A good problem to have is when there are tons of jobs and not enough people with the skills to fill them. Nepal had the opposite problem: Villages filled with artisans with a work ethic, but, well, no work to be ethicked. "The problem was simply that they lacked an understanding of what people in the rest of the world wanted to buy," explains Notre Dame Industrial Design professor Ann-Marie Conrado, "and that's where we've been able to step in and help." Since 2006, Conrado has been traveling to Nepal with ID students in tow to design globally useful--and saleable--products that Nepalese craftspeople can produce.
The social design work of myself and my industrial design students in Nepal [involves] collaborating with fair trade artisans to design and develop handicraft products in tune with the global marketplace. Working with the Association for Craft Producers, the students spend 10 weeks each summer in Nepal, first learning the handicrafts techniques then designing products that have already resulted in increases not only in sales, but in the number of artisans being employed. While in Nepal, we are also identifying and designing various solutions to social and humanitarian problems including an umbilical cord cutter with a thermoplastic locking mechanism that must be boiled before it will reopen, sterilizing itself for reuse, and a $3 washing machine.
The video below takes a look at the overall process, and you can hit the jump to see some of the collaboration's most recent prototype samples (currently in the sourcing process).