I have been doing user experience design for the Web and software for many years now, but until recently have not had the opportunity to design physical products, so "sustainable design" is a new thought on my mental table. I'm currently enjoying its exotic flavors, although I'm not sure what much of it is. : ) So apologies for any ignorance or obviousness displayed below. On Thu, 1 May 2008 14:06:57, Boston IxDA <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Thank you Dan. Before I go though your blog and paper I wanted to say > the crux of my pessimism stems from my viewpoint that consumer desires > rarely align with the greater good. We are still very much in the > 'culture of the self'.
I'd agree with you there, erm, Boston. Most of our consumption is mindless. Most of *my* consumption was mindless, until I started thinking about it. I'm not sure people are ready to do that... and I'm absolutely sure our economy is not set up to do that. How I've managed my own is to think about my needs and define parameters for them. I'll admit to being an Apple fanboy. But I don't own an iPhone. And although I nearly salivate every time someone whips one out, I will not buy one until my criteria are met: It must have 3G, 32GB of storage, and support stereo Bluetooth. At that point, the device will meet not only my immediate needs, but my *needs for the forseeable future.* If I buy one now, I know I will want to get rid of it and buy a new one when these new features are added. I've thought of other features that may be added in the future, but I really don't care about those. So if, e.g., GPS is added after I buy my iPhone, I won't care. Obviously, I've spent far too much time thinking about this, and as an IxD I'm hyper-aware of how I (and others) use technology. I think it will be *incredibly* difficult to get the majority of humanity to adopt a similar attitude. Most people just don't care that much. And on top of that, our economy depends on mindless consumption. If everyone did what I do, a lot less stuff would get bought and our economy would collapse. One of the ideas in the article about Nokia's thinking that Dave posted contains an idea I think could help us alter this, the idea of the device that is constantly upgradeable. I don't know the degree to which Nokia has thought about this, but if we bought various "boxes" for different purposes and "subscribed" to services that would deliver functionality, we could still get the thrill of the new without having to throw something out. Yes, stuff breaks and processors get faster, but as IxDs, I think we can do a lot to design these services... feature/software upgrade paths, the ability to swap out or upgrade components, change batteries, etc. I think this is where we can do the most good. I struggle to think of opportunities where conscientious design > avoids breaking ease of use, they make awkward bedfellows. Not to > say it cant work, just hard for me to see how every socially > responsible designer can apply behavior conditioning as a design > methodology without creating in products that appear to Nanny the > user. Nagware is bad. Flat out. So that's where we come in... how can we *make it easy* to do the right thing? Like recycling. It wasn't very popular when we had to separate different kinds of plastics, tin, aluminum, etc. But now, most services allow us to put like materials together (plastic, metal, paper) and *they* are the ones who sort it. This has made recycling almost effortless and as a consequence it has taken off. With what I've described above, my elaboration on Nokia's idea, that's another opportunity. There's no nagware in that. If anything, it's a benefit for the consumer. Instead of having to pay $200 for a new phone, they can pay $50 to get a new processor installed or upgrade the memory. Of course, if it's hard to do these things, they won't happen. If *we* make it easy, they will. - Fred ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
