Abstract
As pressure to access African resources and explore new market opportunities
increases in light of a diminishing Western resource base, saturated markets and
troubled economies; it is a priority for African designers to gain a better
understanding of the broader and context specific issues of development. This
paper explores the disciplines of Development Studies and Industrial Design in
order to critically identify approaches to development best suited for African
design interventions. Academics and practitioners in Development Studies tend to
support one of two camps, the first, a highly critical post-Truman concept of
development as a Capitalist agenda to access new markets and the second a more
humanitarian approach to an equitable increase in quality of life for all. When
exploring industrial design, products regularly become too style focused and
fashionable, leading to increased redundancy while forgetting the ethical and
political implications of design. Additionally industrial designers have been
criticised for their take on development by creating products either designed with
a misguided sense of charity, or designed for those in need, but remotely and
without an understanding of cultural contexts. Similarly in recent conference
proceedings claims of “design trawling” were raised against designers working
for big corporates in impoverished communities highlighting possible hidden
“Imperialistic agendas”. This raises the question of how designers should balance
seemingly contradictory good intentions and commercial interests in order to
create a more democratic notion of design. Many of the critics of design do not
doubt its power to create positive social change and there are many documented
accounts of very successful products created for a more equitable society. This
paper firstly introduces a history of development and design and then utilises the
recent publication Design and Social Impact: A Cross-sectoral Agenda for Design
Education, Research and Practice (Smithsonian Institution, 2013) in order to
identify gaps and challenges in current approaches to social impact design. This
paper then specifically compares some of these issues under the banners of
participation, and monitoring and evaluation by utilising literature and case
studies drawn from the historically older discipline of Development Studies in
comparison to literature and case studies from the discipline of Industrial Design.
The aim of this is to identify approaches and methods for development best suited
for designers in Africa.