Clean cooking interventions: Towards user-centred contexts of use design

Clean cookstove interventions largely fail to achieve their stated aims. In our view, the underlying flaw of many cooking interventions is a systemic lack of attention to users’ rank ordering of product features and contexts of use during the product design process. Drawing on examples of cookstove and product design, together with our experience in cookstove design, research and product standards development, we offer four suggestions for improving cookstove interventions. First, consider the benefits of incremental changes. Second, do not define the problem or the solution too quickly. Third, make no assumptions about how well you know the end user. Fourth, bring users, donors, manufacturers and implementing agencies into the design process. We conclude with a call for an inclusive approach to designing cookstove interventions that is centred around the lived experiences of users and rooted in context-specific knowledge.