helpmefixit - Poster and Demo

Working on the feedback from last session, here's a new poster we've come up with (right-click and select Open link on a new tab to view in original size):

Also, please visit the following link for a demo: http://marvl.in/1jbe3j

Sustainability in design, sustainability through design

by Eduardo Mercer, Katya Ostamatiy and Jinesh Parekh

Solene le Goff and Christophe Gouache built a solar powered radio fully made of reforestation oak, a sturdy material that's fully renewable. 80% of the materials used are natural and most of the rest is recyclable. It's a great example of sustainability in design, though the use of a more renewable wood like bamboo would be more desireable.

Steve Haslip designed a clothing packaging system called HangerPak. It's made of recycled and recyclable paper, but instead of simply discarding it back into recycling, you can actually disassemble and re-assemble it in the form of a clothes hanger. It's a great example of both sustainability in and through design (and earned him a D&AD Student Award in 2007).

Last, but not least, Portland, OR has replaced all their downtown trash cans with new pairs of can, one for regular non-recyclable trash and another with two divisions - the upper part is for paper and the lower part for plastic and aluminum packaging. The recyclable garbage can has a folded newspaper-shaped slit for the paper division, inviting people to discard their reading materials there and the lower part has circular holes to admit cans and bottles through. Also, these cans have no locks, allowing poor citizens who live off foraging recyclables to access the paper and/or container divisions. This shaping and being shaped by sustainable behaviors are great examples of sustainability through design.

Sustainable Interaction Design - Rethink, Phonebloks, Ara and Beyond

Rethink was an example scenario of sustainable phone presented by Jain & Wullert in 2002. It was a phone built with recycled and recyclable materials, using modular components to promote reuse and longevity of use and it used modular software to achieve the same goals. Limited by the physical longevity of  the components, it would hardly be able to achieve heirloom status, but not impossibly so. It also aimed to replace many different devices, which in a sense was looking for wholesome use and made the user a source of energy, replacing unsustainable use (burning of fossil fuel as an energy source) for sustainable use. It's interesting to note that many of the software (and some of the hardware) characteristics described by Jain & Wullert are present in Android smartphones, such as being sufficiently integrated, programmable and convenient that they eliminate several other devices, possessing software radios for adaptability to new environments and technology advancement and an open, standard API so that new applications can be downloaded on demand, extending its function as well as life. The availability of these characteristics vary from one phone to the other, but are all present in the platform as a whole.

Phonebloks was a concept conceived by Dutch designer Dave Hakkens as his graduation thesis for the Design Academy Eindhoven. It extends on the idea of modular components presented in the Rethink scenario by describing how to achieve modularity: a base provides mechanical and communication infrastructure for modules responsible for processing, data and energy storage, sensor arrays and user interface hardware. It addresses most of the same questions of SID Rethink does and extends on some of them. Motorola based its Project Ara on Phonebloks and, through acquisition, Ara ended up under Google. Ironically enough, a major stumbling block for Project Ara is Android itself. Although Android covers many aspects of reusable software, Google says adapting Android to a modular hardware platform is one of the main challenges of building Ara right now (probably because most members of the Open Handset Alliance are manufacturers and providers who rely on planned obsolescence for sales).

Sustainability and HCI - Concept Map