Economic development as design: Insight and guidance through the PSI framework

Eswaran Subrahmanian, Claudia Eckert, Christopher McMahon*, Yoram Reich

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

Abstract

Economic development is aimed at improving the lives of people in the developing world, and needs to be carried out with design at its heart, but this has often not been the case. This paper first reviews dominant approaches to economic development including the use of subsidies or the creation of markets and demand and the testing of initiatives using randomized control trials. It then introduces 'development engineering' as a representative engineering design approach to engineering and technology in development before presenting the view that successful development needs to involve continual learning through innovation in context. The PSI (problem social institutional) framework is presented as a basis for guiding such development as a design activity, and its application is illustrated using examples from India of the unsuccessful introduction of new cooking stoves and then both successful and unsuccessful approaches to rural electrification. A 2-level approach to PSI is taken, in which the lower level represents daily operation of communities and the 2nd level represents the development project including addressing misalignments between the different PSI spaces and levels.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)229-238
Number of pages10
JournalProceedings of the International Conference on Engineering Design, ICED
Volume1
Issue numberDS87-1
StatePublished - 2017
Event21st International Conference on Engineering Design, ICED 2017 - Vancouver, Canada
Duration: 21 Aug 201725 Aug 2017

Keywords

  • Design theory
  • Economic development
  • Participatory design
  • Social responsibility

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