Incorporating global and local customer needs into early stages of improved cookstove design

Improved cookstoves, despite their many potential benefits in the developing world, have been adopted at surprisingly low rates. To improve adoption rates, many researchers have emphasised the importance of focusing on user needs during design. Unfortunately, current improved cookstove design methodologies primarily focus on later, more technically detailed stages of development, and don't provide sufficient details during earlier stages. This paper presents an early stage design methodology that has been adapted to the unique challenges of improved cookstove design. It highlights the most common pitfalls that are encountered during each stage of the design process and provides recommendations to overcome them. It also identifies the user needs that are both common to nearly all households, and needs that are unique to only a subset of users. This paper suggests that by following this methodology engineers are less reliant on and susceptible to their preconceived notions of what cookstove users need.