Using ceramic crafts to teach user centred design for water purification and development

The development of more advanced technologies for manufacture and knowledge exchange has opened the world to wider trade and partnerships, requiring designers to consider the suitability of their products for cultures other than their own. With these advances a students ability to access other cultures has also increased, allowing them to research a cultures practices and traditions in greater detail. However, the availability of certain technologies differs from country to country, with many developing countries having stable access to mobile telephones, while still lacking basic access to clean drinking water. The use of design for development briefs give students the opportunity to implement user centred design within a cultural context, and to select appropriate material processes for their intended areas of development. This paper explores the work produced by level five product design students completing the ceramic portion of their manufacturing module. The students were given a brief inspired by the authors work in the EU Horizon 2020 funded WATERSPOUTT project. The students were asked to design and produce a ceramic filter and storage vessel for a developing area of their choice, taking into consideration the usability of the product, the cultural heritage of the area, and the local manufacturing resources available. The WATERSPOUTT project has worked to provide solar disinfection (SoDis) resources for the disinfection of local water for target communities in Uganda, South Africa, Ethiopia and Malawi. The authors role in the project was to design a ceramic filter to be used in combination with solar disinfection technologies.