Design is essential to fulfil unmet or under-served needs of resource-poor societies, supporting their social and human development. A great deal of design research has been undertaken in such low resource settings, and is discussed under different names, such as 'community development engineering', 'humanitarian engineering', 'appropriate technology', 'design for development', 'design at the Base of the Pyramid', etc. This has created an important need to know what has been examined and learnt so far and to plan for further investigation. To address this, we review a broad range of literature, with close examination of 30 design studies in this field. This reveals a multifaceted picture, showing a great diversity in investigation and reporting of attributes of context (income, rural and urban, design sectors, countries, and gender), the roles of poor people (consumers, producers, and co-designers), characteristics of research methods employed (e.g. descriptive and prescriptive, data collection methods, qualitative and quantitative aspects, and unit of analysis), and design topics. Based on the review results, we offer recommendations for further research, identifying concerns that researchers ought to have about this field and suggesting ways in which research in this field can be undertaken and reported. Keywords Poverty • Design process • Design research • Developing countries • Frugal innovations 1 Introduction Forty percent of the world population subsists on less than 2 dollars a day, and twenty percent on less than 1.25 dollars per day, living in extreme poverty (World Bank 2010). Although poverty is decreasing, it is still a widespread and tenacious problem with causes, effects and potential solutions at individual, institutional, and structural levels. Whilst Mahatma Gandhi called the problems faced by these resource-poor people as 'the worst form of violence', Amartya Sen defines them as lack of freedom and inability to make life choices (Sen 2001). Others again define them in terms of high mortality rates, ill-health or as a monetary issue (e.g. Jönsson et al. 2012). These marginalised people generally cannot change their living conditions and livelihood opportunities, as their access to financial and other resources is weak, with pressing need for immediate consumption (Karelis 2007, Jerneck 2014). They often face significant challenges to satisfy basic needs, such as food, shelter, and clothing, and lack access to basic facilities, such as public health (Maxted 2011; Zurovcik et al. 2011), education (e.g. Gordon 1997; Gustavsson 2007), safe drinking water (Baumgartner et al. 2007; Matlack et al. 2011), sanitation (e.g. Chaplin 1999; Burra et al. 2003; Lopes et al. 2012), infrastructure (Prahalad 2004), and security (Jerneck 2014). Design is imperative to satisfy unmet or under-served needs of marginalised people living in resource-limited societies (Papanek and Fuller 1972). Appropriately designed products have the potential to create significant impact, contributing towards social and human developm...

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Novelty is an important characteristic of a creative idea, forming a core component of creativity. Measurement of novelty is therefore essential to assess creativity. We found deficiencies in a frequently cited method of novelty assessment found in the literature. We refine this method by proposing four modifications, supported by drawing on examples of products and ideas. The refined method and the original method are evaluated by benchmarking them against the collective, intuitive assessment of product novelty by experienced designers. The overall achievement of the refined method as presented in this paper is its contribution to a better assessment of product novelty.

This paper describes research stimulated by a fundamental shift that is occurring in the manufacture and marketing of aero engines for commercial and defence purposes, away from the selling of products to the provision of services. Under an emerging 'power by the hour'® paradigm, aero engines are effectively leased to the airlines, with the manufacturing company remaining responsible for their maintenance and repair throughout their service life. This has triggered a major re-assessment of the design of aero engines to reduce their overall life-cycle costs, while maintaining performance efficiency. The main aims of the ongoing research are thus to understand what in-service information is currently available in the company; and to determine what in-service information is required by designers, to fulfil their new objectives. This paper presents the results of the initial phase of the research project. In particular, this paper investigates the following research questions: (1) what questions do designers ask about in-service information? (2) what is the perspective of service engineers regarding in-service information? (3) what are the difficulties faced by the repair and overhaul (RO) centres in capturing this in-service information? Semi-structured interviews with three designers and three service engineers were conducted; after the interviews, the designers were requested to comment on a set of questions regarding in-service information, indicating how frequently they might ask each of them when designing a new component or system. The results indicate the service information requirements of designers, and also reveal the related perspective of service engineers.