Designers with heart

Tan Hui Yee, Straits Times 6 Dec 09;

We stare at the curious-looking teapot, which has a spout pointing skywards instead of sideways.

This keeps the tea fresh, explains a kindly waiter at the Conrad Centennial hotel. He opens the pot to show a divider inside separating the tea leaves from the water.

We continuing staring at it after he leaves.

'That,' declares Ms Emily Pilloton, 'is a product that is cool but it's not necessary. It's an accessory.'

Those are strong words, but they are fitting for a 28-year-old who has spent a good part of her working life thinking through the kinds of design sorely lacking in this world.

The trained architect and product designer is the founder of Project H Design, a United States- based non-profit group that seeks to bring good design to those that need it most.

Since last year, its 300 volunteers have devised wide-ranging items like educational playgrounds for schools in Uganda and the US, and water transport and filtration systems in South Africa and India.

She pulled no punches either when she was in town two weeks ago to speak at the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design's World Design Congress.

The design world, she said, was 'misguided' - too caught up in the world of luxury and consumption. 'It's the equivalent of the majority of doctors coming out of medical school working on elective surgery instead of in the emergency room,' she told her peers.

Speaking to The Sunday Times separately, the American with Chinese and French roots stresses that good design really does not require a lot of money.

'We (designers) are so beholden to these corporate clients and think that if we don't have a big funder upfront, then no product can happen. That's the totally wrong approach.

'We don't have to follow the money. We can lead with the solutions and then make them work.'

A case in point: Project H worked with a school in the US state of North Carolina to introduce a playground that would allow students to learn maths in a fun environment. The actual physical space comprised nothing more than recycled car tyres stuck into the ground. But teachers, armed with workbooks on how to use the playground, found that the students learnt maths better through the physical games that formed part of this system.

Unfortunately, cheap materials cannot solve the other nagging problem - designers themselves have yet to find a way to earn a decent living while working for what she calls the 'underserved'. She

uses the word because the humanitarian or human-centred design she advocates does not focus exclusively on poor communities.

'In a lot of law firms, it is required for you to do a certain number of pro bono hours. In a lot of other professions, there is a social justice component where you can work for the underserved and still make money. Design and architecture haven't really had that.'

To do the work she does, for example, she lives in a trailer on someone else's property in southern San Francisco ('I don't pay rent'), gets by on a US$18 (S$25) Casio calculator watch ('It has broken seven times; I somehow manage to fix it') and designs on the fly in spaces like parks or homeless shelters.

Project H's designers do not have any office. They produce their designs 'in the field', working closely with end-users to ensure the final outcome is something that is sustainable and appropriate to the context.

'I get e-mail messages from people going 'I want to design a really cool water device for people who live in Africa'. I'm like, 'Okay, that's great, but 17 of those devices already exist... How did you decide that a water transport device is what's needed?''

Project H uses a ground-up approach. It goes into a community and interviews its members to

figure out what kind of work it needs to do.

'It's really important for us not to go in there saying we're here to design a product. Instead of just going and building a bridge, we ask how you might cross a river.'

The humility has reaped unexpected dividends. One of its projects at a Los Angeles homeless shelter involved teaching the shelter's residents to design and produce retail items for sale from donated material. After the items were worked out - bags, scarves, mats - one homeless woman remarked how she had always wanted a hammock when she was living on the streets. With the hammock, she explained, she would not have to sleep on the cold, hard asphalt. One thing led to another and the residents eventually created bags that could double up as hammocks.

'We never would have thought of that ever,' Ms Pilloton says.

The hands-on designer, who loves taking things apart to understand how they work, laments consumers' increasing unwillingness or inability to do so.

'Consumer culture is just so good at creating a false connection to products. We look at the iPhone and we go, 'Ah, it's so sleek and beautiful, I don't want to drop it'. And yet you have no idea what's going on in there. If you drop it, you are screwed and you have got to buy a new one.'

Few people these days bother to repair damaged products. 'I think that's really sad. Not only do we not think of fixing things, but also if we are going to, we can't do it ourselves.'

But manufacturers are equally guilty of disabling consumers. Take some of the latest cars on the market. 'If you open the engine hood, there's a second hood that's covering everything up. God forbid we see what's really going on.

'The instinct is just to hide all the inner workings because they are something ugly. I know how to change engine oil, and yet I wouldn't know how to do it in those cars because there's a second thing covering it all up.'

In her view, the throwaway culture would not be half as bad if companies created truly disposable versions of the items that have a short shelf life now.

'If we acknowledge things to be disposable, then we should design them to be disposable and biodegradable. We take advantage of the fact that we need them for only five seconds.

'On the other hand, we also design things which are so well-made you need only one in your lifetime.'

To reduce their impact on the environment, products should be designed to fit into either end of the spectrum.

Products like mobile phones, for example, are designed to last longer than two years, but are changed at that rate, if not faster, by gizmo- hungry users.

Any socially responsible phone maker, in her view, could do well asking itself these stark questions:

'If you acknowledge that someone is going to own the phone for only two years, are you making it out of something that's not going to sit in the landfill forever? Are you designing it in a way where you can reuse the parts?'

Ideas that make you go 'wow'
Straits Times 6 Dec 09;

Designers, says activist Emily Pilloton, need to document, share and measure good design instead of just churning out unthinking gadgets for the commercial world.

With that in mind, she produced a book this year called Design Revolution: 100 Products That Empower People.

We highlight some interesting projects:

Anti-virus cap

Designer: Han Pham

This simple plastic cap that permanently attaches to the top of an aluminium drink can facilitates the safe removal and disposal of needles after they are used.

The cap is moulded with international hazardous waste and danger graphics, making it universally understood.

The cap's built-in system safely dislodges a needle and drops it into the container.

Playground fence

Designers: Tejo Remy, Rene Veenhuizen

The designers were asked to transform a playground in the Netherlands in 2004 without adding new material to the space.

They did so by cleverly playing with the school's metal fence to create a three-dimensional space for sitting and playing.

Stop Theft chair

Designer: Design Against Crime

This chair, an interpretation of the elegant 1955 Series 7 chair by Arnie Jacobsen, features two slots on which a user can hang his belongings while seated. This keeps the belongings safe and the floor clear of obstructions.

Voting ruler

Designer: Concentrate Design

This simple tool has a 'yes' on one end and a 'no' on the other. Students can raise either end to answer a teacher's question on whether they understand the topic being taught.

Since their peers cannot see their answers on their rulers, students need not feel embarrassed if they answer 'no'.