why is it so hard for talented designers to make great products for developing countries check out this infant incubator a clever design made almost entirely out of car parts the headlights provide heat dashboard fans help with circulation and Signal lights act as emergency alarms it's 97% less expensive than a standard incubator this clever design keeps premature babies warm and would save millions of lives across the developing world it was ranked number one in Time magazine's 50 best itions of the year but the neon nurture incubator never made it into hospitals in fact the only baby ever placed inside the device was the one during this promotional photo shoot how can such a highly praised design fail so spectacularly the problem was not with the technology the idea was actually really smart in developing countries even the most advanced Tech will break down if you don't have the components or technicians to repair it but spare car parts and skilled mechanics are available all across the developing world the problem was that the designers were from the US and they missed some major cultural nuances they probably thought hey people in developing countries improvise with makeshift materials all the time let's apply that thinking to an incubator but it's not that simple have you ever seen poorly translated T-shirts from overseas that try to copy luxury Brands they get this superficial approximation but they miss the subtleties or sometimes they miss it completely when you're not embedded in the culture you only get a surface level understanding of it and that's what's happening with this incubator the designers thought they had all their bases covered by interviewing people from the developing world but they still missed a couple of key factors for example they overlooked the fact that in many countries decisions on medical device purchases are made by larger government departments not individual hospitals and definitely not the patients themselves these government organizations don't want to buy a medical device that's made from car parts they want to be taken seriously this design is functional and solves a lot of problems around maintaining the device but it looks cheap and untrust trustworthy and I mean it kind of makes sense would you trust a medical device that's made out of spare car parts would you trust your baby's life with it they've seen American TV shows like gry's Anatomy or the good doctor they know what these devices are supposed to look like many Hospital owners and doctors would rather have no equipment than something that looks poorly made or ugly we do this too this car is perfectly functional but you're not going to see me driving this to a client meeting or park it out front during a job interview whether you like it or not looks matter Neo nurtur did manage to solve the Practical problems of medical devices breaking down but they failed to consider the cultural underpinnings of who they were designing for this team actually did redeem themselves which I'll get to later in the video but first let's explore why well-intentioned and even ingenious projects for the developing World often fail this is the play pump it's a merrygoround that pumps water as children play with it it's genius right it was going to revolutionize water access in rural Africa and received $16 million in donations to get started it won several Awards and was praised by presidents and politicians but the play pump was solving the wrong problem in all the wrong ways the real issue was water scarcity not the method of pumping it but even ignoring that there were other issues the idea was that kids would play on the merrygoround and water gets pumped but this merrygoround is a western playground toy African kids might not feel any cultural connection to it plus one thing that does span all cultures is that kids get bored of their toys you had children who are forced to keep playing to meet water demands effectively turning this merrygoround into a child sweat shop and also daily chores are heavily influenced by cultural norms in many African cultures women are the ones responsible for getting water but in this case it put the responsibility on children the designer showed basically no interest or curiosity in what the user might want getting water is an essential everyday task and hinging it on something as unreliable and sporadic as children playing was a very strange Choice when kids did inevit get bored of the play pump adults had to step in grown men and women were forced to engage in this weird perverse version of childlike play just to get access to water imagine you were forced to do a choreographed dance every time you wanted a glass of water that's essentially what play pump was doing and it gets worse one reporter named Amy Costello traveled to Africa and found the play pumps were breaking down now when a pump fails it's very serious many of these places had no alternative access to water also the play pump often replaced existing hand pumps which locals preferred because they were more reliable and they were easier to maintain each play pump cost $14,000 which is four times the cost of a regular hand pump but the videos of brown children playing on the contraption was too compelling for Western donors to resist they didn't see the fail technology or the cruel irony of forcing adults to spin a merry go round to acquire an essential resource all they saw were The Smiling Faces of African children in promotional materials the play pump's creators had a near religious Zeal to make a difference this passion while Noble blinded them to their cultural assumptions now to be fair the Case Foundation one of the main groups behind the project did acknowledge their failings which must have been really tough but I couldn't find any public apology directed to the communities they were trying to help in the first place only the Western public the play pump is a textbook example of the wrong solution for the wrong wrong problem in the wrong context other times designing for other cultures can work extremely well but not necessarily in the way the original designers intended check out these mosquito Nets in poor areas where nothing goes to waste mosquito Nets become soccer balls chicken coops rope and even Bridal veils these nets which are designed and provided by Western nonprofit organizations are supposed to be draped over beds at night to prevent mosquitoes from biting and spreading malaria malaria is a serious disease it claims half a million African lives each year and affects Millions more annually these nets are great for preventing malaria but they're also great for catching fish now this might sound crazy but when you're faced with a choice between feeding your family now and possibly Contracting malaria later it makes a lot of sense a regular fishing net costs about $50 which is an enormous expense in a place where many live on just a few dollars a day traditional Reed Nets take days to make and are far less effective but these mosquito Nets are wreaking havoc on African fish populations they have much smaller holes than other fishing nets so they drag across Lake bottoms and Destroy marine ecosystems plus they're laced with insecticides like Promethean which is highly toxic to fish not only are fish populations at risk but so are the people relying on these water sources a study around Lake tanganika showed that 87% of households use mosquito Nets to fish on one hand people should be free to use tools that are given to them in a way that suits their needs they want to use the nets for fishing instead of malaria prevention that's their choice one mosquito net fisherman interviewed in a New York Times article actually lost his toddler sun to malaria they're very aware of the risks far more than we are but on the other hand we shouldn't enable the destruction of marine ecosystems the governments of several African nations have made it illegal to use these nets for fishing but they lack the resources to enforce the law even some local fishermen oppose mosquito net fishing because they've noticed a decline in their daily catch due to ecosystem destruction caused by mosquito net fishing there's no easy solution for this but it highlights a critical point effective Aid is about understanding and respecting local needs and contexts mosquito Nets are highly effective at preventing malaria but their use for fishing highlights the importance of ongoing design iterations we can't impose Solutions without considering the intricate realities of the communities we're designing for when you provide a tool to a different culture don't be surprised if it's adapted in ways that suit their immediate needs and context this next design initiative is absolutely insane but first let's talk about today's sponsor delete me have you ever felt like your personal information is out there for anyone to see that's because it is this leads to spam scams and annoying rooc calls but you have a right to your personal information and privacy delete me is a Lifeline for anyone who values that privacy they scrub your data from hundreds of data Brokers and people search sites I've been using delete me and it already removed my sensitive personal information from from 52 data Brokers delete me software and team of experts can remove this information for you saving you the hours it would take you to do it yourself not only do they remove your personal information from the web they keep it off every 90 days you'll get a detailed privacy report showing you how much of your data has been removed and what they're continuing to fight for they use Advanced encryption to ensure your information stays safe while they work your online privacy is important and should never be up for sale go click the link in the description below to learn more and use code dt20 for 20% off delete me back to the video there's one project in particular that makes pretty much every mistake on designing for developing nations the one laptop per child initiative one laptop for child or olpc was a nonprofit initiative to educate students in the developing World by giving them $100 laptops now to be clear I have a lot of respect when anyone tries to attack an issue as important as greater access to education at least they tried which is more than I can say for pretty much everyone else but the project was never going to work and it was their cultural blind spots that caused them to miss the obvious signals the idea for olpc actually goes back to the 1980s when the founder Nicholas negranti and his mentor Seymour papert went to rural Sagal to try to teach children to code and use computers they believed that learning how to use a computer was foundational to educating the developing world now the project fell apart because the sagales had no contextual understanding of what a computer was and perhaps more importantly there was no good reason to learn how to use a computer or code if you live in rural Sagal but negranti still thought computers were the key to educating the developing world in his second attempt decades later nrop panti pitched a concept for a $100 laptop at the world economic Forum this was his big break and once again nobody cared but negranti still wasn't ready to give up so in November of 2005 5 he went to the world Summit of Information Society a large event that was sponsored by the United Nations Kofi Anan the Secretary General of the UN was on stage during the presentation of the laptop Anan actually broke the Prototype it was a hand crank used to charge the device let this be a lesson to all of you never let anyone touch a handmade model like this the person in charge breaks it like half the time even if you warn them about it but in spite of this the world leaders who attended were very impressed by the little $100 laptop why was negron's idea able to get funding this time I think it was two key things first of all this conference was more focused on Bridging the technological divide between wealthy countries and developing ones so the audience was more open to listening but in my opinion the biggest thing that captured people's imagination was the aesthetic of the design negranti called it the green machine everything from the colors to the big yellow handle to the way that the laptop folded out was very playful and approachable the unusual look captured people's imagination and more importantly their attention negranti claimed that one minute of turning the yellow crank would give the device 40 minutes of charge which was very important in places that had no electricity the most vocal critics at the conference were the African delegation they were concerned about infrastructure cost resources diverted from cleaning water in better schools and machine obsolescence but this criticism was mostly ignored now it's very telling that the people representing the target User Group developing nations in Africa were the most skeptical of the idea this was the first big red flag of the project every time something happens that might spell trouble we're going to add a little red flag to the concern counter but that red flag didn't seem to matter designing for the developing World often fascinates us because it involves creating artifacts that Inspire hope for a better future the device captured the imagination of the wealthy Western donors and that was all negranti needed to move the project forward production was underway now remember the hand crank that Kofi and en br during the product demo they ended up getting rid of that feature entirely at least not one that shipped while attached to the laptop without that hand crank you need to plug the laptop into a power source and many developing countries don't have a widespread electrical infrastructure so let's add another red flag to the concern counter some more bad news the laptop would end up costing $200 not 100 but still negr ponti and all the organizations were committed to making this idea work let's look at the Aesthetics real quick you've got these gener rounded curves and the bright green bezels it's clearly inspired by character designs rather than typical consumer electronics which is something that I really love for a children's laptop it's very approachable but this was actually one of its biggest problems for example check out these little Wi-Fi antenna they're designed to make the laptop look like a cute little alien character the students would sometimes use these antenna as handles to carry the laptop around causing them to break off or they dro the laptop accidentally because it felt so toyish students just didn't take the device seriously or take good care of it now this is a great example of a cultural blind spot I've been using computers most of my life so I know that you need to be careful with them the playful design was great for getting funding from Western donors but it backfired pretty badly once it was being used by children who had very little exposure to computers they just saw it as a toy there was also this crazy idea that you wouldn't have to teach the kids what a laptop was or what you could do with it here's what negranti said about it during one of his conferences one of the things people told me about technology and particularly about laptops in the beginning was Nicholas you can't give a kid a laptop that's connected and walk away well you know what you can okay look successfully providing the developing world with technology goes way deeper than just handing it over to them a study was done by dalberg Design to understand why people in poor Nations barely use the internet everyone expected that people weren't using the internet because of technical barriers but that wasn't the problem at all it wasn't that they didn't have access to the internet it was that no one even understood what the internet was time and time again we think that the problem of adopting Technologies in the developing world is a problem of access when it's actually a problem of properly communicating context and metaphor let me explain it's easy for us to forget that the internet arrived to us over several decades in the west tonight the information Super Highway and one of its main thorough affirs an online Network called internet what do President Clinton conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh and Rockstar Billy Idol have in common they've all got electronic mail addresses on computer systems linked to the internet there were several metaphors that came with it think about it the worldwide web evoked the image of a literal spider web spanning the globe what connects the web hyperlinks like links in a chain piecing together all the places you want to go all these little metaphors slowly embedded themselves into our culture over several years I remember seeing commercials on TV in the 9s talking about the internet we had several School assemblies where people would come in and talk about how it worked they called it the information Super Highway which was another metaphor that helped us understand it this is going to happen again with starlink a company that's hoping to offer the internet to the most remote places in the world using a constellation of satellites it's great that this company is offering the internet to everyone but nearly 3 billion people have never used use the internet even once education and contextualization is just as important as access and that's why you can't just hand a bunch of people laptops or give them the internet and expect them to be productive with it if you can't picture how something works you're not going to be able to understand how to use it that's why metaphors matter imagine if I was just like here use this regular old plumbus everyone has a plumbus in their home it'll change your life forever its function is obvious so I won't bother explaining it here you go that's literally what negranti is doing when he hands these kids a laptop this is why it's so hard to design for cultures and context that you're not a part of you don't even realize all of the skewed perceptions you have about the objects surrounding you this extended Beyond just the Aesthetics of the laptop by the way there were several programs that would show kids how to code the device was also completely open- Source meaning anyone could customize and edit the software this was important because people were accusing olpc of being culturally imperialistic the laptop's open source software allowed one laptop per child to make a case that the laptop didn't impose Western values the thinking was if something about the device didn't resonate with certain people they could customize it to what they wanted according to Morgan G Ames an independent researcher of the OPC program almost no children did any coding on the laptop though once again there was no cultural or metaphorical grounding for these things it's like handing someone a piano and saying it's the ultimate tool for expression and I mean yeah sure that's true if you know how to play piano this is the creators projecting their own cultural upbringing onto the device they were the types of kids who loveed to code and figure out how Electronics worked they just assumed that this passion was innate to being a child rather than a part of their background and personal preference which is weird because even in the US a tiny tiny subset of people ever bother to customize open-source software and they have an entire subculture and infrastructure that helps them learn those skills there wasn't even a system in place to maintain and repair the laptops or provide any kind of technical support papert said in an interview I believe in Kid power our education systems underestimate kids it infantilizes them by assuming they're incompetent an 8-year-old is capable of doing 90% of tech support and a 12-year-old 100% And this is not exploiting the children it's giving them a powerful learning experience okay look to assume a 12-year-old could repair a laptop with no prior training or contextual understanding is completely delusion you'd have better odds of teaching a dog to do your taxes hey peanut do my taxes what am I supposed to do with that I'm an industrial designer and a big part of my job is understanding how products are assembled I took the x01 apart and I can tell you with absolute certainty that a child would never be able to repair this thing without at least some guidance so where did papit get this crazy idea the makers of olpc believe children were L creative and that adults were the ones holding them back they had this idealized image of childhood where kids are inherently creative fearless and independent like Peter Pan basically they thought all kids were like this but this is a relatively recent western concept this shift about children happened about 150 years ago as children in the west were gradually removed from factories and farms and childhood kind of started to be seen as a time for exploration and learning here's another quote by negranti that explains more we all all in this room learned how to walk how to talk not by being taught how to talk or taught how to walk but by interacting with the World by having certain results as a consequence of being able to ask for something or being able to stand up and reach it whereas at about the age six we were told to stop learning that way and that all learning from then on would happen through teaching whether it's people standing up like I'm doing now or a book or something negranti is explaining a learning theory developed by see more paper called constructionism which claims that children learn most efficiently through self-directed exploration rather than lectures or step-by-step guidance okay I was a design Professor for 5 years yes learning by doing things is great but there are still guard rails negranti claims that there's no teacher when you learn how to walk and talk but he's wrong there's no formal lesson plan but there's still a lot of informal teaching happening you're observing and being corrected by those around you pretty much constantly adults play a major role in shaping Children's Learning environments and learning is a profoundly social process Negron and papert ignore the essential role of parents teachers and Society in structuring a child's world papert emphasized kids as naturally curious and independent learners but he overlooked how much this depends on a supportive structured environment something that many children don't have even if we forget the cultural divide there's an insane amount of INF infastructure that you need to build in order to actually have functioning laptops in Paraguay a local organization had to install Giant yaax and 10i on top of tall rebar Towers to get wireless internet they also needed School servers and wireless access points they even had to install power outlets in classrooms to charge the laptops then there are the problems of how to use it in a classroom teachers weren't given any direction on how the laptop could be used as a tool for learning one local organization ended up hiring three full-time staff and held multiple training sessions for the teachers once again proving that you can't just hand children laptops and expect anything good to happen basically the makers of OPC thought it was the computer that allowed them to learn but really there was an entire social cultural and personal history that was the backdrop for it then there were the issues of durability negranti would toss the laptop on the floor during presentations a better product than those sort of 200 lb laptops you can buy elsewhere you know try doing that with one of the other laptops okay and uh it's it's but notice how I closed the laptop before dropping it that's because the laptop didn't usually break when it closed but it did break while it was open and the screen was exposed even the one I have now has a broken screen although to be fair this thing is like 15 years old the rubberized keyboard cover would eventually wear thin before breaking entirely as well notice how this one has a missing key the charger cables would break and the trackpad was finicky too it feels like the device was designed more for flashy onstage demos to impress Western donors rather than for real life use I understand the challenge of building an ultra durable laptop at that price point in 2006 it's basically impossible but I can't help but think these problems could have been avoided with some field testing and some user feedback but negranti didn't believe in Pilot programs or user testing here's what he said in his Ted Talk the days of pilot projects are over when people say Well we'd like to do three or 4,000 in our country to see how it works screw you go to the back of the line and someone else will do it and then when you figure out that this works you can join uh as well look I try to be nice when I do these videos I have been part of failed startups so I know how hard it is and I want to believe they were genuinely trying to do something good for the world but when I see this level of arrogance it's hard for me to feel bad for negranti and the OPC team this runs so counter not only to basic design principles but just basic common sense it reads like a high pressure sales tactic or something you can't just give away laptops like Oprah gives away cars pilot projects give people the agency to provide input on these initiatives so there's a better outcome for everyone after just a few years more than half of x01 laptops in one South American School District were broken of the laptops that still worked students barely used them the playful charismatic appeal that excited Western audiences didn't resonate with the children they were designing for they just saw the lap laptops as clunky toys that were frustrating to use a lot of these on the ground insights would not have been possible without the research of Morgan G as I read her book The Charisma machine and it was a fascinating read I highly recommend it one silver lining is that a lot of the ideas of the x01 were used in netbooks a very popular Trend that came about in the 2010s there were these small inexpensive laptops that were great for browsing the web laptops at the time were usually over $1,000 and the fact that OPC brought the price down soow is seriously impressive and way ahead of its time also the transflective display that would activate in rear mode was actually pretty clever and is being rediscovered as a viable technology for e-readers today in a lot of ways the technology was pretty amazing they were just designing for a context they didn't understand so look it's not all bad remember the infant incubators I mentioned at the beginning of the video the designers and Engineers went back to the drawing board this time rather than arrogantly assuming what another culture wants they instead asked them what they wanted they helped create a device that treats infant jaundice a very serious disease that's treatable by simply shining blue light on the patient they worked in collaboration with all of the stakeholders from patients to manufacturers to hospital equipment purchasers and ended up designing an effective phototherapy device that has saved a quar million infants across 25 countries the biggest problem with designing outside of your cultural context is summed up by my friend rafy he said you can't solve outside of your inherent geography with Solutions built in your current geography in other words the place you grow up informs the way you see the world the way you approach problems and the tools that you use to solve those problems your thinking won't always translate well to other cultures and geographies the projects I've mentioned were addressed using Western mindsets tools and philosophies imposing your thinking on other cultures usually fails now I'm not saying that designing for the developing world is bad but it does need to be approached with a lot more humility you're a guest you tread lightly and act respectfully one laptop per child aimed to educate the developing world but there actually was a simpler solution this is a leader of light it's a light bulb but it's not like others it's a clear plastic bottle filled with water and a little bit of bleach to prevent algae growth installed in the roof of a corrugated metal home sunlight refracts through the bottle providing the equivalent light of a 50 W light bulb it's not perfect but it doesn't require electricity it lasts for 5 years and it reduces the need for harmful kerosene or paraffin lanterns it extends working hours so that people only need to use precious expensive electric lights at night one woman in the Philippines said this electricity was a priority so a sixth grader could study and stay on the honor role at school leader of light has been installed in hundreds of thousands of homes across the developing World providing affordable durable light it never promised to teach kids to code just brighten their lives in a simple modest Way Big shout out to the people who helped me with this video I interviewed several people from other cultures and social workers who have spent years in underdeveloped areas across the world and it wouldn't have been possible without them I want to give a special shout out to my friend Kyle dexheimer who helped me understand the world of International Development if you enjoyed this video you should support me on patreon the link is below there's a ton of bonus content on there another way to help me for free is to just leave a like And subscribe these videos are really hard to make and your support truly does mean a lot to me have a great day everyone