Editorial

Abstract

The perennial desire to drive home the imperative of design for social good is reinforced by the first article in this edition of the journal. In the article The VHEMBE filter: a product for rural South Africa, authors Angus Campbell and Martin Bolton document a South African design project that focused on an intervention aimed at social upliftment and the impact the outcome could offer a very large segment of society through improved water quality. The article illustrates how a user-centred approach was employed to improve an existing product, the Filtron water filter, to ensure that it was better suited to users living in rural settings. The development of the resulting design, named the Vhembe water filter, formed part of a larger collaborative research project that aimed to investigate whether an intervention that improves water quality would measurably improve the health of people using the intervention. Research data was based on field work conducted in approximately 25 rural villages in the Vhembe district of the Limpopo Province, South Africa.