IDDS Light

IDDS

The International Development Design Summit (IDDS) is a month-long collaboration that invites participants from different countries to build technologies for communities in the developing world. The participantsʼ days are packed with lectures, technology training workshops and brainstorming meetings in both the classrooms and the workshop. From these sessions, they are required to conceive 18 design proposals that use simple technologies to improve the quality of life for the worldʼs poor. Headquartered at MIT, in 2009 IDDS brought the Summit to the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi. Harald Quintus-Bosz (Cooper Perkins' co-founder and IDDS organizer) developed a method to teach participants aspects of the design and prototyping process, by building a solar-powered light using mechanical and electrical fabrication techniques. The objective of this light was to serve as a teaching tool for those students unaccustomed to the fabrication tools and processes used to synthesize ideas. Dozens of these solar-powered lights were fabricated by the students as a required part of the education process. As it turns out, the project that started as a teaching tool acquired a life of its own. After the Ghana trip, calls from many corners of the world were coming in asking how to get a hold of more of these lights. The light also went on to be finalist in IDSA's 2010 annual design awards.