There are 6.5 billion people on this planet, 90 percent of whom can't afford basic products and services. Half of them, nearly three billion people, don't have regular access to food, shelter or clean water. Yet whenever we think, or talk, about design, it's invariably about something that's intended to be sold to one of the privileged minority - the richest 10 percent.

That's changing. Designers, like so many other people, have become increasingly concerned about the plight of the needy majority, and many of them are now using their skills to address it.

The Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York is exploring this phenomenon in "Design for the Other 90%," an exhibition opening Friday, and Alice Rawsthorn writes a preview story (cum slideshow) in the International Herald Tribune.