Abstract
User-oriented community engagement can reveal insights into ways of improving a community and solving complex public issues, such as natural resource scarcity. This study describes the early process of co-designing a novel, waterless toilet to respond to the water scarcity problem in the Republic of Korea. It presents how we designed a toilet focusing on three factors-a sanitization function, an ergonomic posture, and clean aesthetics-by conducting focus group interviews as part of a user engagement approach to understand what community users want from a toilet and ways of improving their toilet experiences. The results not only supported the development of an experiential service design project to raise community awareness of water scarcity but also supported scientists and engineers in experimenting with and developing new technologies by collaborating closely with designers.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 919 |
| Journal | Applied Sciences (Switzerland) |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2019 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We are grateful to all our current and former colleagues and collaborators, and especially to Myles Akabas, Juan Ballesteros, Arthur Karlin, and Harel Weinstein for much helpful discussion, and to NIMH grants 57324 and 54137, the Lebovitz Foundation, and the Lieber Center for support.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 by the authors.
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Materials Science(all)
- Instrumentation
- Engineering(all)
- Process Chemistry and Technology
- Computer Science Applications
- Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes
