Design for Development: A Capability Approach

In this article I suggest a ‘capability approach’ towards designing for society, and particularly, the world’s poor. I will explain that this approach assigns a central place to human capabilities in our discussions of justice and development and criticizes a focus on utility or preference satisfaction. In the literature on the capability approach technical artifacts have hardly been acknowledged as an input for human capabilities, although Sen and some other authors sometimes refer to the example of a bicycle that expand one’s capabilities to move about. Using Bijker’s analysis of the history of the development of the bicycle, I argue that the details of design are very important for an artifact’s impact on human capabilities. In current design practice the focus is, however, too much on things like usability and user satisfaction. Where Buchanan has argued that design should rather find its ultimate ground in human rights and human dignity, I propose human capabilities as an alternative. Due to the functionalistic orientation of the capability approach, this alternative may be more fruitful and appealing to for designers. Analogue to ‘value sensitive design’ – an emerging approach in the ethics of technology - we should thus look into the possibility of ‘capability sensitive design’. What this entails exactly should be investigated, but it is likely that it will turn out to have commonalities with existing design movements like participatory design and universal design. The article will end with some suggestions for further research on a capability approach of design.