The growing awareness of the need to create sustainable environments and products which can foster improved quality of life with less impact to the earth reflects a global shift from consuming to caring societies. Sustainable living and work focuses on maintaining and enhancing the quality of living over time, as related to environmental (planet) variables, socio-economic (profit) factors, and individual (people) life styles. This symposium addresses the role of the designer in creating radical shifts in sustainable product use and practices in the work and living environments from the social and environmental perspective. In particular, emphasis will be given to how sustainability and sustainable behavior can be embedded and supported through interaction design within the context of the home and workplace in the short term and durably.
Similar to recent developments in automotive design, sustainable product and service design can offer new commercial opportunities for companies struggling to find the cutting edge in the market. In the late 1980s, quality was a key concept for companies competing with low cost imitations, today sustainability offers a similar cost-benefit potential when projected across the phases of the product life cycle. Product definitions need to re-thinking as we seek more durable and responsible designs that shift our values, as stated by Ehrenfeld, from "having to being". Interaction designers can support this value shift through effective product experience design. Technology holds both positive and negative implications towards a sustainable future. Technology advancements are inescapable, and current products are often too technology focused. Current "smart product," interaction occurs mostly on a product feature level rather than goal or task level. However, technology affords the possibility to design intelligent, context-aware and interconnected products, beyond physical products that can adapt to user behaviors and desires over time. Here is an opportunity for interaction designers to address sustainability and sustainable behavior from a user centered perspective, taking the starting point of users situated within the context of their daily lives while focusing on issues such as usability, pleasure and desirability.
Download the Symposium Description [doc].
Download our 2009-2012 Research Portfolio, Towards Sustainable Well-being [pdf].
Speakers:
David KeysonRamia Maze
Cees Midden
Krithi Ramamritham
Pascal Soboll
Gert Spaargaren
Suggested Reading:
Sustainability by DesignDesign of Everyday Life
Biomimicry
In the Bubble
Related Links:
Base of the Pyramid SymposiumContextmapping Symposium (past)
