E/ME 105: Product Design for the Developing World

Product Design for the Developing World" is taught in the Fall Quarter. This class is focused on designing products for the 2 billion people in the world who exist on less than $2/day. This class is now in its 7th iteration. Till 2009, the class focused on needs of the rural Mayan community of Guatemala through a collaboration between Caltech, Art Center College of Design (both Pasadena), and Universidad Rafael Landivar (Guatemala City and Quetzaltenango Campus). Currently, our target market is rural Kerala, India, with a continued partnership with Art Center College of Design and a new strong collaboration with St. Gregorios Institute of Technology and Sciences (St. GITS) Kerala, India. In the year 2010 the class produced its first set of projects to help people in Kerala. Projects that were a product of the class included a rubber tapping tool designed to aid the average worker tap trees more efficiently, a multipurpose hospital bed that eases the transportation of patients and stair-climbing crutches that are safer on stairs than present crutches, a portable wind-driven cell phone charger, a tube fan to keep you cool at night, and a scaled down harvester. The Final papers can be found here.

Riding on the success of this first year of collaborative effort and to further enhance the experience, we decided to go on a pre-class trip to India before the second iteration of class. With 8 students from Pasadena - 5 from Caltech and 3 from Arts Center College of Design- along with the course instructor another Caltech Professor and TA, we spent 10 days in the district of Kottayam Kerala, India. They were joined and conducted by 16 students and three instructors from St GITS. We visited a number of industries to observe and analyze their processes. Students thus had the unique opportunity to witness the workings of a wide range of industries - from rubber tapping and processing to candle making; from cardamom harvesting to cane furniture manufacture - they observed and researched them all and immersed themselves in Kerala culture. We are confident that this pre-class effort will translate into some extremely meaningful and useful projects this fall quarter.

As was done last year, each of the Teams will be mixed Indian and American. All classes are teleconferenced between Kerala and Pasadena in a virtual classroom.

On another note, we are continuing to make progress in Guatemala for IMI (Intelligent Mobility International) on a Rotary Project as we distribute wheelchairs to people in rural Guatemala. The number now is over 200.