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Designing empowerment
How do you Design a user experience for a group that cannot read or write. Do we look at it
as a constraint or as an opportunity? Why not conceive a system that acknowledges
ingenuity and resourcefulness of the user rather than point out the "deficiencies. The
Design community needs to take another look at the biggest user group that so far has not
been considered worthy of "Design.
f Design is about creative problem solving, it needs to address some of the biggest issues
facing the society. 75% population survives on less than two dollars a day. They obviously
cannot afford most of the products and buildings that are designed and produced. This
project aims to explore ways in which Design could be used as a catalyst for positive
change at grass root levels. The initial research showed the higher success rate of women
centered programs. This discovery also led to creation of o a focus area, empowering
women through Design.
The paper discusses findings of two pilot projects that explore visual ways of accounting by
illiterate members of micro financing SHGs and an interactive, visual game to educate
members of SHGs about financial literacy and what is the right approach for managing a
Self Help Group. The projects are designed to provide better opportunities of involvement in
the day to day management a SHGs engaged in a Micro-financing venture.
This paper presents two case studies to underline the importance of women empowerment
and its relationship to social change. t presents a studio project conducted with industrial
design students in collaboration with an NGO to design an accounting tool for illiterate users
in a micro financing self help group in ndia. t also examines the difficult scenario of
designing for different cultures and results of testing conducted with end user in rural ndia.
The paper presents a methodology for Design projects aimed at an alien culture where the
students depend on mostly second hand information to develop understanding about user.
t provides details about creative strategies to overcome these challenges and uses the test
results as evidence of successful implementation. The paper uses the pilot project as the
starting point and makes a case for evolving it into interdisciplinary realm.
This project underlines the urgent need for such initiative and its possible implications in
future. t is a small part of a much bigger collaborative with stakeholders from NGOs in
ndia, local government and experts from fields like Design, Social Sciences, Education,
Psychology to name a few.

The paper explores the possibility of treating bottom of pyramid population as a viable user
group for design, one that has no immediate economic benefits but will definitely provide a
pathway for a more sustainable and responsible future.

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Akshay Sharma teaches in the Industrial Design Department at Virginia Tech. He is

interested in exploring ways of using Design as a catalyst for empowerment of women,
especially in developing world. His students have created a visual book keeping system
for illiterate women in India who are engaged in a micro finance venture. He would like
to create a focus on these pressing issues in the design curriculum and build an
interdisciplinary research team to move the projects further.