Lamps are for giving light?

What is the function of a lamp? Silly question - obviously it should provide us with light. But Jan Carel Diehl, an industrial design engineer, gradually changed his mind about this as he gained experience with the design of lamps for poor communities in the South. In December 2008 he participated in the workshop Technology and Human Capabilities, which I organized. And there he shared his insight that lamps are not about light, at leat not really. What he had increasingly realized is that a lamp is about things like being able to go to the toilet at night without being afraid, or being able to make your homework in the evening after having finished helping your father with the cattle.

Now this may seem a very trivial observation and it was just one casual remark in a one-day workshop. But I was immediately triggered, because this resonated very well with what I had learned about the capability approach of Nussbaum and Sen. This approach criticizes the emphasis that is often put on resources (like income) in our dealing with inequality and development. The capability approach emphasizes that not the resources are ultimately important, but what they allow us to do and be (like feeling safe, or finishing school). Resources, like lamps, may contribute to valuable human capabilities. However, we need to take into account the facts of immense human diversity and sometimes there are factors preventing the conversion of resources into capabilities. Now elsewhere (*) I have argued that if these human capabilities are of such moral significance (as the capability approach claims), we need to make them a central goal of and consideration in design (which I have labeled ‘capability sensitive design’, a variation on the existing concept of ’value sensitive design‘). In the next couple of years I will be, together with some fellow researchers, investigate further what capability sensitive design entails (see our research project).

Insect repellant lamp designed at the © Faculty of Industrial Design
Engineering where Diehl works (see www.io.tudelft.nl/bop)

So you can understand that Diehl’s statement immediately raised the question with me: has his insight about lamps made a real and discernable difference to the way he is designing, or to the outcomes of his design work in this area? It lingered in the back of my mind, until I decided to call him last summer and ask him about it. A difficult question, we both agreed. He did say that “value-propositions” were now more important to him. He paid more attention to the underlying needs, such as safety and independence, that are connected to a seemingly simple need like that for more light in a dark night. He suggested that values like independence may matter for designing a “light solution”, for example as a designer you would opt for solar-energy instead of batteries, because the user would not have to depend on a store selling the batteries to you. Which, I can imagine, might be problematic in some remote and poor areas of developing countries.

Those where his first thoughts in answer to my question. He was actually working on a paper reflecting more extensively on this topic and planning to present it at the international conference ’Impact of Base-of-the-Pyramid Ventures ‘ that will be organised at TU Delft next week, from November 16-18th. Even if lamps are not your thing, I am sure that there will be a lot of other interesting presentations and sessions.




* Oosterlaken, Ilse (2009). ”Design for Development; A Capability Approach”. In: Design Issues, 25(4).