[Stoves] cheap = ugly ?

[teri.bhopal]

Appearances do matter! In rural India, where I work, I've noticed a
tendency among households to choose products which look more characteristic
of city life. I've seen households preferring to buy a costlier stove which
bears the likeness of a gas-stove, to a cheaper and more efficient stove
which looks like a plain grill. I have always wanted to explore the
importance of design and external appearance on stove acceptance and
adoption, but could not come across a lot of literature on the subject.
However, I'm sure rural users evaluate each stove in a matrix of criteria
(which varies widely among communities), and stove appearance does figure
high in the list.

Regards,

Arun Sreekumar
The Energy and Resources Institute


On 23 March 2013 06:08, Cecil Cook <cec1863 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Building on Marc's point, I have found in a number of circumstances it
> makes sense for the new thing to masquerade as the old thing even though it
> embodies many innovations.  My experience is with a range of village
> technologies including stoves.
>
> Also, beauty in in the eye of the collective beholder.  What I consider
> beautiful, someone else considers ugly or ungraceful. One element that may
> tie beauty and functionality together with economics is the concept of
> cultural 'branding' by which I mean if the technos looks traditional, it
> gets a name and immediately becomes familiar and even trustworthy.  The
> trick is to incorporate innovations in a way that leaves enough of the old
> appearance in tact so that a product can use the old brand and name.
>
> That way the new thing becomes the old thing and visa versa.  I believe it
> is helpful for modern western people and powerful professionals to restrain
> the understandable urge to  remake the world according to their 'modern'
> ethos and aesthetics of the moment, but let's face it ... there are many
> convert and overt wars going on under the disguise of globalization.
>
> Here in Indonesia where I am at this moment, I have the perception that
> the incredibly dense self governing urban villages - called Kampongs - in
> its cities have discovered the social, economic and political institutions
> that are desperately needed in places like the South Bronx in New York, the
> collapsed inner city areas of Detroit and the South side of Chicago.
>
> We have to study the old thing very carefully before we decide that it
> looks ugly.
>
> In search,
> Cecil Cook
>
> On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 9:40 PM, Marc-Antoine Pare <marcpare0 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>  Yeah, I've always thought this was an interesting conversation.
>>
>> One anecdote:
>> In designing gasifiers for rural brick-makers, I found that "ugly" in the
>> sense of "looks industrial" was not necessarily a bad thing: the operators
>> and mechanics were happy to see that the device *looked like something
>> they were familiar with*. Hence, they could maintain it, modify it, etc.
>>
>> Of course, this was a product for small industry, not for consumers. The
>> same reasoning may not hold for a household customer.
>>
>> -marc
>>
>>
>> On 3/22/13 12:22 PM, Josh Kearns wrote:
>>
>> Thought stovers would like to know of a parallel conversation going on in
>> the WASH sector....
>>
>>  http://www.source.irc.nl/page/77512
>>
>>
>>
>>  --
>> Josh Kearns
>> PhD Candidate, Environmental Engineering
>> University of Colorado-Boulder
>> Visiting Researcher, North Carolina State University
>>
>> Director of Science
>> Aqueous Solutions
>> www.aqsolutions.org
>>
>>  Mobile: 720 989 3959
>> Skype: joshkearns
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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