Engineering for Change: Necessary Trade Offs When Co Designing New Technology

The co-design of new technology with communities has benefits and trade-offs. Engineers Without Borders Australia describe a co-design project in rural Cambodia that they participated in. The goal was to design assistive technologies that helped people with disabilities farm their small plots more easily. In practice, this resulted in the design of two products: a locally manufacturable, low-cost drum seeder, and an attachment for an ox-drawn plough that assisted people with mobility limitations when preparing fields. From this project, they identified two key trade-offs that needed to be addressed for effective co-design.