designswarm thoughts

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Peak oil

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Things are starting to feel awkward.

Something that’s starting to tick me off in the world of information visualisation goes back to why people found it interesting to begin with. When we didn’t know any better, we’d leave information visualisation to Powerpoint and Excel and only insiders and people who’d been to the right schools were able to make any sense of it. The meaning of the information was hidden behind a layer of understanding the average person lacked.

In an age of obsession with visually displaying information (thanks Mr Tufte) that is not directly accessible to us (such as how much carbon is being emitted, information is more accessible to the masses of course, but I’m wondering if that’s all there is to it. “Oh, wow, thats all lot!” is pretty much where information visualisation leaves me at the moment or “Oh, nice!”

We are at a pivital moment where we are collectively starting to suffer from doom’s-day fatigue and our ability to see into the future and observe the consequences of our everyday actions is trumped by these constant visualisations of the depressing “now”.
Part of being a responsible adult is supposed to be about taking responsability for our actions and understand that they have consequences is it not? Why can’t our technologies help us with that? I would like to see us move towards a world full of little everyday objects that give me a glimpse into the future if I keep doing things the way I do, total yearly bills based on my current usage, predictions about how much I’ll have to spend on food and how much weight I’ll gain if I keep at the current pace. It’s not prescriptive and I don’t think it’ll be depressing. It’s just making information I need to lead a sustainable life, more easily accessible and more empowering than simple clever reporting.

I guess that used to be on the next slide.

This really depresses me. I think issues of sustainability are quickly going to have to move beyond the Treehugger attitude that “every little counts”, because our way of life and the economics attached to it is literally killing people as we speak.

It really isn’t going to cut it to act as if we weren’t the ones dramatically affecting the planet and I don’t think that pointing to China is helpful at all at the moment. And I don’t think the changes we need will come from grass-root movements either sadly. As Bruce Sterling highlighted, 3 years ago,we aren’t acting quickly enough to have the type of impact we need. Governments and corporations will have to make the biggest and most important steps.

In Amélie Nothomb’s book, Peplum, set in the year 2580, the main character learns that under the weight of guilt and responsibility that developing countries posed to the western world, the southern hemisphere was eradicated entirely. How crazy does that sound at the moment?

I don’t want to look like I’m crying wolf here, but certainly you can’t ignore the signs.

From why design conferences should be better to how we should design ouselves out of consumer culture ending with Stark himself saying it’s all a bit shit really, things don’t sound too good for product design at the moment.

There’s clearly something wrong with the delivery of a service if it makes me think “oh what a waste”. This reflects poorly on the company, it’s brand and it’s supposed values, especially when I’m already aware I’m being unsistainable by using the service.

1st example:
Last week during a doze on the Eurostar a member of staff woke me up (!!!) by pushing a leaflet on me that described what their specials were at the restaurant car. I always valued the Eurostar experience as one of the best, especially their ability to generally leave me alone to just enjoy the ride. This has definitely changed things as not only are they wasting a lot of paper for trivial advertising but they actually encourage rude behavior from their staff.
2nd example:
Today on the Gatwick express, I bought a bottle of water, only to have a napkin given to me with it. Did I look like I could spill it all over the place? I realised it was made in the Netherlands for Starbucks and had the clever and oh so ironic “less napkins, more plants, more planet” printed on it. As you’re being handed a napkin so uselessly, this tagline really is reduced to hypocritical corporate advertising.

For a number of reasons, I was looking into cutting my Brussels visit short by a few days. Looked up on my 2 non-favorite super cheap airlines only to find that a flight from Brussels to London does not exist.

That’s the first time a travel resctriction made me think “thank god!”. So I’ll just stay put and enjoy the mussels instead of wasting 10 times my weight in carbon.

“Guiltless consumption”

via Past & Vinegar
Isn’t that a contradiction in terms though when it comes to thinking about future services and solutions? It’s like an obese person have vegetables 10 times a day instead of slowing down and just having 3 meals. It’s guiltless but it’s still consumption.

I really believe that innovative solutions that will create a big impact are the ones that will get us to consume less, not just differently.

I’m spending a lot of time around Elephant & Castle (no its not a virtual game but rather a southern and definitely dodgy neighborhood of London) and going to get my lunch at the local Tesco. The other day, as I waited for someone at the entrance, an EDF sales person approached me to sell me their electricity scheme. I asked him about any green options and he looked at me blankly. He suddenly turned around and reached out for a corporate brochure, flipped through it and pointed to an article on their environmental goals. This only described that they intend to build a fund to do research on alternative energy sources… nowhere good enough clearly and I said that I was interested in a sustainable source of electricity, to which he replied “well at least I’m honest”.

Oddly enough EDF actually own and supply British Gas, my current provider. So when they talk of green-sourced electricity you really have to ask yourself who’s telling the truth.

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So I am no longer a “St-Pancreas virgin” as a fellow traveller in the train referred to it, and it’s frankly really great. It took me a little over 2 hours (or about 40 rows of knitting since that’s what’s making transportation such a breeze these days) to get to Bruxelles and 1h50 minutes to come back! I can’t even get out of London in a car in half that time!

The problem of course with super efficient services everything else starts to pale in comparison and your expectations get skewed.

I was supposed to get to Antwerp for lunchtime on Friday and since it took me 2 hours to cross the Channel and get into Belgium, I figured going to the Netherlands was going to be a breeze… what an idiot!
Turns out it takes about 3 hours both ways and would have cost me about half of the price of my Eurostar ticket. Obviously this was unacceptable and totally unfeasible (It would have meant I would have had to be in Antwerp for a little over 2 hours before turning back to be able to catch my train home), so I had to cancel…

Would I have planned better without the Eurostar? Probably. But I would have ended up taking the less sustainable solution of grabbing a flight back to London… Maybe this is something services like Dopplr can start to address more clearly: managing travel expectations in a world where the diversity in service delivery forces users to make less sustainable decisions.

“You can fly tomorrow and meet Y, and if you’re in town B suggests you go have coffee at Tree & Leaf”.

Thanks to Lina from fo.am for a great stay in Bruxelles.

There are a million entertaining things about living in London and this is definitely one of them. With all the press about offsetting your travels, it’s interesting to see the term used in a completely unrelated context (the mortgage industry apparently has always used this term to define payments made) and questions perhaps its power to get people to act or relate to the issue of global warming.

This is all getting a bit surreal.

Sustainability, product-based values, product design, desire, China, US, values, and a partridge in a pear tree…

I’m catching up on a week of madness and found7 steps to a green product and Bruce Sterling’s Anatomy of a spime diagram that Matt Jones commented on.

Funnily enough both speak about similar things. The Metropolis article highlights a methodology when designing a product: the right materials, clean and green production, etc. Bruce’s diagram highlights technologies used for a “spime”: tracking, fabbing, etc…

Both of these relate to technologies and production techniques. Neither of them includes the user!

In an age of the ubiquitous “user-centered design”, it seems a mistake to put a user’s behavior aside especially when talking about sustainability. Most of the sustainability issues we will have to deal with relate directly to our behavior and our choices: the number of places we fly to, the %age of household waste we recycle, where we shop at etc…

None of these issues relate to either of these systems and maybe a next step in the thinking around the Internet of things is the integration of that crucial parameter.

Let me put it this way: even if a chair has been fabbed, tagged and can be easily and instantly replaced by the same model, in this day and age, noone wants to keep the same chair for their entire lives.

Consumerism is a broader behavior that technology alone cannot resolve or change.

via Dopplr Offsetr

Subtlety was never my thing :)

Designers, Visionaries and Other Stories: A collection of sustainable design essays.