Time to act

"The sustainability challenge is a design issue", says John Thackara in his new book In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World.

A few years ago we hoped that digital commmunication networks would lead to a lighter economy and a cleaner environment. But that has not happened. Global temperatures are rising faster than ever before recorded, bringing increased instability to weather systems across the world.

I got a concrete reminder of this when I couldn't get home today in the storm. The wind was blowing so hard I could barely stay on my bike. Right in front of our house a big old linden tree had fallen across Hämeentie, one of the busiest streets in Helsinki. The road was full of police cars and fire trucks.

This year there have been over 40 tornadoes reported in Finland. A few weekends ago one tore through a green and wrecked havoc on a ladies' golf tournament, injuring 9 people. Earlier this summer on visiting my parents in Eastern Finland, we saw an island on the lake that had been flattened by another twister. Not to mention the one in Barcelona.

Now that recovering from natural catastrophes has become one of the most significant causes of countries' budget deficits, sustainability is becoming a real issue in politics. As if we didn't see it coming. The prognostics of the consequences of an imminent and radical climate change have been around for decades, and even the Pentagon agrees they're pretty dire.

What can we do? John summarizes the main principles of sustainability of The Natural Step (TNS) and other holistic sustainability frameworks:
- minimize the waste of matter and energy
- reduce the movement and distribution of goods
- use more people and less matter.

I get this means:
- stop producing crap
- favor locally produced
- invest in quality products that last
- buy second hand
- reuse materials
- reject non-renewable energy sources.

Designers could start by reading John's book.

Comments

[heidi]

For me one eyes-opening point was Thackara's suggestion that we should turn from thinking about projects into designing services. As I understand it, designers would then stop from doing projects, leaving customer to live with it. One cannot design service without noting that we all have to live with it afterwards. Probably a minor point but for me it revealead the fundamental difference between project and service.

[sl]

That tree actually didn't fall over afaik, a branch fell off it and injured a man and thus the fire department cut the tree down.

[Veli Ville]

I haven't read Thackara's book, but it can be seen that there is definitely a need for a wider perspective on products. And service is just the beginning.

Traditionally, I think, the situation is this:

1. User uses a product.
2. Community exploits a service.
3. Society builds itself on an infrastructure.

And let's call the whole stack a culture. :)

As the definitions were made pretty much on the fly, they probably can't take roughing up. But the layers are converging. Let's take second hand design, or crafts, for an example: they exceed the level of product to include values that are cultural. A pair of hand-knit mittens is a cultural artefact first and product only second.

And let's fit software design into the whole mess: what are its impacts on culture and where is this taught to every innocent, future software engineer / designer?

[Ulla-Maaria]

Good points!! A 'product' certainly represents the traditional understaning of our system, in which a product is the output of production. A 'cultural artefact' or a 'meaningful object' on the other hand is associated with the system of consumption/ use.
Service development definitively requires knowledge of the latter, but where is such knowledge available? As Veli Ville suggests, not in the institutions where developers are educated.

[Luistxo Fernandez]

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