Pushcart Development
Across Tanzania, women and children lose hours each day collecting water and firewood. Head-carrying these essentials pulls families away from school, farming, and entrepreneurial efforts, making the cycle of poverty all the more difficult to escape. Pushcarts greatly ease this burden, but poor construction and high rental prices make them a costly alternative for dollar-a-day customers. Anza Technologies has developed a pushcart that is low in cost and high in performance, providing a line of credit and a path out of poverty.
I've provided pro-bono engineering and user-centered design of the Anza cart throughout its development, from concept generation to prototyping and system testing. I've integrated user feedback from field studies with cost-engineering and assembly requirements to help the team make the cart a reality. I've gathered and applied user demographics, environmental conditions, cart usage methods, current market availability, storage information, and supply chain concerns to develop the design with the Anza team.
From testing soda bottles pressurized with dry ice to investigating the use of natural materials such as bamboo, cost, assembly, and user-acceptance have driven brainstorming and design sessions. I've helped finalize production drawings for a 1,000 cart production run, created a user assembly guide, and tested and evaluated sample carts from the Chinese supplier.
