Mobile Phones: Platform for Education?

David Tait and Niti Bhan of the Emerging Futures Lab argue that mobile phones present new opportunities for education that will not be served by certain low-cost laptops. It is an interesting prospect, given that mobile phones already have such a high penetration and the OLPC is hitting more and more governmental and internal roadblocks. But something about reading textbooks on a sluggish 2 inch screen doesn't sit right with me. And accessing the internet for Wikipedia would hardly be effective on such a device or economical in terms of minutes.

Well, designers to the rescue! Check out these nifty new Pico projectors that could be making their way into mobile phones as soon as next year. No material I have read focuses on the BoP market, so expect this to stay in the hands of wealthy on-the-go movie watchers and former laser-point-wielding pranksters for the time being. But this could be the breakthrough that makes the mobile phone a platform for eduction. Textbooks, presentations, lessons... you name it.



Another innovation has come out of Carnegie Mellon that uses a simple Wiimote hack to create a low-cost multi-touch whiteboard. Nintendo, are you listening?

Mobile Phones > Water

New studies are showing that consumers at the bottom of the pyramid are purchasing cell phones before basic necessities. In some countries, such as Pakistan, penetration of mobiles in certain rural BoP market segments is virtually 100%. Nokia's Jan Chipchase argues that they provide an identity for those on the move, an income-generating investment, and a way to communicate with distant or relocated family. Indeed Jan's insights have helped Nokia gain the highest penetration of all cell phone manufacturers.

The immense desire for cell phones presents new opportunities for design of simple, durable products. The already high penetration makes it the ideal platform for things like banking, messaging, and other applications that might traditionally be served by PCs or brick-and-mortar.

What Is Design?

Talking about design in a development context really cuts to the core of the definition of design itself. If this is widely considered one of the best designs ever, where does something like this fit in? On one hand, the iPhone is elegant, deceivingly complex (i.e. user-friendly), expensive - no doubt all traditional signs of good design. The Q-Drum is crude, exceedingly simple, and bargain-bin cheap. The iPhone masks unimaginable complexity with a nice package. The Q-Drum is simple to an extreme. How do you begin to compare these two?

While the former is the poster child of developed world design, the latter is an icon of sorts of the new way of thinking about design. If you want to lift people out of poverty or make life easier at the bottom of the pyramid, give your end user a look at your product and he had better smack himself in the head and say, "Wow I need that!" or you will get zero adoption at any greater-than-zero price point and probably limited adoption by charity. The Q-Drum is brilliant because upon first glance, you immediately know what its for and how many lives it will save. Yet, it is essentially just a piece of plastic.

“The majority of the world’s designers focus all their efforts on developing products and services exclusively for the richest 10% of the world’s customers. Nothing less than a revolution in design is needed to reach the other 90%."

-Paul Polak, IDE

Polak's quote is taken from his fantastic essay in the Design for the Other 90% exhibition catalog. We need to redesign how we think about design. Simple, affordable, appropriate solutions are becoming trendy, even if they end up with the aesthetics of a freshman year engineering project. And yet, all the same principles apply: make it simple, make it cheap, make it easy to understand. But all of these need to be taken to the extreme. Design for development is design on steroids.

A Novel Approach

Each day we see shocking headlines and about the crisis du jour. Photos of Kenyan violence tear at the heartstrings. The latest global warming statistics leave us in awe. But the global issues we face are bigger than the sum of these instances. There's something wrong with our approaches to economic development, crisis relief, and environmental degradation. We know that aid money is misappropriated and the developed world is largely fixed in its habits. A desperate rural world is flocking to broken cities. Overabundance and overpopulation are degrading the environment. All of these issues are connected, and those who "care" struggle to find effective outlets to help fix the world. Why should it be so difficult, we ask ourselves.

The answer is: it isn't. It just takes a bit of design ingenuity. Applying design to technology and business strategy has already made it's mark. From Worldchanging to Design for the Other 90%, efforts are being made to bring these spectacular innovations to the spotlight. Industrial design and engineering have made huge advances in rethinking appropriate technology. Microfinance is generating a wave of developing world entrepreneurs. BoP strategy has shown us that charity can be profitable - incredibly profitable. Wind, solar, and hydro are becoming more efficient and are aiding in sustainable development.

We are entering a new age where social entrepreneurship is hot, and creative thinkers are generating a wave of new solutions to global issues. Design has saved developed world industry from innovative decay, and now it is paving the way towards untapped opportunities to be globally conscious.

This blog will attempt to explore and clarify the role of design and technology in creative solutions to problems of a massive scale. It will also provide a sneak peek into the goings on of our upcoming 3-day conference extravaganza, A Better World by Design. The conference is being planned by a number of partners at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design and will feature the world's leading thinkers and practicers of globally conscious design.