Just because a product works and it's cheap doesn't mean it's the best it can be. Professor Sienko demonstrated this extremely well in her presentation. Through her experience, medical devices in poverty stricken countries often do not work as well as they should, through no fault of the design, but because they were not correctly designed to fit the cultural and ritualistic needs that were required of them. For example, medical devices sometimes do not take into account that there will not be anybody who knows how to repair them immediately available. Oftentimes, when a machine breaks, rather than trying to fix it, local hospitals and clinics will use it for other purposes, like blocking off a broken elevator.
There is more to a product than functionality and cost.
Professor Sienko's presentation focused on Design Ethnography. In addition to studying the basic needs and requirements of the people for whom she was designing the product, she also took into account the local customs, culture and social practices. Rather than working with just a group of engineers and designers, Professor Sienko also worked with the residents of the community to solve their problems. Her lecture focused mostly on the tricky process of traditional male circumcision in Uganda. The practice has been deep rooted in the local culture for generations, but has a 35% complication rate. If something was not done to change this deplorable figure, then traditional male circumcision may have been outlawed and performed solely in clinics. For me, it was concerning that something hadn't been done earlier, but neither side was willing to compromise. Circumcision reduced the risk of cervical cancer, and even the spread of HIV, so from a medical standpoint it is extremely important. On the other hand, performing it the traditional way is a right of passage for the young men of Uganda, and to have it performed in a clinic would be culturally demeaning. I was not surprised by the conflicting ideas, but I was shocked that compromise was not an option earlier on.
Professor Sienko was the one who composed the compromise.
The basic design of her product was intuitive and drew upon the community's local knowledge of how condoms work. meaning that no instruction manual would be needed and non-experienced personnel could operate it. I was surprised by how easily the man of her focus group figured out the products purpose. More shocking to me, however, was the lack of information Professor Sienko had to begin the process. There was virtually no documented information about traditional male circumcision. She and her partners had to travel to various villages and collect the data themselves. The data included number of practicing cutters, speed of cut, and size. Once they had gathered their data, they had to edit their design to accommodate it. For example, medically it takes around 120 seconds to perform the cut. Traditionally, it takes about 10. The product had to be designed with speed in mind.
Professor Sienko's lecture dug deeper into the consumer/product relationship than I had ever thought about. I used to think that all a product needed to be was functional and cheap. However, functional and cheap describes clinical circumcision processes. In reality, the requirements go far beyond this into the realm of the human psychosis. From now on, I will try to think about a product in terms of its design, functionality, cost and cultural relevance.
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