Principle 1: A system is more than the sum of its parts.
Her interactive community message boards plus#
I’ve given it plenty of thought in the week since I’ve left Austin, so here are my seven principles, plus a start at seven action items for anyone is looking for a way to reconsider the sustainability challenge. I outlined seven principles for systems design, but as was pointed out to me several times after my talk, interactive designers still wanted to know: What could they do today? Where should they start? One well-meaning designer asked: “Can’t we just re-Tweet something?” While making a list of sustainability to-dos seems antithetical to the message of real systems thinking, I realized that offering real-world applications was the second, crucial part of my message.
My answer for this audience was to think about sustainability as systems design, something any interaction designer is totally comfortable with–it’s in their DNA. And they’ve grown comfortable in this passive position despite the fact that their community is comprised of the developers and designers who create the products, services, and strategies that shape our global culture. And what I did in that talk was call out the fact that the interactive community has been acting as benchwarmers, sitting on the sidelines in the sustainability movement. I was there, it was indeed that ugly.įortunately the talk I gave was well-received (you can see some of it here). The warning was raw: there had been a mutiny that morning during a panel, people constantly recalled the infamous 2008 Zuckerberg interview, and of course, the Umair-Ev interview the day after my presentation will go down in history. The crew who picked me up at the airport cautioned me that the “South-by” audience ruled, and that the speakers served at the pleasure of a Twitter-equipped crowd who could ruin you (4evah!) within five minutes. It was my first time at the event, and all of the rumors, innuendos, myths, and warnings rang true. Last week I gave one of the keynote presentations at the 10-day film-interactive-music spectacle in Austin: SXSW. Even as a few hundred thousand people rallied around Designers Accord, extending the movement to somewhat of a global phenomenon, “sustainability” in many ways has still felt out of sync with the incredible potential of design, with the reason we all do what we do every day. But the dialogue at that time appeared to center on adaptation rather than change checklists rather than experimentation. Of course there’s great progress to be made by focusing on these specifics–everybody loves the reluctant-hero story of Method, and yes, the improved practices undertaken by Walmart around packaging, composting, and supply chain will continue to have major positive impact. Many designers found the topic too tactical, too focused on conscious consumption and sacrifice instead of the lingua franca of design: empowerment, status, beauty. But while the movement matured, the tone of this conversation had a reverse effect in the design community. Questions like “What’s your end-of-life scenario?” became trendy corporate pick-up lines, provoking our clients into thinking differently about waste (thank you, Bill McDonough).
Industry conversations were punctuated with comments around recycling and material selection. At that time, major magazines like Time and Vanity Fair were declaring “eco-wars,” reveling in “eco-nakedness,” and celebrating Indiana Jones-Athena hybrid “eco-pin-ups.” The sustainability conversation has evolved radically since I started the Designers Accord two and a half years ago.
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