Design for extreme affordability

NEW YORK:D-Rev, soon to launch in New York, is a new non- governmental organisation dedicated to ambitious extreme affordability projects, such as the $15 (€10.23) computer.

D-Rev is the brainchild of writer Cheryl Heller who recently curated an exhibition at the Smithsonian Institute's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, Design for the Other 90 per cent. That 90 per cent represents the poor in developing nations. Design, traditionally, has not targeted this market.

So, why a $15 computer? OLPC, in November 2007, launched a new scheme that brought laptop ownership down below the $200 mark. Give One, Get One was a charitable scheme that invited American consumers to pay $398 (€271) for an OLPC laptop which would be given to a child in a developing country. The purchaser got a laptop free, making a sub-$200 price a reality.

However, the computer needs to be set free from western cultural preconceptions to serve people's needs in rural settings.

In the US, courses that teach design for affordability are popular and it is the subject of student design competitions.

Each year students are invited, by pressure group Design That Matters, to design extremely affordable and innovative new products. Last year, the competition was about incubators for children.

In India alone, MIT calculate a reliable portable incubator could save over one million lives a year. However, the average incubator costs in excess of $20,000 (€15,000). MIT students came up with a €136 option. Stanford students trumped with an incubator for children for €7.