Creating equitable solutions with Industrial Design

Cover text:
Using industrial design to shape the future
Cover Summary
Omagano didn’t think that her master’s thesis was going to be turned into a book, but it happened. Now she is on her way to London to further her studies, and perfect her unique craft and perspective.


Stopping crime with design
As a product designer, Omagano is committed to finding solutions for Namibia and the continent thought the use of her knowledge in industrial design.
Omagano Adelina Kankondi is a young woman with an innovative approach to solving some of the societal ills that plague many African countries, like crime. She studied Industrial Design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, gaining a BTech in Product Design, after obtaining a three-year diploma in 3D Design.
In her own words, Omagano describes herself as bubbly, humorous and opinionated character with slightly odd (according to her friends) personality, which she says also, translates into ‘slightly delightful.’
She grew up in Okahao, where after she moved to Oranjemund and ended up in Windhoek with her mother and stepdad and one of her sisters. She went to St. Pauls College in Windhoek and learned there that hard work pays off and says that “being self-sufficient when it comes to studies, helped me a lot in university especially during my first year.”
As a young woman, Omagano shares that she is deeply saddened that in 2016 a girl child must still miss school, because she and her parents cannot afford sanitary towels. “We have free condoms being handed out, but for something that we as females have no control over, we cannot get free sanitary pads handed out at schools?”
My friend Matuka Kayukwa and I have decided to design a range of reusable sanitary pads that we will manufacture here on the continent,” she shared.
She says that she doesn’t recall a single moment that made her take the path that she has in life, and says that she always wanted to design products and change lives and not just make things that looked fancy.
After that Omagano obtained a master’s degree in Design with particular focus on Socially Responsible Design. For her masters research, she looked into the issue of how design could help curb crime, with a paper titled: “Design against Crime: An exploration for opportunities for design: Innovations to reduce crime,” which was published last year in December.
After she finished her master’s degree, Omagano felt that she had not put her best foot forward, and was not happy with the depth to which her research had gone. To her surprise, she got a phone call from a company in Germany called Lap Lampert Academic Publishing, who mentioned that they had read her thesis abstract and thought that more people needed to see her Master’s thesis.
“It was probably the most amazing feeling out there. It was what I have heard people say is a God wink – I was blown away,” she recalled.
Omagano describes the process of actually having the book published as being “smooth and stress free.”
“I loved the research I was doing in my BTech, it was my first time investigating socially responsible design. I was looking at how design assists visually disabled people to have some privacy when using public bathrooms. The time I had for this research was a few months and I felt I wanted to delve deeper into the matter, so I decided to continue investigating socially responsible design” she says.
She also realised, that design could change lives and wanted to be part of bringing about that change, “For my masters, I looked at Design Against Crime and have always been fascinated by why and how people commit crimes and found that there was research being done across the world that I could plug into it.”
She says that during the early days of her Masters’, she struggled with time management because “You feel like you have all the time in the world to get things in order and the work ends up piling up.”
On top of that Omagano says that she had to learn to be assertive when doing interviews and conducting focus groups, because “I can really be shy sometimes,” she shares. “At one time I was spending a lot of time with ex-convicts and they can be intimidating at times. I learnt to be confident in my research as a result of this,” Omagano mentions.
During her time as a Masters student she started working in areas of product development and research. “I worked for the Cape Craft and Design Institute, assisting crafters and students with product development and introducing them to new technologies at the Fablab,” she says.
Omagano was also part of research that stretched across three countries, namely; Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa and which focused on automobiles and what types of automobiles would suit Africans living in different regions of the continent. She said that the research then informed concepts for new automobiles to be sold and produced on the continent and continues laughingly, that she now has knowledge of the random dimensions of car parts.
Although her schedule can sometimes be gruelling, Omagano says that she keeps a healthy work, study and life balance by reflecting on where it is that she can improve on herself and also her work. She says that striking a balance is hard sometimes, because she feels guilty for taking breaks, but says that she fundamentally understands that downtime is necessary for a healthy mind, body and soul.
Right now Omagano runs her recently established business called O.A.K Product Design which she “wants to grow here at home and work throughout southern Africa, by designing and changing lives as a result.”
“I realise in Namibia, that as creatives we have to be advocates for our fields, because not many people think beyond drawing when they think about design,” she observes. Omagano says that she would love to educate people more about the possibilities of design in communities and businesses.
In a few weeks Omagano is heading back to school, but she says this time it is business school. “I will be doing an M.Sc in Business Innovation with Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management at BirkBeck University in London.”
“This is all thanks to the British High Commission, as they have awarded me with a Chevening Scholarship,” she said excitedly. In the next ten years Omagano says that she wants to “be a champion for design in Africa and should be without a doubt, a trailblazer in my field.”
She says besides this, she would also like to be the president of the Council for the Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID), a position that is currently held by her former supervisor Mugendi M’Rithaa.
Omagano finally shares with us that her inspiration for the work that she does has come from many people, with her family playing a key role in the process. She says, “There are so many people that I would love to mention, but the list is endless”.
Keith Vries