To design better tech, understand context | Tania Douglas

What good is a sophisticated piece of medical equipment to people in Africa if it can't handle the climate there? Biomedical engineer Tania Douglas shares stories of how we're often blinded to real needs in our pursuit of technology — and how a deeper understanding of the context where it's used can lead us to better solutions.

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29 Comments on To design better tech, understand context | Tania Douglas

    • weehawk
      1 second ago
      Wait when was this alleged “golden era” of “non-SJW” “non-virtue signalling?” I want to know when it jumped the shark. lol

    • weehawk Take some advice: Don’t try to make points or arguments if you can’t speak english. Monkeys write more comprehensive than you.

    • Alex C, weekwak identifies as a black male/female (the opposite of whatever it is) and you just talked to it and said the word monkey. Super racist.

  1. This is already happening. Look at your normal laptops are nothing you’d expect to withstand the harsh conditions of a desert where an army might go. Then some laptop manufacturer such as Intel or Dell, made a ‘rugged’ spec laptop. Good talk though.

  2. It sounds like the american do gooders are deluding themselves …..infrastructure is step number one …..we are neglecting such in our country …pure delusion ….good money after bad !

  3. protip for any kind of electronic equipment going to south america or sub-saharan africa: if the electronics can’t handle cockroaches crawling in and peeing on it, then its no good

  4. What a threat provoking speech. More Africans in biomedical engineering are needed for health care to improve in africa

  5. There are so many racist and sexist people in these Ted talk comment sections sheesh. Dont you guys have something better to do? If you value your peace…don’t scroll down

  6. Well spoken and good examples, Thank you Tania! Using “Context” should apply to all disciplines of STEM and not be dictated by Marketing/Shareholders sometimes limited purview. Allowing more clarity in the humanity, real communications (listening/speaking/understanding) “LSU” with the team and end users throughout the process will always give a better and higher quality product, imho.

    Perhaps a new discipline of “LSU” would be in order to better solve the issues of context from initial concept through design/proto, quality beta testing (remember that?), production, overall system QA, life-cycle relevance, let alone quality documentation and end user service. Not being so focused on time to market and quantity over quality and price per unit mentality will always give better results and more sales. There is no “I” in Team or System, but there is in Discernment.

    My old sayings are; R&D ain’t Cheap but Quality is. Or, Shooting from the hip always results in more misses.

  7. There’s room for both homegrown and imported solutions to Africa’s problems. Africa has enough problems to go around.

    The problem is measuring compassion by the money spent instead of the practical results. “We’re sending 500 fetal heatbeat monitors to Africa!” is a great to include in an NGO’s next fund-raising mailer, there’s no followup for how effective those 500 actually are.

  8. The most important part to take out of that is that our development aid for Afrika is not doing the job it should have done.

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