Hi all,

Sorry for the lack of activity recently.  My day job is taking much more of my time than it used to, but I love this content and sharing it with all of you.  I’d love to keep it rolling and expanding and if you’d like to help, I’d be thrilled to have you.  Please contact me if you’d like to be a regular or occasional writer, tweeter or if you have great WordPress skills and some effort to lend–I have some RSS ideas in mind.

In the meantime, I’ll keep posting whenever I can (below) and the BoP Designer Daily is refreshed every day to keep you up to date on what’s going on in the world of social innovation and design.  Feel free to retweet stories and share with others.  Also be sure to check out friends and colleagues on the list of other great blogs and websites.

Cheers,

Dave

This post is by Heather Fleming of Catapult Design.  It was originally published on October 17, 2011 here on Catapult’s blog.  Thanks to Heather and the Catapult team for sharing their great insights.

Raise your hand if you’ve heard the term “social innovation”, “BoP Design” or “social impact design” being thrown around on the web, at a conference, or in an article this past year.   Over the last 3-4 years there’s been an increasing amount of buzz on how we use design to address social issues.  As a design firm working within the design and poverty alleviation space, Catapult receives countless emails from aspiring designers, designers in transition, jaded designers, recent graduates – all who want to learn what it means to design for the BoP, the bottom of the pyramid.

I read every question, many of which are pretty similar.  They resonate with the most popular discussion topics and inquiries in our Open Studio hours.  Based on this, I feel there are a few myths that need to be debunked in order for this industry to continue to grow and prosper.  Here are five of them:

MYTH #1:  “’Design for the BoP’ (is a specific sector).” 

The vast majority of the emails we receive simply state:  “How do I ‘design for the BoP’?”  It seems that by simply labeling our work with “social impact” or “BoP”, we are communicating that the processes and methods we use to design for people who are poor are different.  They’re not.  Before Catapult, I worked in the corporate design world for close to six years. One of my clients was a power tool company and I spent time “in the field” with construction workers, specifically drywall installers, on a re-design effort of drywalling tools.  I observed the installers’ technique, training of new crew members, the language they use for tools and processes, and even had a go at installing drywall myself (with the tool to the left).  After weeks of immersing myself within their world, I achieved some clarity in how the drywall installers sub-culture fit within the larger culture of construction workers, both of which I knew little to nothing about. Approaching different cultures and sub-cultures around the globe is not much different – as outsiders they are worlds we know little to nothing about.

As a general rule, a good designer never assumes and always employs good methodology, whether your customer is a drywall installer from Mexico or a mother of five in Rwanda.  So to address myth #1:  there are no secret design methods you need to learn in order to work in social innovation.

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Hi all,

I’ll be traveling to India next week, from about Oct 13th to the 28th—still in the planning stages.  I’ll be dropping in on my friends at Ashoka in Bangalore, and another friend in Mumbai with DASRA, and I’m looking for more people, places and projects to visit—especially designing innovative products, systems and solutions for social benefit.

I’d like to know from you – Who is doing the best design for development & social innovation work in India?  I’d like to know about them before I go, but it’s also a great topic for larger discussion.  Let’s start the list and I’ll follow up with more posts to follow up.  Who do you know of who’s doing great work?

Leave a comment below or reply on Twitter (@BOPdesigner).  If you have any leads you’d prefer not to publish, feel free to email me at thedavefoster (at) gmail (dot) com.