Design for the Poor

This NYT article describes innovative design aimed at creating products that can be bought and used by the world's poor. I've often wondered when people were going to catch on that the poor, although they don't have a lot of money, are actually a huge untapped market for good products. I've also wondered why we constantly try to get the poor to use technology that works for us in our environments but clearly is not appropriate to their environment, rather than jointly coming up with technologies that work in their environments for their purposes. This is a good start.