Designing transformative development interventions

The Stockholm Environment Institute presents a seven-stage iterative framework for development interventions designed to move beyond the dichotomy of top-down and bottom-up approaches. By integrating service design and behavioural science, the toolkit emphasizes co-definition of problems and rapid prototyping to ensure interventions meet actual user needs. The effectiveness of this approach is illustrated through a case study of mango farmers in Kenya, where the toolkit revealed a misalignment between funder goals (fruit quality) and farmer priorities (fruit quantity).

• The proposed toolkit utilizes a non-linear, iterative seven-stage process to design interventions that require behaviour change in complex settings. These stages are: 1) Problem co-definition, 2) Actor-centred mapping, 3) Experience-based problem diagnosis, 4) Rapid prototyping, 5) Intervention design, 6) Intervention testing (preferably via controlled field trials), and 7) Scaling up.
• The framework aims to resolve the tension between top-down approaches, which are often seen as "rigid and overly bureaucratic", and bottom-up approaches, which can suffer from representation bias and data management difficulties.
• Application of the toolkit in Kenya with smallholder mango farmers in Tana River County and Meru County demonstrated that low technology uptake was caused by a mismatch in objectives: funders focused on increasing fruit quality, whereas farmers prioritized increasing the quantity of fruits produced.
• The toolkit offers a more rapid design cycle than typical monitoring and evaluation cycles; stages one through five can generally be completed in less than one month of fieldwork using a team of 5 to 10 lead researchers and a similar number of local assistants.

APA

Lambe, F., & Osborne, M. (2019). Designing transformative development interventions. Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/1900923a-gill-osborne-behaviour-and-choice-brief-1904a-web-1.pdf

Chicago

Lambe, Fiona, and Matthew Osborne. Designing transformative development interventions. Stockholm Environment Institute, 2019. https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/1900923a-gill-osborne-behaviour-and-choice-brief-1904a-web-1.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Lambe |first1=Fiona |last2=Osborne |first2=Matthew |title=Designing transformative development interventions |publisher=Stockholm Environment Institute |date=September 2019 |url=https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/1900923a-gill-osborne-behaviour-and-choice-brief-1904a-web-1.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{lambe2019designing, author = {Lambe, Fiona and Osborne, Matthew}, title = {{Designing transformative development interventions}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2019}, month = sep, url = {https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/1900923a-gill-osborne-behaviour-and-choice-brief-1904a-web-1.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }