Abstract
This paper reviews the methods and practices that reflect subconscious behaviours of people in daily lives. Cases, studied for this paper, show how practices of people living in poor settings, who are members of the base of the economic pyramid, contribute to designers, belonging to the top of the economic pyramid, in designing better products and systems. A new approach to the bottom-up innovation is suggested where the source of inspiration comes from the BoP populations to be implemented by ToP designers to generate ideas for BoP or ToP products.
Keywords
Daily practices; base of the pyramid (BoP); top of the pyramid (ToP); bottom-up innovations; culture; design methods
Citation
Ibragimova, E., and van Boeijen, A. (2014) From BoP to ToP and Vice Versa: Daily Practices in Settings with Limited Resources to Inspire Designers, in Lim, Y., Niedderer, K., Redström, J., Stolterman, E. and Valtonen, A. (eds.), Design's Big Debates - DRS International Conference 2014, 16-19 June, Umeå, Sweden. https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2014/researchpapers/106
From BoP to ToP and Vice Versa: Daily Practices in Settings with Limited Resources to Inspire Designers
This paper reviews the methods and practices that reflect subconscious behaviours of people in daily lives. Cases, studied for this paper, show how practices of people living in poor settings, who are members of the base of the economic pyramid, contribute to designers, belonging to the top of the economic pyramid, in designing better products and systems. A new approach to the bottom-up innovation is suggested where the source of inspiration comes from the BoP populations to be implemented by ToP designers to generate ideas for BoP or ToP products.