We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
- Einstein

I’ve spent the past few weeks collecting thoughts on the Valerie Casey keynote at SXSW, but it got too complicated. So instead, here’s a bunch of stuff I found insightful or inspiring in the process (followed by some thoughts on how to move forward)…

In Colonizing Sustainability, David Stairs shares some of his thoughts on Designers Accord and others. There are also notable comments by John Thackara and Eric Benson.

The idea of “System Design” makes me think of the discourse around “Design Thinking” in the fact that design is now so broad it can mean basically anything. On a related tangent, Rick Poynor’s thoughts on Bruce Mau struck me on the difference between designers and design thinkers and the why there’s some unease with the latter.

But a lot of the truly influential ideas I find come from non-designers…
• Built to Trash: Is ‘heirloom design’ the cure for consumption?
• ‘The Road From Ruin’: Are We Naive Idiots For Thinking Business Can Be Anything But Greedy?
• Jacqueline Novogratz: Pioneer of “market-based” philanthropy
• Tim Kasser: Professor and Chair of Psychology (focus: materialism)
• Michael Pollan, food guru
• Jeffrey Hollender on The Responsibility Revolution, CSR 2.0, and Blowing Your Lawyer’s Mind
• Live simple: Radical tactics to reduce the clutter, complexity, and costs of your life.

My big question in all my searching was – is sustainable design financially sustainable? I’ve mostly seen projects that *cost* designers money and the few potentially for-profit endeavors involved seductive green consumer products (or as Casey would say, doing “less bad”). Is this movement being promoted by professional organizations as a hobby?

What I would really hope to learn from the leaders in sustainable design is how to create relationships with other industries. How do we work with non-profits, government, and business innovators who are rethinking old standards of success? How can we start collaborating with professionals in policy, science, social research, journalism, etc. instead of naively fumbling around with these ourselves? This kind of facilitation and networking could really enable opportunities for designers and start to reshape the character of our industry. I’d also like to see more real-world examples with success metrics and not just gallery shows. For successful projects, I’d be interested in hearing the specific challenges and solutions from the designers involved. All the designers I’ve seen in this space are very heavy on self-promotion and very sparse on details and actionable takeaways for fellow designers.

In absence of that kind of larger “system” change on the part of design sustainability advocates, I still think there are positive changes designers can make in the context of their jobs. Maybe this is treating the symptom and not the problem, but it’s more realistic and actionable regarding what many designers are able to do at this point in time. For interaction designers specifically, I found the following areas…

1. Software Design & Information Diffusion – Make sustainable options easy. Use software and easily accessible information to engage people, encourage better alternatives, and connect those who can work together. Think of the larger social and cultural impact of design choices. (see Danah Boyd’s keynote on privacy)
2. Create New Future Visions – On a recent trip to Disneyland I saw a McMansion of the future that had a kitchen with over 5 flat panel displays and a child’s room that turned bedtime reading into a multimedia extravaganza. With the housing bubble burst and the economy collapsed, the vision seemed more retro than futuristic. What are these gadgets adding to our lives and what is the real cost in raw materials, energy consumption and healthy child development?
3. Hardware, Systems, Business Models – It’s hard to apply ideas like “heirloom design” to technology and the current rate of hyper-consumption is great for the economy. However, the overwhelming amount and toxicity of the waste, not to mention endless personal debt, is not sustainable. Consider designing hardware with more easily replaceable components. Plan for repair, not replacement. Make them rugged for the long-term, not delicate. Reduce wherever possible. Use fewer platforms with standardization for development (sorry Don Norman, c.f. unitasker). A current problem area is the cell phone business model with its hardware churn and convoluted financing. I also think of those early gen iPods and iPhones with the mirror finish. The *second* you got your hands on it, it was scratched or scuffed. This led you to buy more plastic tchotchk in the form of “protectors”, made it virtually impossible to resell, and got you wanting a new one almost immediately.

Given the hangover people have been getting at CES the past few years (see Guardian and Newsweek reviews), maybe putting goals 2 & 3 together is a much more viable direction that it seems. We could also use some time getting all the crap we already have to work right instead of endlessly making more.

4. Power Usage – This is an area we probably think about least because it’s the hardest to get around. All digital work runs on power and hardware innovation to improve efficiency may add to the waste/replacement problem of #3. But consider the energy requirements we create by making digital experiences more common and more addictive. We think switching from analog and paper will save raw materials, but how many plugs and power strips are there now vs. 20 years ago and how many server farms and off-site computing centers are supporting all your digital services? There are also health and well-being repercussions from sitting looking at screens all day. If we can’t solve this while still holding our jobs, maybe there are ways to introduce balance into systems we create.

So there’s some starting points and I will post whatever examples I find. If you want any more thoughts on design and sustainability, you’ll just have to take me drinking some time.

I have to say, going to a conference has a different feel when you’re a presenter and not just a punter. I end up paying more attention to presentation techniques (the transitions, the things that work, the things that can go wrong) as well as how panels frame the content – what they include and leave out. And being on the last day leaves more room for prep and anticipation and less room for partying. Oh wellz.

The first panel I got to was Touch + The Holy Grail of Delight. This seemed the most like Beyond Sci-fi so I was especially curious. Turns out it’s a bit of a different focus, theirs being retail. They talked through their use cases on immersive out-of-home touch screens that augment and personalize product information in stores.

There is some crossover with my talk in getting at the importance of multi-platform strategy. Us UX designers just can’t stand the thought of porting what’s essentially a web site to these emerging platforms. The more we can get that across to clients the better!

Being a touchy-feely day, I also caught A Touchy History of the Future. The talk basically covered some emerging and futuristic technologies like brain interfaces, RFID, jetpacks, etc. with some thoughts on how compelling or viable they were. Um, I think. They were actually couched in terms of how compelling or viable they were in a future zombie apocalypse. Kinda funny, kinda random. But I agree with Stassi on voice (it’s too loud).

The last one I caught was PayTV vs. Internet – The Battle For Your TV. Or rather, I caught the first few minutes until the Austin Convention Center had to be evacuated (!). I think it turned out a false alarm, but in the confusion I didn’t catch the rest – and really wish I did.

I wished the *showdown* between Cuban and Ronen was framed a little better for those unfamiliar with their apparent blogging saga. I didn’t entirely know what they were fighting about being that the issue is large and complicated. But from the little I saw as well as the blogging and scanning some tweets, I’d have to side with Cuban.

From looking his blog, I believe Ronen is naive as to how complex and interconnected the economics and practicalities of content production, marketing/distribution and infrastructure are. He sees the current system as flawed and the inevitable direction more choice and segmentation. But the current system works for the average user. You can try to end broadcast as we know it, but something fairly similar would spring up in it’s place.

We at SXSW are a unique bunch. We crave interactivity and choice and open systems, but for most people all that amounts to is more work (to find media) and much less payoff (in quality). Content bubbles up in You Tube because of one reason: it’s short. People are not going to browse 1/2 or 1 hour shows or 2 hour movies to find what’s good. That would take all day. Someone else will end up doing it. And while they’re at it, they should make the quality better so it doesn’t look like it was shot in someone’s bedroom. And next thing you know, you got an industry of networks and production companies that is looking for exposure through the people who build a wide-reaching technical platform, i.e. cable companies.

I also think the hate of cable companies is curious in that they seem to be the potential partners of the Boxee business model (making the software and hardware of set-top boxes). I totally understand the burning desire to make a single, optimized platform. TV platforms are unique (in a bad way) because unlike any other device, the TV is a single display that switches between a bunch of wildly different computers that are running through it. Integration is a noble goal, but you would need more that a great UI for that experience. You need content and the wires to get it to people.

Granted, I’m not exactly non partisan on this issue. I work on UI for, oddly enough, Ronen’s own maligned provider Cablevision. Because of vastly different technology and histories, the iTV and internet communities have strangely little contact together, but people in iTV certainly know of UI trends and social networking. The development cycles are also huge and hardware roll-out is glacial as opposed to the ADD device replacement of consumer-driven PCs and web. There are definitely ways iTV can change and it indeed is. There’s just a lot of procedural and economic complexity dealing with infrastructure and content licensing. TV can learn from the internet, but I also think the internet is also going to have to deal with this – only in retrospect. You used to have a business model first, then work on the product. Internet sometimes works in the opposite way, but you eventually have to end up in the same place – viable and sustainable.

I’m really trying to understand this issue in that it’s a crucial one for the future of ALL media. It relates to similar challenges in music and (in the wake of Kindle and iPad) books and is one I hope to explore in greater depth. But for now, I really must get some sleep. -.-

Jochen Winker and Stefan Kuzaj, students in Germany, allow users to “experience” water pollution statistics with objects on a digital table display…

Though I’d usually peg Apple for being a little more elegant, they’ve made the interesting decision in Quicktime Player 10 to put the controls over the video. I often use Quicktime at work for reviewing motion tests – short videos of UI that require detailed scrutiny, replays and scrubbing – so this feature has rendered the application virtually useless by constantly blocking the thing I’m looking at.

This may be a specific usage, but I doubt it’s rare and I’m not sure which user would *want* their video obscured when it clearly doesn’t have to be (c.f. Apple Quicktime 1-7). Maybe it seems more integrated or more like TV, though porting over the limitations of other platforms when not applicable is a strange kind of progress.

Also fascinating, and less frustrating, is their new 80s sci-fi icon (below left).

Luckily you can still get Quicktime 7 while anticipating the fate of this feature. However if you have Snow Leopard you have to install from the installer DVD.

I thought VLC media player would be better and has the added bonus of playing Windows Media files, but instead of controls it adds the file name on top of video. People just can’t leave video well enough alone.

Though it has been over 10 years since its opening, Encounter restaurant at the LAX theme building remains a fascinating example of total experience design. It’s nice when an architectural landmark can be re-contextualized to fit it’s own crazy space age reality thanks to interior design, sound design (is that Lalo Schifrin in the elevator?), and sophisticated-ly kitsch identity design (by Adams-Morioka). Eddie Sotto talks about the project here as head of Walt Disney Imagineering team that worked on it.

Though the building is enduring some exterior work, the food is less inspiring and upkeep is not always keeping up, it is still an inspiring piece of LA. These kind of multi-sensory projects with such a strong look and feel are rare outside of family entertainment and make art of everyday life.

Cute conceptual dress called Skin for maternity, or not. I can’t find them anywhere for purchase, but you can try asking designer Marisol Rodriguez.

A recent LA Times article featured Village Green, a hidden gem of local architecture and urban planning south of the 10 between Culver City, La Brea, and the Baldwin Hills oil fields. Having lived here over a year myself I can attest to the quality of life. There’s so much nature that we even get seasons. I like good design for the people.

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Village Green in the ’50s, photo by Julius Shulman.

For a complete pictorial history, see our ambassador Steven Keylon’s flickr sets. There’s also video of the construction and early years of the complex…