From the desk to the field: Co-designing a retort with Zimbabwean artisanal miners versus literature-based approaches

Mercury use in artisanal gold mining poses serious health risks to miners and communities. While technologies such as retorts—devices that capture mercury fumes during gold processing—offer health and financial benefits, they are rarely adopted. One reason is that many retorts are designed without considering miners’ specific practices and constraints, making them expensive, difficult to maintain, or incompatible with local methods. In this study, we co-designed a prototype retort with miners in Zimbabwe and compared it to concepts developed solely from the literature. While prior studies provided useful starting points, they failed to capture certain critical user needs. For example, the use of nitric acid during heating was not mentioned in any of the literature reviewed, despite miners stating that they will not use a retort incompatible with nitric acid. These findings highlight the limitations of designing technologies based only on secondary sources. We argue that technical designs must be grounded in direct user engagement, especially when introducing tools that respondents have no prior experience using. Testing and refining prototypes with users proved essential for revealing unanticipated needs and improving design acceptance. This study emphasises the importance of participatory approaches in developing appropriate, effective technologies in artisanal mining communities.