Initial Research Questions

From the literature review in the context of sustainable development, it is clear that the gap between theoretical efforts to alleviate poverty in developing countries and reality is huge. Poverty reduction in Egypt is still one of the most challenging problems facing the country. Although the alleviation of poverty has featured in design discourse in developed countries since the 1970s, the role of design as a partner in the development process has not yet been recognized in Egypt, despite the publication of the first Egypt Human Development Report in 1995. As observed in the previous chapter, traditional design discourse is the first obstacle, because of its limited perspective as an activity that focuses solely on form and appearance.

In contrast, the vision of design presented in this thesis has shown that design has a significant role to play within the context of sustainable development in developing countries. The principle of social responsibility can and should motivate the designer to realize the abstract values of development.

Different examples from design history have rooted the proposed vision in the three dimensions of human, social and economic development. Long-term strategic planning is required to implement this vision. The first step in this process is to raise the following questions:

1. What kind of methods and tools do designers need to develop their skills for coping with the challenges they face, especially when addressing real-world problems? This question is grounded in the methodological background and aims to explore additional tools and methods. Answering this question will empower designers to accomplish their new task in a sustainable way.

2. How can people’s needs be translated into relevant products, services and systems in an affordable way? This question engages with three phases: recognizing what people need, proposing a solution to satisfy this need, and then making this solution affordable. If one of these three components is missing, then the proposed solution is not sustainable and will sooner or later cause another problem.

3. How can local crafts people’s skills and productivity be improved to increase their income? This question is concerned with connecting the skills, productivity and income of craftspeople and the role designers can play in this respect.

4. How can these products be efficiently connected with markets in order to avoid donor and NGO support and lead to a sustainable economic situation? This question is concerned with sustainable economic production and finding a way for local producers to market their products and avoid NGO support.

5. What role should the designer play to support national policy towards sustainable development in developing countries? This question aims at exploring the designer’s ability to participate effectively in development efforts in developing countries.

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Conclusion

A considerable body of literature about design history demonstrates that designers always try to link design activities with other disciplines in tangible way. Regarding sustainable development, the shift in the development paradigm has been mirrored in design discourse from recognizing design as an activity through which business promotion and economic development can be achieved, towards Papanek’s ‘Design for the Real World’ that led to the emergence of design for solving real-world problems in developing countries. Sustainable development has been defined in this research as a development that aims at promoting human welfare according to the specific local culture in order to obtain a life worth living.

This chapter has proposed a vision of ‘Design 4 Sustainable Development’ by mapping out literature from the design discourse that deals with three development aspects: human, social, and industrial development. It has been argued that ‘Design 4 Sustainable Development’ aims to solve real-world problems by applying responsible strategic action to change existing situations into preferred ones.

In this respect, human needs will be satisfied through converting cultural values into concrete reality.

Hence, design becomes a service to satisfy human needs by solving real problems in a tangible way. If the idea of human needs is extended to a more general sense of well-being, then design, in turn, aims to improve well-being at the human, social and economic level.

The theoretical framework has been built upon the work of leading design thinkers. Focusing on three perspectives of design discourse, this framework has been categorized as: Design 4 Sustaining Human, Community, and Industrial Development. Each category has been filled with exemplary design work to visualize the role design can play to strengthen development efforts in each context.

The connection between sustainable development and design has been established in this chapter in terms of promoting and realizing the idea of well-being in the form of better quality of life.

Addressing design and poverty has referred to the significance of promoting social responsibility in design and motivating designers to deal with poverty problems. It has identified the challenge of approaching such complex problems on the basis of traditional design methods and skills, referring to the initial obstacle ‒ that of the starting point. Other obstacles will be elaborated later in this research. Bonsiepe’s ‘design humanism’, ‘design for the real world’, ‘design for need’, and ‘design for society’ redirect the design profession towards a more responsible set of attitudes.

After proposing a clear vision that defines the role of design in development discourse (know-what), a number of research questions have been proposed in subsection 3.3, exploring ways of empowering designers to accomplish their new tasks effectively by raising issues that relate to appropriate methods (know-how). To answer these questions, the next chapter will focus on design research and its methods.

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