3D Printing Meets Humanitarian Design Research: Creative Technologies in Remote Regions

Introduction

This chapter introduces the discourse on approaches used by designers working in humanitarian research and the background to the current opportunities provided by recent advances in digital technologies. It then outlines an example of practice that suggests new research directions and an alternative approach to practice for humanitarian design research enabled by creative technologies. Industrial designers have long been involved in design research to support the work of international aid agencies but, to date, the area of humanitarian logistics has been largely outside the scope of the discipline. However, recent innovations in digital technologies have inspired design researchers to look at new opportunities and to collaborate with colleagues from the humanitarian logistics field to address the inherent challenges within current supply chain systems. This chapter describes a pilot project funded by the Humanitarian Innovation Fund¹ and aims to illustrate how humanitarian design research in the field of logistics is being impacted by advances in creative technologies and new thinking, whilst highlighting the tensions. The project was hosted by Oxfam G.B. and brought together researchers in humanitarian logistics and industrial design to investigate how 3D printing could circumvent issues in the current supply chain for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) projects in East Africa (Oxfam, 2015).