Incorporating users into sanitation technology innovation: Challenges to knowledge coherence between disciplines
type: CreativeWork
description: Although great progress has been made towards improving access to water worldwide, the same progress has not been observed in improving access to sanitation. While engineers are at the forefront of advancement in access to technologies, social and cultural barriers present unique challenges in the sustainability of sanitation interventions. It is clear that a better structure for incorporating user factors into sanitation interventions and sanitation technology design is required but how to go about this process is uncertain. Three primary methods for incorporating users into technology design have been popular in engineering sciences: user centered design, multiple criteria decision analysis, and appropriate technologies. International aid organizations have also popularized the concept of ‘participation’ in interventions but the concept is vague, open for interpretation, and has been criticized for its continued dependence on hierarchical, expert-driven technology interventions. Participatory action research offers an more distributive model for participation within research studies and, for this reason, we also consider participatory action research as a method that engineers can use for incorporating users into innovation and intervention processes. Through a comprehensive search of literature on sanitation technologies, this thesis examines how engineering literature on sanitation technologies includes users into the design process. Through a network analysis using a novel MATLAB script, which we call Synapse, to sort literature derived from the Scopus database, this project shows the connections and gaps in the sanitation literature and points to significant opportunities for future multidisciplinary work incorporating end users into processes of sanitation technology innovation.
abstract: Although great progress has been made towards improving access to water worldwide, the same progress has not been observed in improving access to sanitation. While engineers are at the forefront of advancement in access to technologies, social and cultural barriers present unique challenges in the sustainability of sanitation interventions. It is clear that a better structure for incorporating user factors into sanitation interventions and sanitation technology design is required but how to go about this process is uncertain. Three primary methods for incorporating users into technology design have been popular in engineering sciences: user centered design, multiple criteria decision analysis, and appropriate technologies. International aid organizations have also popularized the concept of ‘participation’ in interventions but the concept is vague, open for interpretation, and has been criticized for its continued dependence on hierarchical, expert-driven technology interventions. Participatory action research offers an more distributive model for participation within research studies and, for this reason, we also consider participatory action research as a method that engineers can use for incorporating users into innovation and intervention processes. Through a comprehensive search of literature on sanitation technologies, this thesis examines how engineering literature on sanitation technologies includes users into the design process. Through a network analysis using a novel MATLAB script, which we call Synapse, to sort literature derived from the Scopus database, this project shows the connections and gaps in the sanitation literature and points to significant opportunities for future multidisciplinary work incorporating end users into processes of sanitation technology innovation.
author: Carrera, Jennifer
language: en
keywords: Sanitation, Participation, Engineers, Developing World, Poverty, Multidisciplinarity, Sustainability
date published: 2014-05-30T17:06:46Z
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:25:40Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/49728