one of two categories: they are task specific (e.g. brick maker), or they can contribute to making other machines (e.g. torch table).  Whilst there may be machines beyond this 50 it gives a solid goal to reach this priority set to facilitate the GVCS experiment.  I was curious to the absence of wheelbarrows, bicycles and other such tools, but discovered they are a level up from the base manufacturing infrastructure that GVCS aspire to, their plans already being open source, and them being but future children of the GVCS rapid reproduction tools.

Although resource acquisition (steel etc) and tool reliance (laptop etc) can be taken as opportunities to highlight holes in GVCS’s autonomous label, this first experiment is only a step towards complete independence from the commercial global industry monster (this has been considered and documented in their methodology). OSE seem to have total transparency in their actions, and although carrying strong ideals they have humble posture and are comfortable and versed in debating their theories. The air of revolution and economic liberation may have attracted some resistant commentary to the GVCS, threatening to overshadow its experimental value, but it has also attracted a global following of input and support, catching the attention of TED, BFI, and many other big guns in the game. Good work I say, but dive in and check it out for yourself at opensourceecology.org & openfarmtech.org.

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Social Impact Design happy hour in San Jose

Attending the IDSA Social Impact Conference? Not attending, but still want to meet the speakers?

The IDSA San Francisco Professional Chapter, SJSU Student Chapter, Project H and Catapult Design invite you to join us for happy hour in downtown San Jose at the conclusion of conference day 1. This is an opportunity to expand our creative community here in the Bay Area, meet the speakers, make new friends who are visiting for the conference, and get inspired by designers outside your expertise. Dont miss it.

Friday, May 6th @ 6pm (drink specials til 7pm)

Loft Bar And Bistro
90 South 2nd Street
San Jose, California 95113

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Conducting fieldwork in developing countries

I’ve just read a good book, which has given me cause to reflect – “Fieldwork in Developing Countries”  (edited by S. Devereux and J. Hoddinott, 1993 – table of contents here) is far from new, but then how much has the concept of cultural sensitivity changed lately?  I single that topic out because though their collection of essays stretches from data collection methods to whether to learn the language or not (yes, if you have time!), the continuing theme that appeals to me is “How do we create the good rapport with the community that we need in order for our efforts to be useful and appreciated?”  All of the authors are economists, interested in arcane information that might just disappear into dry academic journals. But even economists have to engage the people that they are studying so that they have confidence that their numbers are reliable.  Some of the chapters are narrow case studies scattered with useful tidbits, and others are just treasures of generality.  For example, in “Thinking About the Ethics of Fieldwork” we ask: are covert methods permissible?  Instead of just asking/listening, are we allowed to also draw conclusions from what we see?  Can we determine ability to pay from what luxury possessions we somewhat surreptitiously see in houses or from what treats we observe children buying from the local store (with their family’s scarce disposable income)?

We can always ask people any old question and hope for the best, but how do we ask in a way that does not suggest to them what answer we might like to hear – what should we expect when we ask someone whether they need a new cookstove?  Or whether the smoke in their kitchen is the very worst of their daily challenges?  Whereas Western cultures favor bluntness, many others have a natural tendency to want to please and will often provide you with the answer they think you want to hear, even if is an untruth (or more politely, a bending of the truth).  Developing good interviewing techniques that account for those cultural differences is an important early step in working with a community.  For example, you might focus on using more open ended questions or discussions – “Can you tell me about how you cook?” or “Please teach me how to cook with your stove.”  Better yet, try to create your own learning opportunities.  For example, I sharpen peoples’ knives and offer to cook for them (any way to get to spend time in their kitchen), while someone else may knit socks in public in order to engage people.  Go collect firewood with someone to see how they interact with their environment; chop wood with them to see why their pieces are the size they are.  Spend more time listening than asking questions and you’ll get a better picture of the problem you are trying to solve.  One author comments that we should make the process as enjoyable to all as possible – “share genuinely of yourself, be prepared to grow together with people, and develop your sense of humor”.

Worth considering regularly is the inherently odd relationship between the foreigner and the local, and if we examine it even a little we see that there is a very strong tendency for observer bias to exist.  Our research is not “value-free,” we all have personal and institutional values which can’t help but shape our work.  Even our opinion of the meaning of “poor” or “poverty” comes from who we are and where we have come from culturally – the people we work with may not have much disposable income, so the choices they have are reduced compared to yours. However, that doesn’t mean that they don’t have the basics required for a happy and fulfilling lives.  To us, a state of impoverishment means not having a job/money and suffering because of this, but in some parts of the world this might mean more time that can be spent with family and is not viewed as negatively.  When we devise ethnocentric and probably arbitrary metrics and opinions (such as “earning less than $1.25/day is always a bad thing, invariably resulting in misery”) we risk drawing inappropriate conclusions instead of learning from our experiences.

People want to know why we want to wander about in their villages, and even live in them – an alien concept to people who may never leave their village, and often have little desire to ever be separated from their family.  We must be prepared to be continually explaining to people (individually and collectively) why we need certain kinds of data.  People also appreciate some back-story – what other studies have shown, what people are saying now, what is happening in this research area in the greater world, etc.  All this is part of the general process of forming genuine relationships and making your work a collaborative effort.  We also need to explain what our constraints are – e.g. we are not a charity so we cannot pay for everything or distribute gifts constantly.  Gifts, if we are not careful, can take a relationship from one of equality to one of patronage.  Most places we visit will have already had some experience with NGOs and their presents of candy/toys/electronics, so we have to regularly examine what we want to accomplish with them, and whether other ways of sharing might be more productive (music, demonstrating your talents, entertainment, etc.).

Finally, the process of preparing for a trip is never easy – you want to be ready, but don’t know what you need to be ready for.  Have you done your literature review and contacted experienced people who might be able to help you in this geographical area or field of expertise?  Don’t try and re-invent the wheel!  If you are using a questionnaire, have you thought it out so that it hopefully results in reliable answers?  What other formats have other people used (there are often examples online)?  Are you ready to modify it in the field, once you have done a small pilot survey to make sure it is an effective communication tool?  Role-playing exercises before you leave can often help you anticipate problems, so enlist friends to help you practice probable conversations.  And it’s always good to prepare a vocabulary list, with local translations of words that relate to your project (sometimes I’m worried that I speak mostly cookstove oriented Spanish, since that is what I use most).

When we are introducing new technology and would like to persuade people to spend their hard earned money on things that provide “future benefits” – LED lights, solar panels, items related to health care or the education of their children – how can we determine how much they are willing to pay?  How do you assign a time and cost value to an improved cookstove that reduces a household firewood budget?  Are you prepared to ferret out how much people really value your new idea or widget?  I recently attended a economist’s talk on financial incentives in the health field and it changed the way I look at how I ask people about what they can afford – I advise investigating ahead of time concepts like present bias (why the future is less important than right now) and incentive compatibility (and even the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak method, for determining willingness to pay) so that you can design your approach appropriately.  For those of us who tend to be too technical, learning from those outside our narrow field – like from anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, economists, etc. – is hard work, and you have to do it before you reach the field.

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Tanzania: Field-Testing Handcarts

The last half of January saw exciting times for our handcart project – two of our Catapult Crew, Tyler Valiquette and Noel Wilson, spent two weeks working with Anza Technologies in Tanzania to test, revise, review, and improve the initial field prototypes we had recently built in San Francisco.

We arrived in the village of Matala, Tanzania, with three substantially different prototypes ready to assemble with villagers – in this photo you can see Noel instructing the villagers in how to drive the cart prototypes we had brought with us.

The following two weeks were chock full of design exercises, ethnographic research, iterative prototyping, community meetings, and endless cups of chai. The insights garnered from our two weeks of working closely with the villagers proved invaluable. The villagers were able to use the carts daily to perform their regular work (e.g. collecting water for family and farm use) and the carts were passed from family to family on a daily basis so that we might get as many perspectives as possible. It was a real joy to walk around the village and hear the familiar rumble of the carts as they rolled by, full of water cans and driven by women and children going about their lives and finding the carts extremely useful.

After three days of fetching water, chatting with mamas, surveying carts, visiting homes, taking photos, and meeting villagers, we attended a community meeting in the local school where the carts were discussed in-depth. The villagers were asked to recount their experiences and provide input on how to make the carts better. We spoke with the 26 villagers for almost an hour and walked out of the meeting with an excellent idea of how to make the carts better.

That weekend we spent two nights with a local family, participating in their daily lives – observing and taking notes all the while. We learned about their family, work, religion, chores, habits, routines, expectations, joys, aspirations, and struggles. This up-close-and-personal interaction with our end-users enriched our understanding of the people we were designing for and will ultimately allow us to produce a more refined and tailored hand cart that will integrate more easily and, most importantly, usefully into their lives.

The second week we spent working in the nearby town of Himo with local artisans to modify and improve the carts – integrating the villagers suggestions. After two days of impromptu design sessions, haggling with welders, and running all around town we returned to the village with three dramatically improved carts.

The rest of the week was spent visiting families, going to markets, sitting around the water tap watching people collect water, surveying water carrying vessels (mostly plastic jugs and buckets), and chatting with anyone we could find about how they transported water and other materials from place to place.

At the end of our time in Matala we attended one final community meeting – led by Noel – in which we asked the villagers for feedback on the carts we had modified. They were delighted with the changes we had made and felt that the final carts were serious improvements on the ones with which we had arrived. As we expected, there were still suggestions and critiques of the modified carts – all which will prove useful when we return to our studio in San Francisco and begin work on a final cart design.

We then left the carts with the villagers and began the long journey home, full of ideas and enthusiasm for how to make the best possible cart for the villagers of Matala and, hopefully, the rest of eastern Africa.

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Announcing Catapult’s 2011 Workshop Series

Prototyping Workshop at the Unreasonable Institute

Over the past two years we’ve had the pleasure of working with a variety of outstanding organizations through workshops and design sessions.  Last summer we workshop’d with the Unreasonable Institute Fellows in Boulder, CO as well as Villgro’s staff in Chennai, India.  These sessions are our way of bringing hands-on coaching to groups, companies, and teams exploring the intersection of international development and design.

This year we’re offering a line-up of workshops based on our own training and project experiences and built around the topics expressed by you — our twitter followers, newsletter readers, blog commenters, and Open Studio attendees.  Each workshop is structured to run approximately 90 minutes and can accomodate groups of 30.

Here’s a glimpse of the 2011 Workshop Series topics:

- Exploring Values
- Cross Cultural Communication
- Developing Observational Skills
- Prototyping
- Product Design 101
- Quantifying Community Power
- Technological Environment

To organize a workshop for your group, download the pricing sheet or visit our Workshops page for details on requesting a workshops.  As always, we invite your suggestions for custom and/or future workshop topics!

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Catapult talks collaborative design models at IDS 2011

On January 27, 2011 the IDS 2011 “Conversations in Design” symposium will challenge its audience to think outside the box, and ultimately illuminate and inspire on the provocative subject of Crowdsourcing Creativity and Community. Is crowdsourcing—better known as “tapping talent from the crowd” — helping or hindering creativity? How are crowdsourcing and open source contributing to design for social change? These are just a few of the issues and questions that will be debated by 10 international thinkers who will share their practical experiences with crowdsourcing and open source design as it relates to humanitarian projects and commercial design.

Join Catapult CEO Heather Fleming to explore new collaborative design methods leveraging physical and digital communities, collaboration sites, and social capital.  The presenters roster includes:

Robert Fabricant, Frog Design
David Benjamin, The Living
Jason Bruges, Jason Bruges Studio
Douglas Coupland
Matthias Hollwich, HWKNArchitizer
Dan Rockhill, Rockhill + AssociatesStudio 804
Roo Rogers, RedScout Ventures
Hunter Tura, Bruce Mau Design Inc
Helen Walters

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Catapult gets carted off to Kilimanjaro

Rugged Trails in Golden Gate Park

Catapult Design have been absorbed in all things ‘cart’ as our project with Anza Technologies moves on to the next step.

With a little help from our friends we have designed, made and broken a bunch of early prototypes and constructed a set of sturdy detailed prototypes ready for testing on the rugged trails around Marangu. We have had access to some wonderful minds and facilities, from Martin Fisher’s contextual wisdom to San Francisco’s brand new Techshop (and it’s lasers). We’ve also used the famous topography of our wonderful city to test the physics and usability of our designs, from Golden Gate Park to Russian Hill.

Testing By Night

Now we are off to the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania to work with our client to determine the potentials of the prototypes, and to discover first hand the contextual realities of our end user, their community, economy, and landscape. Through respectful inquiry we will uncover the local demands related to the mobility of resources, determine how they inform our design, and assess how well the prototypes are satisfying them. We will also be hunting for unexpected considerations,  disguised assumptions and insightful stories, with our ears and eyes hopefully doing more work than our mouths. In preparation for our trip we are collecting appropriate methods of inquiry to uncover this valuable information, and any input and ideas to help us on our way are welcome!

Tyler Welding

Stay tuned for updates as our trip progresses…We will return in early February to implement our discoveries into the design in preparation for pilot testing.

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Catapult on sustainability at Compostmodern ’11

Join Catapult Design and a host of visionary speakers at Compostmodern ’11, January 22-23rd in San Francisco.  This year’s theme:  Fertile Ground for Designing a Sustainable Future.

Compostmodern ’11 pairs a day of inspiring speakers with an activity-driven day of thinking and problem solving. First hear and see what leaders in sustainability are doing, then collaborate with your peers and pick the brains of the Sustainability Fellows to put ideas into action. Join AIGA SF and the Compostmodern team in San Francisco for two days of inspiration, information, and action.

On Saturday, hear from inspiring main stage speakers including:
·       Yves Behar, Founder of fuseproject
·       Lisa Gansky, author of “The Mesh”
·       Heather Fleming, CEO at Catapult Design
.

At Sunday’s Unconference, you’ll work with Compostmodern Fellows to propose discussion topics and build projects that can help realize change. Join thought leaders including:

·       John Bielenberg, Partner C2 and Founder of Project M
·       Phil Hamlett, Director of Graduate Graphic Design, Academy of Art University
·       Gaby Brink, Founder and Creative Director, Tomorrow Partners and Co-Author, The Living Principles

Register here.  Twitter: @compostmodern