Culturally Consonant Design

Culturally Consonant Design

Relatively early on in the Chimneys for Africa Project, a mentor described our design process as being culturally consonant.  

He was, amongst other things, a lawyer, and chose his words carefully.  Consequently, I tried to listen carefully when he spoke.  

Those two words have stuck with me. 

Suzanna with her own modifications to the original chimney design

As the project has progressed, we have seen how our design philosophy of listening carefully before creating has a tremendous impact on creating products that are culturally consonant.  During the most recent implementation phase in East Africa, we have been able to give some more specific definition to the impact of culturally consonant design.

By culturally consonant design we mean:

• how readily is the design adopted by the community

• how easily is the design adapted to suit the intended community

How readily is the design adopted by the community

One of the things that surprised us was how rapidly the chimney was accepted by the wider community after a single demonstration.

As part of the demonstration, we would install a chimney and ask the recipient to cook a meal, giving no instructions on how to use it.  

The design is intuitive and requires no change to existing, time-honoured cooking practices, encouraging long-term adoption.  

In all cases, the women were able to cook as they had done prior, albeit with no smoke—a visual sales pitch to the other women looking in that this was a piece of technology that was worth exploring in their own homes.

How easily is the design adapted to suit the intended community

Critical to the success of a design is whether it can be adapted to suit the individual needs of a specific community.  Even within a single Maasai community, we observed distinct cooking techniques amongst women.  As we travelled south through East Africa we also observed different food types, requiring different cooking methods.

The chimney design, however, was able to be easily modified to suit each of these variations in cooking technique and ingredients—a design fact that we had hoped would be the case but were unsure until we did more widespread testing.

As we have thought about this, a major factor in the ease of modification is the simplicity of the design—it can be assembled by hand and therefore modified by hand without the need of specialist tools.

Suzanna modified her chimney by constructing it above two cement blocks and filling the area around it with mud made from ash, cow dung and termite mound mud.  When we came back and tested her adaptation, it reduced the amount of carbon monoxide by 90%.

Additionally, she now felt distinct ownership over the chimney—her smile tells it all.  Her chimney became an example for the community.

We’re excited about culturally consonant design.

It’s the only way to ensure products are: sustainable and adopted for the long term.  It sows the seed of community-led design, too, an incredibly empowering enabler.