What is Development Engineering?
David Levine
Alice Agogino
UC Berkeley
Designing products and services that
improve poor people’s lives at scale
Is it hubris to “engineer” development?
• For over five centuries people from the Global
North have “designed solutions” for those in
the South
Profound humility
• For over five centuries people from the Global
North have “designed solutions” for those in
the South
• Often with tragic consequences
Profound humility
• Foundation of development engineering is
realizing:
– How little we understand needs
– How bad our initial ideas and prototypes are
• Learn from and with local partners
– For scaling: Need local partners to own & scale the
project
• Plan for unintended consequences
Adding Development to Design Thinking
Our complementary additions
Design thinking
Needs assessment
Qualitative tools
Ideation
Creativity tools
Continuous
improvement
Rapid prototyping
Development
Business model /
scaling / system
thinking
More tools:
sensors,
experiments, and
biggish data
• Social goals to improve people’s lives at scale
• Barriers to design from geographic and cultural distance
• Constraints of poverty, remoteness, liquidity constraints,
gender roles,…
• Opportunities of donors, mobile phones, microfinance,…
• Tools like impact evaluations
Design Thinking
in Development
Engineering?
Framework
(Insights)
Imperatives
(Concepts)
Qualitative &
Quantitative
Data
Observations
Solutions
(Contexts)
(Prototypes)
Example: cooking over biomass fires
kills 4 million people per year
(Lim, 2014) http://blogs.civicus.org/worldassembly/2012/07/14/wood-fuel-destroying-theenvironment-and-harming-the-african-woman/.
Example: Development issues & stoves
Social goals to improve
people’s lives at scale
Barriers to design from
geographic and cultural
distance
Constraints of poverty,
remoteness, liquidity
constraints, gender roles,…
Opportunities of donors,
mobile phones,
microfinance,…
Tools like impact evaluations
Needs assess
Who breathes
the most
smoke?
How can we
learn when far?
Creativity
How can we
reduce smoke
exposure?
Improvement
Are we
reducing smoke
exposure?
How learn
problems with
out solutions?
How sell when Find 20 solutions Test our
liquidity
to liquidity
solutions
constraints?
constraints
What role for
How use mobile How collect
mobile phones? banking?
data via phone?
What impacts
do donors care
about?
How roll out our
product to build
in learning?
Low-cost RCT
Development Engineering
Dev Eng complementary additions
Design
thinking
Needs
assessment
Qualitative
tools
Ideation
Creativity
tools
Continuous
Rapid
improvement prototyping
Development
=> More
objectives,
constraints &
opportunities
Business model
/ scaling /
system thinking
Add questions to
inform the
business model
Applied to
business models
Of the business
model
More
tools:
More quantitative tools
Our complementary additions
Design thinking
Needs assessment
Qualitative tools
Creativity
Creativity tools
Continuous
improvement
Rapid prototyping
Business model /
scaling / system
thinking
Development=>
More objectives,
constraints &
opportunities
Beyond rich qualitative methods:
• Sensors embedded in products,
smart phones,…
• Experiments (A/B testing, etc.)
• Large data from satellites, clicks,
mobile phones…
More tools
Cook Stove Workshop
http://bit.ly/deveng-cookstove
Sensor Data
UCB-SUMS Stove Use Monitoring
System
Maxim iButton: http://www.hedon.info/BP55:Low-costTemperatureLoggersAsStoveUseMonitors
What is Said – What is Done
• Comparison between ODK survey data and
sensor data
• 85% over-estimated cooking hours & events
– Users over-reported time
spent cooking by 1.2 hours
(almost double)
– Non-Users over-reported by
1.7 hours.
Users
NonUsers
Development Engineering
Dev Eng complementary additions
Design
thinking
Needs
assessment
Qualitative
tools
Ideation
Creativity
tools
Development
=> More
objectives,
constraints &
opportunities
Add questions
& overcome
barriers
Use as cues
for creativity
Business model /
scaling / system
thinking
More tools:
sensors,
experiments,
and large data
Add questions to
Using more
inform the business tools
model
Applied to business Use tools as
models
cues for
creativity
Continuous
Rapid
Address
Of the business
Using more
improvement prototyping barriers & use model
tools
opportunities