(P)REVIEW
EDITOR
Alex Wright
[e-mail]

fication of their ideas, but this power brings great
responsibility. The ripples can be negative or even
deadly—overflowing landfills from disposable
goods; injuries, illness, and deaths from dangerous
products; and a culture fixated on consumption
as a means to satisfy deeper human needs. As
Pilloton succinctly puts it, “Product design...must
own up to its power to both improve and harm on
grand scales and use this potential as an opportu-
nity to empower rather than damage, to encourage
people-centric engagement not retail therapy.”
Next, she neatly introduces foundational con-
cepts like social entrepreneurship (which expands
business focus to the triple bottom line of people,
planet, and profit), appropriate technology (the
right materials and design for the context), and
design thinking and explores their relationship to
design for social good.
With the context set, Pilloton urges readers to
take first steps toward designing for social impact
with her repurposing of Nike’s tagline: “Just do
something.” To this end, she provides a thought-
ful personal oath for designers to take, including
such statements of intent as “go beyond doing no
harm,” “listen, learn, and understand,” and “serve
the underserved.” Some of the book’s greatest
depth and value is in this tactical section. Pilloton
suggests that product designers—who are typically
trained to fetishize beautiful and cool objects—
consider designing solutions that have no product,
focus on impact rather than features, and design
for needs rather than markets. These ideas may
seem obvious to those of us who have long under-
stood the difference between products and eco-
systems and who come to design from a humanist
point of view, but to much of the industrial design
world, they really do represent a revolution in how
people understand their basic role.

Photographs courtesy of Project H Design

I have to confess that reading this book made
me a bit jealous. As the saying goes, designers are
inherently optimistic—the whole point of the dis-
cipline is to make things better. In reality, we tell
ourselves lots of little lies about how what we do
makes the world better by making things easier or
more ergonomic or convenient. But placed next to,
say, a cheap, rugged, easily repaired water filter
designed for people in areas with little or no clean
water, that new running shoe, remote control, or
website we may have designed seems, well, crass at
best. It’s natural to want to do good as a designer,
but it feels fairly difficult to know how to begin. So,
• Football tape.

A roll of tape and discarded newspaper can take the place of an expensive leather soccer ball.

 

• spiderboot. Designed to protect landmine detection teams from injury, the boots distribute body weight making detonation less likely.

• adaptive
Eyecare.

An attached syringe fills the membrane lenses with liquid, making the glasses more concave or convex. The wearer can adjust the glasses accordingly until their vision is corrected.