Cooperative design in developing countries : case study of a rice grader to sort small brokens in Senegal

To add an additional link to the processing chain for locally grown rice, a Senegalese team designed a rice grader to sort small brokens, using a multidisciplinary and cooperative design approach. The development of the project at successive time steps is described in an innovative way with the help of 'Slices of life'of the project. The technical trajectory of the equipment, through the changes in the design team, shows the team dynamics, the need analysis, the emergence of the technical solutions and the construction of the equipment. An analysis of the design process shows that effective cooperation between the different actors came about as a result of an intermediate design object, termed the 'basic object', the purpose of which was to demonstrate the validity of a basic idea by means of a minimum physical realization. (Resume d'auteur)