What makes a cookstove usable? Trials of a usability testing protocol in Uganda, Guatemala, and the United States

Abstract

Improved cookstoves, which are designed to address the health and environmental damage caused by inefficient biomass cooking and heating, are generally engineered to prioritize technical emissions and efficiency improvements over practical user cooking needs. As a result, improved stoves are often only used alongside traditional technologies, or are rejected by cooks entirely, and may fall short in efforts to address health and environmental problems even if they are technically capable of doing so. A testing protocol for cookstove usability was developed by the authors to help stove designers and implementers evaluate user needs for a given stove technology and cooking culture, and balance them with technical design criteria more effectively. The protocol is based on established usability practices and includes ethnographic testing methods to increase validity in cross-cultural testing applications. This paper discusses evaluative trials of the protocol in 10 rural and urban households and 2 institutional kitchens near Lira, Uganda, 4 rural households in Antigua, Guatemala, and 11 stove designs in a US laboratory, as well as preliminary results from a usability study on 20 rural households near Gulu, Uganda by an international NGO. These trials, along with feedback from test administrators in Uganda and Guatemala, demonstrated that the protocol is a viable tool for increasing the understanding of cookstove usability, though more work is needed to improve its validity and connect the results to effective stove design and selection decisions, as well as health and environmental impact. As a result of this research, various improvements were made to the protocol, and opportunities for further validation, expansion, and improvement were identified. In addition, methods used by the protocol elicited related data from participants regarding their attitudes towards improved cookstoves and the relative importance of reducing air pollution and fuel use in the larger context of their lives. Finally, this research highlights the value of an interdisciplinary approach, in this case based in anthropology and engineering, to increase the accessibility of user input in international development more broadly.