Lakshmi Sandhana over at Co.Exist reports on an extraordinary commitment to understanding the people you’re designing for:
When Arunachalam Muruganantham hit a wall in his research on creating a sanitary napkin for poor women, he decided to do what most men typically wouldn’t dream of. He wore one himself–for a whole week. Fashioning his own menstruating uterus by filling a bladder with goat’s blood, Muruganantham went about his life while wearing women’s underwear, occasionally squeezing the contraption to test out his latest iteration. It resulted in endless derision and almost destroyed his family. But no one is laughing at him anymore, as the sanitary napkin-making machine he went on to create is transforming the lives of rural women across India.
I really think design falls short unless you find techniques to embody your user (or are your user), and you rarely have to go to this Pattie Moore style extreme. Inspiring that Arunachalam was in a situation where he did, and that he had the guts to follow through.
