Design for ethical impact and social responsibility

Dr Ricardo SosaSeminar on Design for

Sustainability

http://www.simtech.a-star.edu.sg/events/seminar-on-design-for-sustainability.aspx

Summary

1. Design transparency

2. Sustainability: technological and human complexity

3. Designing cycles

4. Product attachment

5. Extend lifecycle

6. Design research

7. Survey

Background concepts

• Life-cycle analysis (LCA)

• Cost benefit analysis (CBA)

• Carbon/water footprint

• Kansei Engineering

• Paradox of choice

• The Fifth Discipline

• Cradle to cradle

“Double ignorance: we don’t know the true impacts of our products/services and we don’t realise that we don’t know” Daniel Goleman in Ecological Intelligence

Sustainability

• Definition?• Multi-dimensional• Measurable impacts• Design decisions

The hidden price tag

• Everyday impacts determined by design decisions

• What are the design decisions in your organisation?

• What are the indirect and long-term consequences of these design decisions?

• Genuine questions that lead to fresh perspectives from all stakeholders

Design transparency

• Understand and make visible the (hidden) impacts of your products/services

• The impacts of (even simple) products entail enormous complexity

• The ‘illusions of choice’– Conditioned by the decisions of

others

– Paradoxical discontent by choice

Paper or plastic?

Environment / Economy

http://www.doobybrain.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/paper-or-plastic.jpg

Paper or plastic?

Materials are not the problem

The problem is… the way we source, process, move, use and dispose

http://www.sfenvironment.org/sites/default/files/editor-uploads/zero_waste/pdf/sfe_zw_bag_ban_factsheet.pdf

Design cycles

Sustainable Design Principles

http://c2ccertified.org/innovation_hub/tools_resources/sustainable_design_principles

Organic fashion

NatGeo video: http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/environment/freshwater/cotton-tshirts

Organic fashion

“Organic cotton has very different impacts: 10.6 gallons/lb for rain-fed from Brazil

782 gallons/lb for California organic cotton”

http://www.nrdc.org/living/stuff/choosing-between-organic-and-cotton-tencel.asp

Product attachment

http://www.ijdesign.org/ojs/index.php/IJDesign/article/viewFile/325/205

“Cars are an avatar. Cars are an expansion of yourself: they take your thoughts, your ideas, your emotions, and they multiply it.”

Recycling

Lulls consumers into the illusion that something is done (‘feel good’ story)

Extend lifecycle

www.platform21.nl

Reforestation

Promotes monocrops, requires fertilisers, damages eco-diversity

Hybrid cars

Highest impact of cars: manufacturing. Designing for Eco-driving

Paradoxes

In NYC, a bottle of French wine has a smaller carbon footprint than a wine from Nappa Valley (airplane/truck)

Lamb from New Zealand shipped to Britain has 25% of the carbon footprint

from British lamb (energy, fertilisers)

Dutch roses have 600% greater carbon footprint than roses flown from Kenya

Design research

To bring depth, precision and clarity to sustainable design

To reveal hidden connections between built, natural and social

systems

Challenges are too varied, too subtle and too complicated to be

understood by any single discipline

http://ecodesign.lboro.ac.uk/index.php?section=2

http://www.designersaccord.org/archive/

http://cfsd.org.uk/

http://www.globalecolabelling.net/

http://www.storyofstuff.org/

Trophec video: http://www.trophec.com/howitworks.php#.UVCGrRdTA4f

CreditsIndustrial designer Victor G. Martinez from Northumbria University in the

United Kingdom developed Trophec as part of his PhD project, supervised by Dr. Stuart English, Matteo Conti and Dr. Kevin Hilton. Trophec software was

programmed by Dan Hopper under the supervision of Dr. Garry Elvin.

Survey

4. More necessary:a. Relevant, accurate data b. Tools for decision-making

5. More valuable:a. Disruptive ideasb. Best practices from

successful cases

6. Sustainable design:a. To create radically new

product/service conceptsb. To improve and optimise

current portfolio

1. Main driver for sustainability in SMEs:

a. Legislation complianceb. Market demands

2. Main role of design is:a. Product aestheticsb. Product strategy

3. Main constraints related:a. Technologyb. Budget

Underlined responses selected by majority of participants