7 Rules of Low Cost Design

I came across this article that summarizes Amy Smith’s philosophy of design for low cost solutions

Here are her 7 key points. You can read the entire article on Popular Mechanics.

1. Try living for a week on $2 a day.
2. Listen to the right people.
3. Do the hard work needed to find a simple solution.
4. Create “transparent” technologies
5. Make it inexpensive.
6. If you want to make something 10 times cheaper, remove 90 percent of the material
7. Provide skills, not just finished technologies.

Some of Amy’s inventions and designs are also described with diagrams in another article Small, Low-Tech Inventions for Big, World-Changing Problems on their website. Amy is an editorial advisor for Popular Mechanics.