What's a more sustainable world look like?
What’s a more meaningful world look like?
What’s a post-consumer world look like?
We don’t know. We need to know. According to Nathan Shedroff, that is what design is for (or should be for).
Nathan Shedroff is the author of Design is the Problem: The Future of Design Must be Sustainable, and also a man whose lecture I had the pleasure of sitting in on today. We’ve all heard the saying, “if you aren’t part of the solution you are part of the problem.” In this sense, design IS the problem. And the problem is the lack of sustainable design. Design has a huge impact on the produced world and designers need to learn how to harness this power in order to create a solution for our flawed world of consumerism instead of adding to it.
There is no such thing as sustainable design. All good things must come to an end eventually. There is, however, such thing as more sustainable design. In order to get to this state of more sustainable design a few things must happen, the most important being the necessity of designing for use. “Useful” is a word that most of us believe goes hand in hand with the word “design.” It should. The problem is when this is not the case. Shedroff gave the example of a particular Nokia cell phone that was designed with a circular keypad (similar to a rotary phone). Not only is there no use for a circular keypad over a rectangular keypad, but the design actually proved to be downright confusing and ineffective. Thousands of people returned the phones within the next few days, and eventually they were all removed from the stores (to go sit in a landfill most likely).
It is imperative that designers don’t fall into the same trap that Nokia did and don't design things today that make tomorrow worse. If they heed the advice in Shedroff’s book (which includes looking to the questions seen above) it is possible for design to not only not be the problem, but be the solution.
Shedroff’s lecture, Sustainable Innovation, communicates effectively for several reasons. Shedroff is very funny and personable. He includes humor and personal experiences into his lecture, thus making it enjoyable to listen to him speak. However, the most effective way that Shedroff communicates with the audience is when he urges us to step away from the idea of “going green.” Shedroff believes that design is made up of three domains: ecological, social, and financial. “Going green” focuses on the ecological domain, however, entirely ignores the other two domains. Furthermore, the idea of something being “green” has a very specific connotation for most people. For many, this connotation consists of images of protesting hippies that have chained themselves to trees (and as Shedroff said himself, “dirty feet”). Although “going green” has had some success stories, it unfortunately conveys this image that very few people can relate to on a personal level. It leaves people thinking that if they aren’t one of those hippies then they clearly can’t be part of the solution and should just stop trying all together. It is almost more discouraging than encouraging. Following his own advice, Shedroff steps away from the idea of “going green” in his lecture and instead speaks directly to us—the designers of tomorrow. Shedroff places the well being of tomorrow in our hands. This feeling of responsibility makes each of us more likely to do our part in making our world more sustainable.
