Participatory Methods in Technical Design: Household Biomass Stoves

Abstract

Participatory Design represents an important methodology focused on involving people who experience problems in the process of defining and solving them. This is especially important in global development, where diverse stakeholders attempt to tackle poverty challenges. In this thesis, I analyze a case study of improving biomass stoves in the Himalaya through the lens of participatory design to inform design practice and research. Biomass cooking and heating cause high levels of indoor air pollution especially in the Himalaya where households need accessible and affordable wood fuel for cooking and heating during extreme winters. Prior to fieldwork, I facilitated ideation sessions to generate solutions to these challenges, and we pursued prototyping and testing of a chimney retrofit to a traditional stove. This incremental innovation had increased chances of long-term adoption and impact because it would not require users to change cooking practices or discontinue using their traditional stove. Lab testing resulted in several design guidelines, rather than optimized parameters, to enable fieldwork. In the field, the team co-designed a chimney clay stove with a lead user, trained under a local stove master in constructing improved clay stoves, and designed a one-pot clay chimney stove and modifications to metal chimney stoves using principles of participatory design. The chimney modification reduced indoor PM 2.5 and CO mass concentrations by 32.3% and 78.5%, respectively, while maintaining usability characteristics. Design experiences allowed the team to recognize the technical skills in materials and construction necessary for successful clay stove design and document cultural value placed on this expertise. The team also documented user innovations on stoves, which are sparse in literature, but further demonstrate the feasibility and value of increased user participation in designing improved stoves. Inspired by field work, I present a short review of literature on gender in biomass stove technology and recommendations to involve women and gender specialists in designing improvements to traditional stoves. In addition, I propose a new model for calculating thermal efficiency and a method for estimating space heating in biomass stoves used for cooking and heating. With the new model, clay multifunctional stoves can achieve up to 35% efficiency, which raises the standard for new stoves entering the market and better reflects actual usage and fundamentals of thermal efficiency.