• Journal of Appropriate Technology
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.28-36
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• 2020

Sustainable appropriate technology requires user-centered design with consideration of the political, cultural and environmental aspects of the area. However, in the preparation of appropriate technology, there is a limit to the prior grasp of the user's intention and experience leading to the actual behavior of the user after the dissemination. As a result, appropriate technologies are often inconvenient for practical use or used for other purposes, contrary to the designer's intention. This study analyzes the case of appropriate technology with an analysis framework that reflects Maier's affordance theory, and proposes a design solution that can overcome the limitations of existing design. Affordance theory is the theory of factors that cause the user to identify and use features through interpretation based on prior knowledge and experience about things. The analysis cases in this study are the interviews with the designers, management education materials, and manager interviews for water purification systems at three of six schools in Binh Dinh Province, Vietnam, from August 2015 to January 2018. The case was attempted to be improved by periodic installation, maintenance, and inspection, but similar problems continued to occur. First, the facility inspections and manager interviews are compared with manager training materials distributed at the time of installation to find inconsistencies. Next, we analyze the designer's intended affordance and the affordances that actually influenced the management behavior. And then, we propose design solutions based on commonly found problems and affordances. This study suggests that it is necessary to apply the design considering the user's behavior before distributing the appropriate technology, and this study will be precedent in the process of finding the improvement through the analysis framework based on the affordance.