CITE Suitability : an exploration of product evaluation methodologies for developing world technologies

There are a multitude of technological products that have been developed to improve the lives of bottom of pyramid consumers in the developing world. Unfortunately, many of these products fail to have the desired impact and there is a serious gap in knowledge of what works and what does not work. It is the goal of the Comprehensive Initiative for Technology Evaluation to fill this gap by creating a methodology for evaluating such products. This thesis documents the first efforts of the Suitability team, as part of the Comprehensive Initiative for Technology Evaluation, to develop these product evaluation methodologies. The Suitability team is focused on evaluating the technical performance of these products in a comparative manner with respect to user expectations and use patterns. Two different product evaluation frameworks were developed, implemented, and compared. The first is an attribute-based product evaluation, in the style of Consumer Reports, in which all products under evaluation are subjected to a standardized set of laboratory tests designed to differentiate among products in key performance areas. The second is a problem-based evaluation in which user feedback is gathered in order to guide product testing. Product evaluations were produced using both methods. Both user groups ranked the importance of solar lantern characteristics similarly, with a Kendall's -r coefficient of 0.4545. Each method also had unique advantages, revealing different kinds of information on solar lantern performance. This suggests that it may be useful to employ both methods simultaneously, with-the problem-based evaluation informing the attribute-based evaluation.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2014

Author dc:creator

• Pombrol, Christopher Anthony

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Daniel D. Frey.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/93739

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/93739