*Image credited below
Nathan Shedroff’s lecture titled Sustainable Innovation begins by posing the audience three questions: what’s a more sustainable world look like? what’s a more meaningful world look like? and what’s a post-consumer world look like? He provides Cuba, India, Brazil, Build-A-Bear and even Star Trek as potential examples of such places that are sustainable, least consumerist, and very meaningful (to some). However, all these places are incomplete because even though they rank high on the questions raised above they have bigger problems such as poverty and hunger to deal with so we can’t really adopt their system. While others like Star Trek are just not viable options. Thus, he states that we don’t have answers to these questions but we need answers, and the answers need to come from designers!
With the framework set and the seeds implanted, Shedroff throughout his lecture tries to provide us, the audience of designers, with tools and tips with which to create a “more sustainable design” in the hopes of better understanding the questions posed above, and thus getting us a step closer to answering them.
He states that to understand the questions, we need to understand other sectors of our society such as the business and sustainability sectors. We have to know a little bit about economics, finance, ecology etc. so that when do come up with sustainable solutions we are able to implement them universally in all the different sectors of society. Shedroff calls this type of approach system thinking. Thinking in systems, according to Shedroff, is not limited to sectors it also encompasses multidisciplinary teamwork or diversifying our thinking group, thinking about and engaging with our clients and customers, focusing on the experience and benefit not the product etc. Basically, not getting stuck on one aspect or one object but rather thinking about everything that surrounds that thing and involving the system or systems that surround that one aspect into our solution. Finally, he ends by giving us some very important tips such as: design for use, dematerialize, focusing on efficiency (less is more) and last but not the least, create meaning in our designs.
So Shedroff was incorrect when he stated that designers hold the answer to the questions mentioned above because like he says all systems related to an idea need to be thought about before a solution is produced. Thus, all systems associated with these questions need to contribute to the answer(s). Business, Manufacturing, Environment, Design etc. all hold part of the answer to these questions. So as designers the pressure is off a little, but in another way it is back on. For if we are to create more meanigfu and sustainable designs, we need to be "bilingual" in not only our own design world but also in the financial, economic, agricultural etc. etc. worlds.
Image courtesy of http://www.nathan.com/thoughts/RethinkingConsumption.pdf
http://www.nathan.com/thoughts/RethinkingConsumption.pdf
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