The Power of Design: Product Innovation in Sustainable Energy Technologies

G.2 Methods

G.2.1 Project Setup

From experiences with earlier base-of-the-pyramid (BoP) projects at Delft University of Technology (Kandachar et al., 2009), it was concluded that creating products for BoP markets requires a deep understanding of the real daily needs and context of the people within it. In such a situation it is clear that designers, in this case a team of four students, should engage with the cultures directly in order to better understand local people (Rodriguez et al., 2006). Because of this reason, a special emphasis of the project was put on local context research in the field. Knowing the context and observing and interacting with users in their context help designers to understand the users' latent needs and come up with new appropriate product solutions that meet their real lighting needs. As a result the most essential part of the project took place in rural areas of Cambodia during a period of 3 months, during which time designers explored and understood the local context and needs as well as developed local suitable design solutions for the lighting needs of rural Cambodians.

G.2.2 Participatory Market and Context Research

As a first step of the new product development trajectory, a thorough participatory market and context research was executed in the field. The market and context research existed of two parts: (1) observatory research and (2) participatory research.

As a first start for the designers to get familiarized with the local socioeconomic ...