The poo project

Miguel Angel Melgarejo Fuentes graduated in Strategic Product Design from the Industrial Design Engineering (IDE) faculty last month, literally going through tons of crap to get his MSc degree. His graduate project focused on user-centered research and the creation of business models for the technology developed as a part of the ‘Reinvent the Toilet Challenge’ competition, organised by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. After writing a project proposal, he was selected to develop a strategy for deploying sanitation technology in India’s urban slums.

“It was a complex project, because the 3mE faculty was to develop the technology and IDE the user-centred aspects,” Fuentes explains. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was primarily interested in the technology, but TU Delft also wanted to include the user-centred focus. “Technology’s great but it couldn’t work until the human side was included,” Fuentes says. “When you talk about poo, which is something super personal, then it has a bigger dimension.”

For his research, Fuentes had to go to India: “But the people in Delft didn’t know much about India, and the Indian collaborator firm was too busy with their own projects, so I didn’t know where to start. I searched the web for NGOs with any connections with sanitation in Delhi.”

Slums

He ultimately landed in Delhi’s notorious slums. “I went with no clue of what to expect. I met a young guy who eventually became my guide, but it was quite difficult to handle that relationship. Dependent on his time schedules and whims, I had to keep persuading him in different ways to keep my research going. I also did this in many other slums with the help of other NGOs.”

No matter how dismal the slums, Fuentes was struck by how the “people there tried not to show the raw reality, to hide the dirt and show how clean the toilets were and how good the systems were. I had to play detective, trying interpret gestures, dig, and find my way.”

As for conducting research in the slums, Fuentes says: “Babies on the floor, swarming flies, open sewage…I thought I was in a Discovery Channel documentary. It was emotionally intense, so intense that you end up thinking: ‘how do they survive like this and why are they like this?’ Slowly you start to understand things and that’s the beginning.”

And was he asked questions in the slums, too, recalling how explaining the technology of plasma gasification was particularly difficult. The slum dwellers also asked Fuentes when the new sanitation-system would be deployed. “Knowing that it didn’t depend on me, that’s when I felt really bad, and that pushes you to do the best you can and I tried,” he concludes. “I tried to be nice to them, left some Mexican candies and Dutch clogs as gifts, but that’s not going to change their lives. I promised the NGOs to send them my thesis as appreciation for their help.”