[Stoves] design mimic the known

Sat Mar 23 00:36:23 CDT 2013

Perhaps it explains why making a briquette look dark by addi little charcoal sells it far faster than a normal agro residue blend that might perform just as well !
Richard Stanley
www.legacyfound.org

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 22, 2013, at 19:25, "teri.bhopal" <teri.bhopal at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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>> 
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> 
> 
> 
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