Beyond cliche in activist design

To get a view of the landscape, putting people first isn't a bad place to start. Its focus: user-centered design. This review of a new book on humanitarian aid gives a sense of their sensibility:

While written about developmental economics, poverty, foreign aid and the grand plans designed to save the poor from themselves, Easterly proposes an alternate approach based on the principles of the user centered approach to design of systems and solutions. Do exploratory research, understand the needs of the users, observe them and the systems they already have in place for addressing the issue or existing grassroots solutions [jugaad or bottom up innovation], use these as prototypes for the design of replicable successful programs, cross pollinate ideas that work across different regions or countries, adapt programs and plans to local culture and social customs - basically the user centered approach to the implementation of aid programs.

That's the approach I pressed for years in Russian nonprofit legal reform, to no avail, alas. It's great to see user-centered system design emerging as the new standard.