Poke-Oke is a Japanese systems-design concept for fool-proofing. It is particularly prevalent in automated manufacturing systems as a way to eliminate the risk of human or technical error. This involves the anticipation of possible errors and the programing of redundancies and fail-safes to eliminate the possibility of mistake.

Our interest in Poke-Oke as a design technique for global development goes further. For solutions to function successfully in target areas of development, we must design our solutions to function effectively across the range of environmental conditions they will encounter, such as the extremes of hot and cold, less-paved and more-rugged transportation infrastructure, lower serviceability, significant remoteness, and uncertain availability of resources like electricity and water. Even more sweeping is the range of cultural, linguistic, and educational factors our solutions will encounter. A user’s education level, familiarity with symbols and colors, and the associated cultural relevancies of design all affect the degree to which the tool or strategy is adopted and properly used.

There is a further responsibility incumbent upon the designer, particularly in situations of international technology transfer, of use appropriation. It is critical to understand and design relative to the consequences of error, misuse, and potential dual-use of the product in the field. The efficiencies of productive dual use and the dangerous repercussions of destructive dual use are all factors in designing a product that both operates and functions without mistake.

Poke-Oke is the most challenging aspect of designing for global development. It forces us to expand the concept of functionality, placing emphasis on inclusion, empathy, localization, resourcefulness, durability, and field testing. Making error and misuse impossible through design forces us to model environmental and behavioral patterns, identify potential obstacles and failure points, measure retaskability, and make forecasts about correlated determinants affecting our solution.

Our collaborative approach and cross-sector design teams with in-country, on-the-ground experience is invaluable. By helping us assess our solutions from all perspectives, we improve our empathy quotient and design for greater relevancy.

The design itself must simplify the complexity and intelligence of its formation, without becoming fatally simplistic. It must be determinative of its appropriate use, anticipative and preventative of its mistaken use, without sacrificing functionality. The solution must reduce its reliance on the user, its environment, and external resources without added cost or complication. And it must not only function, it must endure, optimizing durability, value, and sustainability.

And ultimately, Poke-Oke for global development considerably increases the importance of prototyping. The cost of commercialization and urgency of the causes in which we work require us to get as close to perfection as possible. Design and engineering based on postulation and apriorism do not go far enough. We are heavily invested in rapid prototype development, in-country field testing, and extensive piloting in order to refine our work’s ability to make mistake-making impossible with deductions and data from actual experiences and testing.