A Method for Identifying Design Principles for the Developing World

Growing awareness of the unique needs and challenges in the developing world has resulted in the development of products for those in poverty. Successful product design focuses development efforts on design principles that are important to a target market. Consequently, the better these principles are understood, the higher the probability is that resulting products will be successful. Recognizing that the identification of these principles is a major challenge, this paper presents a method for identifying them for any target market, but especially for the developing world. The presented methodology uses characteristics of products within the target market to extract information about the underlying design decisions resulting in these characteristics. This information is then used to identify the design principles. To verify the ability of the method to identify these principles, the method is applied to best selling products in the US and then applied to products created for the developing world. The resulting principles from the two markets are then analyzed and compared to highlight the similarities and differences between the identified principles. The authors conclude that the resulting list of principles will enable designers to better design and develop products for the developing world.