The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It may be a trite platitude, but it is the inevitable conclusion I’m forced to come to when I see 90% of the design that is focussed on helping people in the developing world. While designers often recognize the basic issues that need addressing, there is almost always a fundamental misunderstanding about the means of the target market, and more importantly, a painful ignorance of existing solutions. Everyone wants to come up with something new and fresh, instead of seeking out models to better distribute knowledge and solutions that are applicable today.

The newest invention to incur my wrath (or at least, disappointment) is the winner of the (dramatically titled!) Innovate or Die competition, called the Aquaduct. The idea is a plastic bicycle that can be used to transport large volumes of water, which is then filtered through an activated carbon filter (via a peristaltic pump driven by the pedals, that can also be run while the bike is stationary). While the idea is well-executed, and touches on a number of very important issues (the difficulty in transporting water, and the scarcity of fuel and environmental ramifications of burning wood to boil water, for instance), they seem to ignore an important, very fundamental issue. Most people can’t afford a bike at all, let alone a new, custom-designed plastic one (which I imagine would make repairs nearly impossible) with all the additional complexities and expenses of the filtering system.

Instead of giving every family in the community a water-filtering bicycle, wouldn’t it make more sense to pool resources and dig a well in order to eliminate the commute in the first place? Or if that isn’t an option, what about using simple, inexpensive Q-Drums to transport water, which can then be filtered through a stationary, gravity-based slow-sand/clay/dung water filter made from locally available materials for virtually nothing?

Design won’t save the world by itself, people. It takes restraint to acknowledge that sometimes, the best solution is also the simplest one.