Daily life is full of tasks, chores and small pleasures that constantly engage us with objects. People enjoy some of the activities in their daily life and for them some activities are irritating. Physical efforts required to perform these different activities are significantly different (Sidhu M. et. al, 2005). The household work now a day has become very strenuous and consumes 2700 k.cal to 2800 k.cal. of energy in every day and it can be compared with any type of hard occupation outside the home in terms of energy costs and time utilization. (Grandjean, 1971). In India, improvement of health and hygiene of women and their economic empowerment is a major challenge. This can be met by improving working condition by design intervention in the social developmental initiatives. Almost thirty-five years ago, Victor Papanek (1985) pointed out the designers’
responsibilities with respect to major social and environmental needs. The underprivileged needs attention from the industrial designers. The traditional market- driven approach is based on the idea of relieving people of the many tasks of everyday life. The everyday tasks, that required individual manual effort in the past, are now performed by something (a product) or someone else (a service) (Morelli Nicola, 2007).
Dishwasher could not full fill the expectations of the consumers living in urban India. A mechanized dishwasher may not be the only solution to solve the dishwashing problem. People prefer to get the dishwashing job done by the domestic help, which are mostly maid. Normally, the domestic helps belong to the economically weaker section of the society. They earn their livelihood from the dishwashing service and run their families including providing food and shelter to their children. They want to increase their income
level, want to have better health and hygiene and also want to save time so that they can earn more and spend more time with their families. Facilitating the domestic helps in the dishwashing activity by introduction of equipments and accessories may be a better design management strategy than to sell European designed dishwashers in the Indian market. D Leonard (1998) defines social quality as the ‘measure of citizens’ capability of participating to the social and economic life of their community in conditions that improve both their individual wealth and the conditions of their community.’ In the context of dishwashing, a strategy may be suggested to design a product, targeting the middle and higher income group but the economic benefit goes to the poor and the underprivileged and hence the improvement of their quality of life. For example, if we find a design solution for the dishwashing problem and introduce some range of products to ease the dishwashing activity, it will ease the work of the domestic help. In this case the target customer will be the middle income group or the upper income group, but the social and economic benefit will go to the poor. On being asked to the individual household heads, whether a dishwasher or a cloth washer is a substitute for domestic help, majority of the respondents disagreed. It has been observed that though washing machine has become very popular in the middle class families, it could not eliminate the domestic help. Similarly it is expected that a socially responsible solution to the dishwashing problem will not eliminate the domestic help. Their employment opportunity will not be threatened. As the solution is expected to reduce the time and fatigue caused to the domestic help, therefore their productivity is also expected to increase. Their health and hygiene condition is also expected to improve. Therefore their capability (Sen Amartya, 1999) will also increase.
The study conducted in rural areas by M. Sidhu, R. Bakshi and P. Sandhu of Punjab Agriculture University, Ludhiana, India reveals that most of the women in the rural areas carry out the dishwashing activity in squatting posture (Sidhu M. et al, 2005).
Percentage increase in heart rate after the dishwashing activity is 23.28%. Similarly the percentage increase in respiration frequency is 62.79%, increase in Pulmonary Ventilation rate is 238.29 % and increase in energy expenditure is 62.96%. As the activity becomes more strenuous, energy expenditure of body increases proportionately. It is especially true when heights of work surface are involved and when specific posture need to be followed. In such cases excessive bending of legs and abdominal muscles take place,
68 line. In another study conducted for grip assessment of rural women performing dishwashing activity (Khatoon Jahida et al, 2009) reveals that majority of the rural respondents (60%) adopted bending posture for bringing utensils from kitchen to the cleaning area and 75% of the respondents adopted sitting with bending posture for scrubbing utensils. Maximum deviation in body angle was found to be 52 deg in scrubbing activity. The maximum decrease in grip strength was 25.93 kg for left hand followed by 22.59 kg for right hand and 16.07 kg for both hands after completion of the dishwashing activity. The average heart rate during dishwashing was 116 beats/min, blood pressure of 142/95 mmHg and pulse pressure of 61mmHg was recorded. From the population surveyed, 52.5% respondents adopted sitting with bending posture and 42.5%
adopted squatting with bending posture for rinsing utensils. Only 5 percent adopted standing posture for rinsing utensils. The case of dishwashing was hence selected for this study. A socially responsible design solution to the dishwashing problem may improve the efficiency, health & hygiene and satisfaction level of people and therefore the capability (AmartyaSen) will increase.
Figure 3.1: Dishwashing behaviour in urban area
Figure 3.2: Dishwashing behaviour in rural area