INNOVATION Summer 2022: Sustainable Leadership by Industrial Designers Society of America

QUARTERLY OF THE INDUSTRIAL DESIGNERS SOCIETY OF AMERICA SUMMER 2022

SUSTAINABLE LEADERSHIP Exploring the intersection of earth-saving design practices and the value-driven role design can play in strategic decision-making and successful business outcomes.

INTERNATIONAL DESIGN CONFERENCE & IDSA Education Symposium Proudly supported by

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SEATTLE, WASHINGTON September 12-14, 2022 internationaldesignconference.com INNOVATION SUMMER 2022

QUARTERLY OF THE INDUSTRIAL DESIGNERS SOCIETY OF AMERICA

SUMMER 2022 ®

Publisher IDSA 950 Herndon Pkwy. Suite 250 Herndon, VA 20170 P: 703.707.6000 F: 703.787.8501 idsa.org/innovation

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SUSTAINABLE LEADERSHIP 22 Acknowledging the Balance: The Merits of Practical Environmentalism in Sustainable Design by Katie Kuffel

26 Designing Better Climate Futures Together by Sebastian Gier

FEATURED 14 The Power of 10: Celebrating a Decade of New York Design Week by Stephan Clambaneva, IDSA 18 I Could Not Sketch, I Could Not Render by Stephen Hauser, FIDSA

21 IDC 2022

30 Designing with Sunlight by Beth Ferguson, IDSA

34 Breaking Barriers for Plastic Practicality by Gregory N. Polletta

38 Will Circularity Be Enough to Save Us from Environmental Collapse?

58 What Is the Experience That Experience Designers Are Designing? by Stephen B. Wilcox, PhD, FIDSA

64 How a California Sunset Inspired the Lucid Design Language by Brian Paschke

by Sayeh Dastgheib-Beheshti, IDSA

42 CMF: The Glue That Binds by Courtney Der

IN EVERY ISSUE 4

44 Thinking Outside the Box for Sustainable Design in Africa by Mark Evans, PhD, FIDSA

48 Design’s Heroic Mission: How Maturing the Design Culture Leads Brands to Sustainable Outcomes

In This Issue

5 From HQ by Chris Livaudais, IDSA 6

Beautility by Tucker Viemeister, FIDSA

ID Essay

by Steven R. Umbach, FIDSA

by Jayson Simeon, IDSA

52 Using an Interdisciplinary Biodesign Charrette to Prepare Future Sustainability Leaders by Don Carr, IDSA, and Louise Manfredi, PhD, FRSA, IDSA

56 An Architectural System Inspired by a Shoe That Was Inspired by a Building by Michael DiTullo, IDSA

QUARTERLY OF THE INDUSTRIAL DESIGNERS SOCIETY OF AMERICA SUMMER 2022

SUSTAINABLE LEADERSHIP

Cover: Haven tables, designed by Mike & Maaike and Watson, feature inviting touchpoints like lights, hooks, and rounded shapes in an effort to facilitate a collaborative environment. See page 22.

Exploring the intersection of earth-saving design practices and the value-driven role design can play in strategic decision-making and successful

Opposite: Sketches, by Michael DiTullo, IDSA, of the Kirei Air Baffle using Nike Grind. See page 56.

business outcomes.

Innovation is the quarterly journal of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), the professional organization serving the needs of US industrial designers. Reproduction in whole or in part—in any form—without the written permission of the publisher is prohibited. The opinions expressed in the bylined articles are those of the writers and not necessarily those of IDSA. IDSA reserves the right to decline any advertisement that is contrary to the mission, goals and guiding principles of the Society. The appearance of an ad does not constitute an endorsement by IDSA. All design and photo credits are listed as provided by the submitter. Innovation is printed on recycled paper with soy-based inks. The use of IDSA and FIDSA after a name is a registered collective membership mark. Innovation (ISSN No. 0731-2334 and USPS No. 0016-067) is published quarterly by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA)/Innovation, 950 Herndon Pkwy, Suite 250 | Herndon, VA 20170. Periodical postage at Sterling, VA 20164 and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to IDSA/Innovation, 950 Herndon Pkwy, Suite 250 | Herndon, VA 20170, USA. ©2022 Industrial Designers Society of America. Vol. 41, No. 2, 2022; Library of Congress Catalog No. 82-640971; ISSN No. 0731-2334; USPS 0016-067.

INNOVATION SUMMER 2022

I N T HI S I SSUE

BE A VOICE FOR CHANGE

s the developers of products and services used by billions of people around the world, industrial designers hold a crucial position: one that demands we look for ways in which our work can ignite social, cultural, and institutional change. By leveraging our resources, processes, and voice as designers, we can establish new ways of thinking and methodologies in our studios, companies, and corporate settings that, in turn, can help to ensure the ongoing health of our planet and its precious resources. In this issue, we explore the complex intersection of earth-saving design practices and the value-driven role design plays in strategic decision-making and successful business outcomes. Now, as the once separate languages of design and sustainable business continue to converge, it is vital that we know how to enable a dialogue that helps our business counterparts succeed financially while delivering meaningful human-centered solutions to the marketplace without sacrifice. The authors in our Summer issue provide insight into successful products and projects across a wide spectrum of

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industries and product categories. Whether turning groundup Nike shoes into sound baffles or implementing circular strategies to address complex societal challenges, industrial design, when combined with sustainable practices, continues to prove itself with practical solutions and a demonstrated positive impact on people, profit, and our planet. Exemplifying sustainable design leadership takes much more than a splashy marketing campaign or putting a recycling logo on the back of a package. Rather, it requires a comprehensive and persistent commitment to address every detail of how a business operates and produces its goods and services in order to truly make the type of lasting change our planet needs. Decades of poor decisions and consumer apathy have created a situation that needs to be addressed with more urgency than ever. Action must be taken today if we have any hope of creating paths forward to a more sustainable professional practice. We hope this issue inspires you on your journey to design for positive impact—for today and the future. —INNOVATION Editorial Team

FROM HQ

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE

his year, under the direction of our Senior Community Manager, Korie Twiggs, we are simultaneously developing and piloting a new program aimed at providing exclusive professional development for our many volunteer leaders across the country. Our goal with this training is to provide valuable learning opportunities that will empower them in their work as community leaders and enhance their practical skills in professional settings. The training provided by IDSA’s new Community Leadership Institute is an exclusive benefit for Chapter and Section Officers as well as members of our various Committees and Councils. Courses will be held quarterly throughout 2022 and will cover a variety of relevant topics. I am delighted to share that we held our first Community Leadership Institute class on March 21, 2022, on diversity, equity, and inclusion, a topic of utmost importance for IDSA. Facilitators from CultureWizard (www.rw-3.com) led participants through an interactive workshop titled Mastering an Inclusive Mindset. During the 90-minute session, the audience listened to presentations about understanding (and overcoming) implicit bias and how to promote best practices in workplace inclusion. Afterward, small groups were formed for discussions around specific prompts before returning to the full group to share findings and hear perspectives from other participants. Many in the audience also took part in an individual selfassessment, which provided a detailed and personalized report across three dimensions: inclusive behaviors, exposure to diversity, and cognitive flexibility. The results create a framework to understand one’s own unique experiences related to diversity and belonging with highlighted areas of strength and for personal improvement. I believe all of us aspire to be an inclusive leader, but perhaps we are unsure of exactly what that means or how to implement inclusivity as a daily habit. This thought-provoking experience allowed for inward moments of personal reflection while also delivering

tangible insights into how each of us can become a more inclusive leader in our professional practice. Looking ahead, our next Community Leadership Institute class will focus on sponsorships and partnerships specific to Chapter and Section events. All chapters are provided funds from IDSA at the start of each year, which are available to use at the discretion of chapter teams for the production and delivery of programming for their local community. Sometimes, however, opportunities may exist to engage with local businesses to bring additional value to the event experience. This could take form of in-kind food or beverage donations, venue rental agreements, or direct financial support, to name a few. We want to help our community leaders understand the best practices for building these kinds of partner relationships and provide the tools needed to successfully secure them. Other topic areas we are exploring for future Community Leadership Institute classes include volunteer recruitment and engagement, chapter finances and budget planning, communications, and event management. Over time, we plan to bring some of these courses out of the virtual world and incorporate them into our larger in-person events, such as the International Design Conference. In this way, we can provide greater professional benefit to our community leaders who travel to participate in IDSA conference programming. I’ve often said that one must experience IDSA firsthand in order to truly discover value. This program builds on that idea and presents a compelling offering for those who choose to take advantage of it. IDSA deeply appreciates the commitment our members demonstrate daily in their work as volunteer community leaders, and this is one way for us to say thank you for all you do on behalf of our society. —Chris Livaudais, IDSA, Executive Director chrisl@idsa.org

INNOVATION SUMMER 2022

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BEAU TILI TY

BEAUTY OR THE BEAST

ntrepreneurs are not supposed to be nice. Their ruthless drive toward their target is a relentless flushing out of every possible opportunity. Their nonlinear attack seems

chaotic but gets results because they’ll go anywhere it takes— even moving the target (redefining their success) so they can win. Their rush for winning gambles can throw a monkey wrench in the works. A tycoon, capitalist, mogul, or even my mother can demonstrate a more compassionate entrepreneurial spirit, like when she improvised her delicious “Garbage Soup” out of whatever leftovers she could find in the refrigerator—using any means to get dinner on the table. Getting the gizmo on the table is what drives industrial designers too. Opposite: Futurama: Highways & Horizons by Norman Bel Geddes, FIDSA, at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Photo: General Motors

INNOVATION SUMMER 2022

The word “entrepreneur,” Google says, means “a person who organizes and operates a business taking on greater than normal financial risks.” A successful entrepreneur jumps into a shark tank searching for new money, power, and IP. It’s really not that risky to go outside the normal; that’s where they can grab new opportunities for better, faster, and cheaper prospects. They are curious thrill-seekers out for adventure. Today entrepreneur means more than business. It’s the emotional spirit with a can-do attitude, Yankee ingenuity, jump-to-conclusions reflexes, a fighter-pilot omnivore mode, and a seat-of-the-pants go-for-the-gusto drive. Turbocharged like my mother, industrial designers are inherently entrepreneurial with heuristic speculative methods, visual thinking, and a rules-of-thumb, trial-and-error, shootfrom-the-hip mentality. Designers call it concurrent product development. Computer scientists call it spiral development. Knock Knock. Who’s There? Academics Arthur Levine and Scott J. Van Pelt wrote in The Great Upheaval (2021) that the Industrial Revolution “produced new knowledge needs, which the modern university arose to meet.” The Industrial Revolution also activated the industrial design profession. While universities opened research labs, industrial designers opened studios and created new professional processes and pedagogy. Most of the founders of the profession were not architects or craftspeople. Walter Dorwin Teague, FIDSA, was a sign painter; Alexander Kostellow, FIDSA, and Richard Lepper were fine artists; Rowena Reed, FIDSA, was a sculptor; John Vassos, FIDSA, and Raymond Loewy, FIDSA, started in window display; Donald Deskey, FIDSA, Russell Wright, FIDSA, and Norman Bel Geddes, FIDSA, began as set designers (Henry Dreyfuss, FIDSA, worked for Bel Geddes); Donald Dohner was studying theatrical design and teaching shop class. Putting on a show taught designers to control appearance for dramatic effect. It was only a short step for these entrepreneurial window decorators to give products seductive lines and forms, packages, and branding that people wanted—envisioning the whole user experience, like how Bel Geddes created GM’s Futurama pavilion and Dreyfuss the future in the Democracity exhibit inside the Perisphere at the 1939 World’s Fair.

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Those designers saw that their new service business needed a process they could sell. They invented it—in some kind of pre-iteration—using a design process to design the design process. Like biomimicry, industrial designers mimicked what they saw: the assembly line, thinking about controlling the whole process as Henry Ford did from exploring for ore to considering the users driving the car. Phase one starts with a blank page without assumptions, like Donald Rumsfeld’s looking for the “unknown unknowns,” and asking good questions, like Socrates and Sherlock Holmes. Phase two is artistic, generating sketches and prototyping concepts. The third phase is essentially more mechanical, making it work, testing, and solving fabrication problems. Realizing they were not done, they added a fourth phase: postproduction and user-experience issues. But wait, then they doubled down, going back to phase one again: redesigning leveraging the feedback loop (this part really is biomimicry). Each phase, like Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats, taps different talents under the industrial designer’s hat: observer, thinker, artist, engineer, marketer, and advocate. Juggling mechanics, aesthetics, and testing requires transdisciplinary general thinking, making collaboration fundamental—cycling between topdown deduction and bottom-up induction, swinging from divergent to convergent and from iterative modeling to design thinking. Each phase contains the micro design process, like fractals where inside each iteration are miniiterations. The steps are elastic; some stretch to four or five phases. The process both tames and encourages the entrepreneurial spirit. With this phased method, designers established a powerful and effective tool that has become a standard business method. The design process is core, the keystone of all design. Those progressive steps, each with specific tasks, hurtles, and deliverables, can create a good answer to any problem. The system helps creatives move projects toward solutions and gives the process, as David Kelly says, “creative confidence.” The design process harnesses the entrepreneur’s constant surprises and guides the zig-zag creative practice to success. Creatives and entrepreneurs use the guard rails—budgets, function, schedules, constraints— as springboards, igniting what Hartmut Esslinger calls “creative combustion.”

Design Process + Entrepreneurial Drive = Success Architect Christopher Alexander said, “Everything we see in our surroundings raises our spirits a bit or lowers them a bit.” People naturally want to do something about it—either accidentally or intentionally we impact the environment. “Whenever we are shaping the world, we are designing,” IDEO chair Tim Brown pointed out recently on FastCo’s podcast. Herb Simon at Carnegie Tech in his seminal 1969 book, The Sciences of the Artificial, wrote, “Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. Schools of engineering, as well as schools of architecture, business, education, law, and medicine, are all centrally concerned with the process of design.” The engineering process essentially breaks down problems into solvable bite-size bits, then adds up all those little solutions to make a big bridge or rocket. The phases of the generative design process create something new. The industrial design process is scalable; it works on designing products and nonphysical things like services and systems. The power of our design process is that it’s not just critical thinking—it’s critical doing. The Dutch word for design is “vormgeving” (vorm = form; geving = giving). Architects have what they call studio culture; beginning in college, students work together “on charette.” The term comes from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the 19th century where student architects would work right up until a deadline, riding on the charrette (French for “cart”) as they wheeled their drawings and models to the review. All-nighters in the studio fuel the quality of sketches, a lack of sleep dissolves creative barriers, and urgency sparks serendipity. The best conversations may take place after 3 a.m., but recently the Office for Metropolitan Architecture was criticized for unfair labor practices for a job listing asking for a “no 9–5 mentality” (but designers never sleep). “The design studio in the architecture programs is at the core of a student’s educational experience,” says Pratt’s website, “shaped by the three guiding principles of creativity, community, and commitment, incorporating all of the fundamental and positive values of a studio-based education.” Writing about Carnegie Tech in the ’50s, former vice president of corporate industrial design at Xerox and once dean of Pratt, Arnold Wasserman, IDSA, said that his

design studio experience at Carnegie “convinced me that much that is wrong with business life could be fixed instantly if people worked in studio environments in an atelier culture.” The reason I’m an industrial designer, I told my German physicist cousin Carsten Hellmich is because everything needs to be designed—then he said from his point of view everything is physics. It turns out that physics and design are not everything. Function and money are not at the height of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pyramid either. Maslow’s psychological theory about fulfilling innate human needs begins with air, food, and water; rises to love and respect; and culminates in the highest priority he called “self-actualization”—which I say means creating beauty, the ultimate “better.” Beautility is functional. Beauty is magical. Plato considered mathematics the highest form of beauty. Beauty is the reality check. Beauty proves a theory. When a formula works, the code doesn’t crash, the soufflé doesn’t fall, and people love to peel a potato. Beauty is a guide toward the truth. E=mc2 is joyful poetry. Keats agrees: “Beauty is truth, truth is beauty—that is all.” So far, democracy is the most equitable way to govern ourselves, and so far, the design process developed in the 1930s is the smartest way to make things better, especially because it acknowledges that the design is never right the first time (my mother would agree). Following our design process map is the best method to enchant wild creativity and zig-zagging entrepreneurs, because no matter what we say, as Denver-based graphic designer and MATTER printer Rick Griffith says, “Design is not a skill, it’s magic.” After Wasserman graduated from CMU, he realized he “badly needed to fill the gaping holes in my mortarboard. I was a technological savage having no historical, epistemological, or theoretical framework for what I was doing. I needed to go back to school to get a liberal arts education.” These days, solving form and function seem to be the easy part of industrial design, as the transdisciplinary Parsons professor Jamer Hunt points out: “The need to understand what it means to solve problems for people, which involves all sorts of issues concerning privilege and power, will challenge designers for decades.” —Tucker Viemeister, FIDSA www.tuckerviemeister.com

INNOVATION SUMMER 2022

I D E S S AY

THE DESIGN OF THE SYNANTHIC RUMEN INJECTOR SYSTEM YOUTH, WISDOM, AND RESOURCEFULNESS

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n 1978 when I was a sophomore at the Rhode Island School of Design, I obtained a summer internship in Palo Alto, CA, at a product design consulting firm called GVO. The firm was founded in 1966 by Dale Gruye, George Opperman, and Noland Vogt. During the 1970s and 1980s, it became one of the first design firms in the US to bring together industrial designers, engineers, researchers, human factors specialists, and modelmakers to fully integrate the product design and development process. At the time I had no idea that GVO was one of the very few design firms in the world that operated this way; I was enthusiastic and young. When I graduated in 1980, I returned to GVO as a full-time entry-level designer. One of the early projects I worked on was the design for a device to deliver deworming solution to cattle. The client was Syntex Agribusiness, which contracted GVO to develop an entirely new device for injecting the deworming solution directly into the cattle’s rumen, the largest of many stomach compartments in cattle, which is prone to the growth of worms. To preserve its effectiveness, the solution could not be delivered through the cattle’s mouth as was customary with many other livestock solutions and medications. Fueled by my design education and focused on a holistic and resourceful approach to creative problemsolving, I jumped into the project enthusiastically and feeling unconstrained. GVO had already started on the design and mechanical development for another cattle hormone injector device for Syntex. As such, GVO already had a development team up and running and under a tight schedule, so GVO management assigned me as the lead industrial designer on the Syntex Synanthic Rumen Injector System. Noland Vogt was my project leader and my design mentor for the project. Noland was a kind and confident employer, manager, and personal mentor. He showed a lot of patience for this young hot-shot designer and was wise enough to not squelch my go-getter initiative during the conceptual development phase of the device. He allowed me to remain enthusiastic about the design process and explore my ideas. Always with a calm tone, he added his experienced guidance along the way. The pay-your-dues philosophy so often encountered by young people at the hands of the more experienced always seemed like such an incredible waste of young talent and energy to me, apparently to Noland as well. We made an incredible team. He was very wise. California Because most of GVO’s engineering development resources were busy with the development of the other device, I could get only a limited amount of mechanical design support from the engineers, mostly for concept reviews once I

sketched up a direction. The design was progressing slowly and at risk of falling behind schedule, so I educated myself on the design of basic mechanical systems that could be employed. Because the injection device would be used in some very remote cattle-ranching locations around the world, the design couldn’t be dependent on any external power source—no electricity, no fuel, no compressed air, not even batteries. Noland had experience in the automotive industry, so I studied the basic mechanical systems used in automotive design that might apply to the device. I consulted diagrams of brake and clutch systems, ramp-type release and sear mechanisms (think of triggers), and ways in which various types of springs and torsion bars were employed to deliver energy to a mechanical system. Hmmm, now I was off and running! I looked at each function of the injection device design as a separate mechanism at first, figuring out how to create the movement, lock and release, sliding motion, etc. needed. To supply the energy needed, I investigated the basics of spring design and applications for compression and expansion type springs. The final design of the Synanthic Rumen Injector is essentially a compact telescoping cylindrical layering of all these simple systems brought together into one device. We also traveled to cattle stockyards around California to deepen our understanding of cattle anatomy and the context of use for the device and its design. Noland would pull his Airstream trailer along, which served as our base camp for the day. With field experience and the basic mechanical design well underway, the final approach came together quickly, and everyone at GVO took note of its simple yet appropriate and effective mechanical design. In fact, the Synanthic injection project had caught up to and passed the engineering activities of the other Syntex device project underway. The next step was to translate the concept design into a working prototype. Mexico As soon as the prototype was ready and a few tests were completed in California, Noland and I were off to a massive cattle yard in Mexico located far outside of Tijuana. This was a major milestone for the project; many key corporate executives from Syntex flew in from around the world to take part in the demonstration. On the first morning, we were already dusty in the hot sun with smelly, noisy cattle all around us—and one poor cow selected as our test subject. One of the Syntex executives made the first attempt to operate the prototype. It malfunctioned! He tried again; same result. Noland took over, and it malfunctioned once again—and now some of the deworming solution was dripping out of the device. There we stood encircled by Syntex executives—our client—staring at us waiting for

INNOVATION SUMMER 2022

us to do something. In a calm voice, Noland apologized, suggesting we break for the day and return tomorrow after we had time to troubleshoot. Back in our tiny hotel room, I was in a panic to get started. Noland suggested we take a few minutes to first calm down and have an afternoon cocktail. Good idea. Once we were both a little calmer, we began brainstorming about what could have caused the leak. We carefully examined the prototype and could not see any obvious faults. Without the support of tools or a shop, Noland instructed me to fill the bathroom tub with water. It took me a moment to realize what he was thinking. We couldn’t see the leak, if that was the problem, but underwater, bubbles would expose the tiniest of leaks! And voilà, once we tried to operate it underwater, we found it. The leak was in the brass weld that connected the hollow piston rod end with the solution tube barb fitting. Now how were we going to get it fixed? We set out early the next day to look for help, some type of business or machine shop that might have the capacity to weld brass—a special type of welding that required the right tools and knowledge. This was long before the days of Google. We drove for miles seeing only dusty, desolate land with hardly any trees and nothing even close to a shop. After a while, we drove by a tiny gas station. Hmmm, we wondered, maybe? Then we saw it, an original 1962 Studebaker Avanti parked in front of one of the garage bays! Noland and I being designers and car guys both knew instantaneously—anyone with an original Avanti in good condition knows his way around tools and intricate repairs! Not only did the mechanic who owned the car speak English, but he also had the proper equipment and skills to weld brass! After he finished, we did a quick underwater test of the repair, and Noland phoned the Syntex executives to tell them we had resolved the problem and would be back at the cattle yard after lunch to resume the demonstration. The second day was a complete success.

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Australia The next test for the prototype was to send it to the Syntex executives in Australia to operate it without the GVO design team babysitting. I created numerous diagrams for an operator’s manual and off it all went to Sydney. The Syntex team in Australia had made arrangements with a cattle yard far, far outside of the city; it took hours to drive there. Soon the reports came in. The device worked okay, but it took a long time for the solution to fully expel its measured dose into the cattle, forcing the rancher to stand next to the animal for a long time pressing the device firmly against the animal to maintain proper pressure. This made many of the animals very anxious. These weren’t California cows either; they were larger and stronger Australian Brahman cattle with the bulls weighing up to 2,200 pounds! The Syntex executives and GVO management conferred. Something wasn’t right. The device should fire the needle, deliver the dose, and be ready to retract from the animal in about a second. The decision was made to send over the only person in the world who knew everything about the device and its operation: me. With the experience in Mexico fresh on my mind, I soon found myself in Sydney surrounded by a couple of Syntex executives, some beefy ranch mates, and even beefier Brahman cattle while trying to ascertain what went wrong with the device this time. I operated the device, and yep, the reports were correct. Later back at my hotel room, I even operated it underwater—nope, no leaks. I spent the next day in the Syntex regional offices brainstorming with a few of the executives. I had tools this time and a good shop space, where I took apart the prototype and inspected it carefully. I played the role of the court jester, asking the stupid questions starting at the top, a process a professor of mine referred to as asking professionally naïve designer questions. I finally started asking questions about the deworming solution, knowing that Australia is very sensitive about contamination from outside countries regarding its agribusiness and farming. I had firsthand knowledge because upon arriving in Australia

we were literally fumigated by department of agriculture officers on the plane before we were allowed to exit. Was the solution sent from the headquarters in Palo Alto, I asked? Maybe something happened to it along the way, and so on. The Syntex executive explained that they had their own solution formulated specifically for the conditions and the cattle in Australia. That’s it! That was why the device wasn’t operating properly. Believe it or not, up until this point GVO hadn’t been made aware of the different global formulations. The Australian deworming solution was a completely different colloidal suspension, a mixture in which one or more substances are dispersed as larger solid particles or liquid droplets. Its consistency was best described as liquid chalk. Now I knew what to do: We needed to increase the spring force used to expel the dosage.

and many more like this. Some of the learnings caused us to completely redesign the injection needle and the fluid check valves to improve the flow of the various viscosities of the deworming suspension through the device. In fact, the GVO engineers were so impressed with my redesign of the check valves that they internally dubbed them the Umbach Check Valves. Others and I working on the project at GVO continued to learn and implement design refinements all the way to the start-up manufacturing process. To continue to build on the experience and learnings, GVO partnered with Syntex to create a new company, Mobius Manufacturing, to build the new Syntex devices and for which Noland Vogt is listed as the registered agent. The Synanthic Rumen Injector won an IDEA in 1983 with the jury citing the system’s “innovative yet appropriate and complete solution, a total industrial design project from beginning to end.” In 1990, it was recognized as one of the 10 best designs of the decade by IDSA in a special recognition program and noted for bringing “industrial design to the barnyard.” While these accolades were wonderful and careerboosting, the ability to find quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties and resolve design problems was the most important lesson of all for this young designer. —Steven R. Umbach, FIDSA steven@umbach-cg.com This article is dedicated to the life and memory of Noland Vogt, FIDSA.

Off I went in search of the Avanti with a Syntex executive driving me around Sydney looking for a place that might have a spring with the exact diameter, length, and force needed to replace the spring in the prototype. Where to? The closet retail automotive parts warehouse, of course. I went through multiple drawers of springs making the best assessment I could and found a few that seemed plausible. After installing and testing them at the shop, I found one that dramatically improved the device’s operation. Over the next week, I spent my days in the Outback accompanying the Syntex executives and local ranch owners, testing the device with great success and more lessons. Lessons in Resourcefulness During my trip to Australia, I learned many other things about the mechanical design, needle design, and context of use, all with similar stories of incidents, evaluations, resourceful responses, and solutions. Back in Palo Alto, we continued to refine the design based on these experiences

LIKE THE STORIES IN THIS COLUMN? Have you designed something amazing, funky, or famous that’s now at least 10 to 15 years old, or older better yet? If so, we’d love to hear your unique behind-the-scenes story and see some of those never-beforeseen sketches, renderings, and images of the design. If you are an IDSA Fellow or Member, please consider contributing your story. Please contact Steven Umbach if you have an idea you would like us to consider.

INNOVATION SUMMER 2022

NY C X D E SI G N

THE POWER OF 10: CELEBRATING A DECADE OF NEW YORK DESIGN WEEK

hey say, “Time flies when you’re having fun.” For those who call New York City their home and IDSA their community, it certainly has! With New York Design Week, what all New Yorkers know as NYCxDESIGN, celebrating its 10th year in 2022, we at IDSA have great cause for celebration, too, because of the impact our community has had on this great city. While IDSA has been on this wonderful ride since the beginning of NYCxDESIGN, for IDSA the ride has been a lot longer than that—five times longer, in fact! IDSA, through its chapter leaders and vast community of volunteers, has been holding multiple events in the city every year since the 1960s. It’s time to celebrate these past 10 years by remembering those who dedicated their time and expertise to the New York design community, thanking them for how they have highlighted design and celebrating together with more inspiring design! Happy 10th Birthday, NYCxDESIGN, from all of us at IDSA! NY Design Is IDSA The Industrial Designers Society of America was founded in New York City in 1965 as a result of the merger of several organizations: American Designers Institute (ADI), Industrial Designers Institute (IDI), Industrial Designers Education Association (IDEA), Society of Industrial Designers (SID), and American Society of Industrial Designers (ASID). Good

design had to start somewhere in the US, so why not New York? American industrial design was arguably synonymous with New York ID when Henry Dreyfuss, FIDSA, Raymond Loewy, FIDSA, John Vassos, FIDSA, Norman Bel Geddes, FIDSA, Walter Dorwin Teague, FIDSA, George Nelson, FIDSA, J. Gordon Lippincott, Florence Knoll, H/IDSA, and many others were writing some the first chapters in the history of American design. The co-chair of IDSA’s Design History Section, Marshall Johnson, FIDSA, explains the import of New York City: “The stagecraft, fashion, store display, and other design professionals congregated there. When mass produced ‘industrial’ manufacturers needed design so their products could reach a wider and more affordable market, they booked a trip to the Big Apple to see who could give them some help. Although it was a product that was being designed, the moniker ‘industrial’ stuck as the description for this new profession. New York did not keep all this design talent to itself. The practitioners spread throughout the country coast to coast and pushed into Europe and the Far East.” As for the wider implications, he says, “We at IDSA consciously celebrate the mutually beneficial impact the product design profession and New York City has had on each other. I sometimes wonder if the product design profession at large acknowledges the contribution of this

Opposite: A collage featuring IDSA NYC chapter, Northeast District, and NYCxDesign events from the past 10 years.

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early start in the Big Apple. If the profession had not started here, what other city would have been able to tolerate the creativity and the chutzpah to begin a new and muchneeded profession?” ID(IDSA+NYCxDESIGN)10y How much has the last decade changed the face of design, IDSA, and New York? What would the answer to the above equation look like? If we contextualize it broadly, this decade would be bookended by two financial crises coupled with a continuous environmental crisis and a two-year—and counting—global pandemic, channeling Michael Cannell and his New York Times article “Design Loves a Depression.” Despite all that, were we able to make an impact? Were we able to elevate the importance of design? Did we get a seat at the table? Do we have voices loud enough to be heard? Yes, definitely, if we gauge it by the number of designled companies today showcasing their products in New York and the fact that design was a focus of Bloomberg magazine in 2015, which also coincided with the Harvard Business Review’s cover issue focused on design. While Michael Bloomberg may no longer be the mayor of New York, I believe the brainwashing about the value of design all those years really paid off. While the jury is still out on the last point, we are collectively working on it. But as a member of the advisory committee for NYCxDESIGN since 2018, together with all the rest of the local design voices, we are making a lot of noise! The best way to exemplify what I mean is to share examples of what we have been doing. If we were to try to list the number of events that IDSA and joint collaborations have done over the last decade, it would use up the allotted word count for this article. Here are examples of some of the most impactful initiatives for how they aligned with IDSA’s four pillars of information, education, community, and advocacy: IDSA @ ICFF: IDSA has curated an exhibition of local, national, and young up-and-coming designers during the International Contemporary Furniture Fair for six years with its largest being more than 150 linear feet long! IDSA IDC in NYC: IDSA hosted its International Design Conference during the famed New York blackout of 2010, which didn’t stop the event. Many attendees fondly remember this as the best conference ever!

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IDSA + IDEO: IDEO and IDSA collaborated to develop and host the first in a series of workshops called A Sense of New York that was replicated in Philadelphia and New Orleans. IDSA + Farenheit 212: This provocative conversation was centered around the theme Design Thinking: Dead or Alive with prolific design leaders like Bill Moggridge, FIDSA, Helen Walters, Mark Payne, Deb Johnson, Cliff Kuang, and myself moderated by New York’s own Allan Chochinov. IDSA Cooper-Hewitt tours and garden parties: The Cooper-Hewitt has long partnered with IDSA to advocate for design, but the most memorable events were the garden parties hosted by Moggridge during the Van Cleef & Arpels exhibit. IDSA 2010, 2014, 2016 District Design Conferences: New York has often hosted the IDSA District Design Conferences, bringing together the best and brightest professionals and students from all over the northeast. IDSA @ Parsons: A student gathering led by Ayse Birsel, IDSA, invited all the local schools, Parsons, Pratt, SVA, and ITP, to join a conversation about supporting the students with better programming. IDSA @ Sotheby’s: A panel discussion called Creative Hong Kong in New York, developed by IDSA NYC and the Hong Kong Design Center and hosted by Sotheby’s New York, featured designers from Hong Kong. IDSA @ Smart Design and Smart Salons: IDSA NYC and Smart Design have collaborated for decades. Two highlights are the Gravity Sketch VR workshop and the town hall with TED founder Richard Saul Wurman, moderated by Carla Diana. IDSA @ LIXIL: As part of the ongoing series of roundtable conversations called IDSA NYC Perspectives, LIXIL hosted a celebration of the roots of industrial design in New York City, coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus, featuring design greats such as JeanJacques Lhenaff, Alberto Mantilla, Lucia N.DeRespinis, FIDSA, Michael A. Cousins, and Carl Magnusson. The Post-Pandemic Roaring Twenty Twenties Looking at the city today from when I first arrived at the dawn of the new millennium, New York City is totally different, by design. Gone are the days when you hear “Greed is good.” Now you walk through Times Square and the Financial District and you hear, “Design is good.” NYC has rapidly

grown to become the place to come for good—no, great— design. And we all know that good design is good business. This city has always been about business—big business. Now it has become all about the business of design, according to the latest Center of Urban Future report. New York City has the largest concentration of designers, creative talent, and design agencies than any other major metropolitan area in the US. While there was some attrition due to the pandemic, it is said that more than 60,000 designers call New York City their home. According to the same CUF report, analyzing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), employment in Brooklyn’s creative industries increased by 155% over the past decade. More specifically, in 13 of the 15 creative industries tracked by QCEW, employment in Brooklyn increased by at least 50%, with the fastest growth in industrial design (423% job growth). The evidence is all around us. Whether you explore the creative and entrepreneurial startup boom in Brooklyn at Industry City or the Navy Yard, or visit the various design districts steeped in history and how each has reinvented themselves time and time again, you will see inspiring design around every corner. Deciding to experience the city through the perspective of a repurposed, redesigned, and upcycled built environment such as the High Line, you can’t avoid it—design is everywhere you look. Every May, just like the spring flowers blooming all over Central Park, the best design sprouts up all over the city, inspiring us to be the best we can be. We have a new generation of young leaders and IDSA NYC Chairs waiting in the wings. As we pass the baton, we at IDSA can’t wait to see what they come up with for the next decade of design in New York. —Stephan Clambaneva, IDSA stephan@clamba.net When not with PARK clients, educating tomorrow’s design leaders, ensuring a sustainable future for IDSA’s Sections, or serving on the IDSA Board of Directors, Stephan Clambaneva guides the NY Design Week’s organization as part of the NYCxDESIGN Advisory Committee.

IDSA NYC Chapter Chairs 1980–2022 1980–81 James Ryan, FIDSA (deceased) 1982–83 Andrew Serbinski 1984–85 Lorenzo Porcelli 1986–87 Tucker Viemeister, FIDSA 1988–89 Harvey Bernstein 1990–91 Amelia Amon 1992–93 Lisa Smith 1994–95 John Zogg 1996–97 Danae Loran Wilson 1998–99 Steve Russak 2000–01 Joe Moya 2002–03 Russell Robertson 2004–05 Angela Yeh, IDSA 2006 Deb Johnson 2007 Shunyi Wu 2008–09 Meredith Goodwin 2010–11 Stephan Clambaneva, IDSA 2012–13 Adam Wendel and Dave Miller 2014–15 Alex Sacco and Robert Nightingale (vice chair) 2016–17 Vijay Chakravarthy, IDSA 2018–19 Peter Schon 2020–21 Michiko Stas 2022–23 Vincent Lin, IDSA

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RE F L E CTI O N

I COULD NOT SKETCH, I COULD NOT RENDER

ndustrial design has evolved over the years, and because I discovered and fell in love with ID in the ’60s, I have been asked to explain ID’s evolution and how I rolled with the changes and demands. In very simple terms, I have not rolled with the changes. My love and understanding of design and my approach to ID have not changed. More importantly, my limited skills have not changed. I still cannot sketch well or render, and I believe those two weaknesses are just possibly the reason Hauser was so successful. A Love of Design I discovered industrial design accidentally. When I walked into the ID classrooms at UCLA, I knew instantly that ID was my calling. In those days, styling was the means to an end, or at least the beginning. I have always found styling to be a shallow answer. My love affair was always on the side of the limits and advances of manufacturing. I was always interested in how products are manufactured and the restraints imposed on the designer because of basic manufacturing guidelines. The head of the UCLA industrial design department was Henry Dreyfuss, FIDSA, and Niels Diffrient, FIDSA, was one of our instructors. Neither ever complimented me on my sketching and rendering skills, but they did, at times, comment on my evolving interest to learn the manufacturing methods that could eventually bring our ideas to market.

Dreyfuss offered me a small scholarship so I could continue on to a master’s degree. The extra time in college just gave me an extra year to mature a bit more. I was a Korean War veteran and taking advantage of the GI Bill. Now I needed a job. I will not bore you with the jobs I held, but all were worthwhile steppingstones until I unexpectedly decided to open my own little office in an 8-by-10 bedroom in our small home. This is the part I would like to share: I discovered I could sell and that I was a leader and that I liked ownership. I had no idea I had these skills. At times, it was very scary making cold calls to potential clients who were just beginning to hear the term “industrial design.” Marketing began to listen. Engineering was a bit skeptical that they might share their spotlight with an industrial designer, whatever that title meant. I was not selling sketches and renderings. I was trying to sell function and logic As my little office grew, I became aware of two other small ID firms nearby. One was Ron Loosen Associates. Ron had hired me out of UCLA when he was the ID head at Ampex Computers. The second was Chuck Pelly, FIDSA. We three had about two to four designers on staff. Our approaches to ID were different, and I don’t believe we ever competed, but we partied together in restaurants and each other’s homes for many years. We all had our own ideas of growth. We all grew.

Opposite: Put styling aside and first learn how the product functions and is possibly manufactured.

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Hire People Better Than You and Leave Them Alone As Hauser began to grow, my mother gave me some sage advice: “Hire people better than you and leave them alone.” It took me a few years to understand her message, but it was so true. I sold Hauser and retired in 2002. I don’t really miss ownership, but I really do miss the people. The new owners of Hauser were good people, but their only experience was running huge corporate companies. I gave a talk years ago at an IDSA National Conference. My subject was “How to Sell a Small Industrial Design Consultancy and Watch it Crumble and Die.” The talk was well-attended. I hope designers in the audience took note. A sale can be done, but it is risky. I do not believe any of the people at Hauser were hurt. They were all picked up by ID companies or departments elsewhere. Hiring designers is easy. They all have portfolios. If you like what you see in their portfolio, you ask them how they arrived at their answers. If you like those answers, you hire based on personality. You all know that creative industrial designers are always a bit crazy. Learn to let them play and enjoy each other. The outcome is always impressive. They learn to respect and love each other. Yes, the industry, especially the tools, have changed; however, in my opinion, the sequence of events leading up to a successful product design has not. At Hauser, we hired so many creative people who brought new and wonderful marketable ideas to the table. Clients, for the most part, loved their exchanges, and we had managers who knew how to conduct and direct. A very important point to note: I never did learn how to sketch to present an idea to others, only in a very rough form, which I was teased about from time to time. However, I could write proposals, which would address real manufacturing and user issues the potential client would understand and appreciate. Their responses were usually positive. Their in-house engineering teams would appreciate that we understood the manufacturing issues, and they very often became our partners in bringing their product to market. Over the years, my love affair with product development has never waned. As Hauser grew, our designers grew

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and introduced all those “other” parts of design that were coming along. Although hardly any of those new approaches interested me, I allowed them to move into Hauser. The people we hired to support those other parts were left alone, and they flourished and the company expanded. My mother was right. Hauser grew to just over 60 designers, engineers, graphic designers, human factors engineers, market researchers, color specialists, and a fine marketing team with a complete prototype shop and full CAD capabilities. We occupied 27,000 square feet, taking over Mickey Rooney’s never-finished dinner theater with a full balcony offering space for three conference rooms and a complete bar for entertainment and office parties. The offices were very impressive and certainly helped move Hauser along. I have been retired now for just over 20 years. For that entire time, I have retained a small machine shop/office where I can come and hide and still design, fabricate, and create. I know nothing about marketing, and when I think I have a product and a marketing team behind me, I go to two ex-Hauser mechanical engineers who have the skills to convert my fabricated functional models to a full CAD file and 3D printed parts in a short time. Several products have reached the marketplace during my retirement years. The most memorable was probably the Perfect Pushup. The change with the most impact that has taken place in industrial design, and in all industries for that matter, is the virtual takeover. To me it is sad because so much of the one-on-one, day-to-day exchanges with friends in the field are, far too often, lost. I am delighted to have seen ID flourish over the years, and I hope that all of you have enjoyed the ride as much as I have. It has been a joy. —Stephen Hauser, FIDSA sghretired@la.twcbc.com Stephen Hauser founded Hauser, Inc., an engineering-oriented industrial design consultancy, in 1966. The firm was among the top 10 design consultancies selected by BusinessWeek until the firm was sold in 1999. Hauser retired in 2002.

IDC 2022

AT LAST, TOGETHER AGAIN

rom the start, a central part of the International Design Conference experience has been the unique opportunity to assemble diverse design perspectives and create an unforgettable shared moment to connect and inspire. We are beyond excited to return to an in-person format in 2022, which will mean so much more after having spent so much time apart over the past two years. Seattle, WA, is a well-known creative epicenter in the Pacific Northwest with a thriving arts and music scene. The 1962 World’s Fair gave Seattle its now iconic Space Needle (designed by Edward E. Carlson and John Graham Jr.), and today the city is home to major technology companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Nintendo. Seattle also has a great history of hosting some of IDSA’s most spectacular events. In particular, our 50th anniversary was celebrated there in 2015 with the theme of “Future of the Future.” This was a special moment to mark a half-century of achievement for our organization while looking ahead to speculate about what the future holds. It’s unlikely that anyone there could have imagined all the global and cultural events that have transpired since then or the massive societal shifts we’ve navigated in our daily lives, most recently in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet here we find ourselves. A mere seven years has passed, and we are still a community of passionate individuals looking to be inspired by the most transformative ideas and emboldened by the power of design to tackle some of the world’s most wicked problems. Our

profession is constantly shifting and evolving to keep pace with rapid advancements in technology, cultural trends, and socioeconomic forces. Once siloed disciplines, methodologies, and skill sets now overlap and blur into what is often called simply design. IDC is a space to celebrate these deep interconnections while amplifying the unique and bold voice of industrial designers. Through knowledge exchange and the sharing of ideas, you’ll come away with a fresh perspective and actionable insights ready to be implemented in your own work. IDC is a platform to drive your career forward. Whether you are just starting out or well on your way, this is an opportunity to learn something new or give something back. The schedule, as a comprehensive event, will include the IDC, IDSA Education Symposium, Sponsor/Exhibitor Gallery, IDEA Ceremony & Gala, IDSA Awards Ceremony, IDSA Business Meetings, and Seattle-area excursions. If you can’t make the trip to Seattle, don’t worry! Virtual viewing tickets will be available which will allow you to enjoy for everything that happens on the main stage throughout the entire three day event. www.internationaldesignconference.com

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ACKNOWLEDGING THE BALANCE THE MERITS OF PRACTICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM IN SUSTAINABLE DESIGN

he forces behind the environmental crisis are quiet, invisible blights that spread through convenience, fastpaced consumerism, and inattention. They are easily forgotten, and without vigilance, accountability, and a cultural shift toward transparency, they run rampant. Too often, the conversations around sustainable design are spearheaded by marketing departments mining for information to drive sales, focusing on a reductive environmental story that serves to liberate consumers from guilt and personal responsibility. Performative environmentalism appears good—feels good—without doing good. This industry-wide greenwashing isn’t the result of an organized plot, however. It’s the side effect of a culture made apathetic to the rippling threats of climate change and of an industry desensitized and fatigued into ignoring the complex reality of the business of design and manufacturing.

The CEO of Watson, Clif McKenzie, identified this tension and the environmental risk surrounding simplified narratives, saying, “We have a number of good stories, but at some point we are probably like a lot of other companies. We run the risk of believing our own story and thinking our story is better than it actually is. But if you’re not going after it every day, it’s just yesterday’s news.” The honest story is decidedly more complicated, but I believe it equips designers and manufacturers with more effective tools against environmental apathy within the industry at-large. The truth acknowledges that sustainability is rarely the yardstick each decision is measured against and that the design-to-distribution pipeline is an ever-shifting network of scales that tip and inform each other with every choice made, meaning the best we can do is find a balance that strives for better.

The Messy Truth of Sustainable Design My original intent for this article was to reflect on the commercial furniture collection Haven, which was created in collaboration between Watson and the industrial design duo Mike & Maaike, to share sustainable design techniques and practices with the industry. But over the course of researching and interviewing, it became clear that the story I thought I was telling—a clean narrative about designing products that intentionally incorporate sustainable design choices at every stage of development—wasn’t honest.

The Right Design It’s clear that Mike & Maaike and the Watson team benefit from mutual respect and a kindred design philosophy that creates the framework for a successful working relationship, a strong foundation that leaves room for questioning and the professional friction needed to design something right. One reason for their successful partnership is an unspoken understanding that “right”—environmentally speaking— isn’t one perfect answer. It’s an amorphous destination they navigate toward by cultivating awareness around a

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“Sustainability is rarely the yardstick each decision is measured against.”

product’s potential environmental impacts, a far-reaching list that includes material selection, origin, quantity, waste, fabrication, shipping, recyclability, and longevity. “Right” then means making a series of decisions with imperfect answers that line a middle road that aims to lead to a better destination than where it began. When asked about how they approach finding collaborators that fit their own ethics, Mike Simonian of Mike & Maaike offered his solution for the tension between personal environmental responsibility and finding compatible business partners: “You could take an absolutist approach: ‘Well, I’m not going to work with anybody who doesn’t follow these values exactly, so that I don’t have any tension.’ Or you could say, ‘Well, whoever I’m working with, I’m going to help them improve so that with the products we’ve designed together, we can all take a step in the right direction.’” He posits that changes are incremental and slow to unfold, but that this kind of change is better than none at all. The merits of an approach centered around acknowledging the gray areas of design and manufacturing are subtle and frustratingly gradual. But beyond developing an informed culture that prioritizes curiosity and educated problem-solving, designers have an opportunity to influence and create new processes built around researching and understanding the measurable environmental impacts of their choices. These methods will help prevent the industry from being swept up in whatever green consumerism deems

Right: A table from the Haven collection with a privacy screen that accommodates a monitor mount to add more flexibility for how and where the table can be used.

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Clif McKenzie (left) and Maaike Evers (right) testing a prototype bench from the Haven collection.

in vogue at one time. This awareness honors good holistic design by factoring in variables like functionality, marketability, equitability, and relevancy—which can each be at odds with a product if it is chiefly concerned with sustainability. These fundamental considerations cannot be eclipsed by the goal of making something as green as possible, because that may not lead to the right design—one that people will find intuitive, useful, and actually buy. Maaike Evers of Mike & Maaike called out the laptop table they’d designed for the Haven collection as an example. “We want it to cantilever because it makes it more comfortable to use, but in order to get it to cantilever we have to use heavier steel in portions so it doesn’t bend. We can make it less comfortable and use a lot less material. It could be more ‘sustainable’ if we did this, but it would be less useful and then actually become trash more quickly.” Products that use a less durable green material, aren’t built robustly, or are made too expensive by material choices can easily end up being irrelevant to the market they were intended for, creating more waste in the long run than making compromises throughout the development process ever would have. My point is that it’s paramount we maintain a critical eye toward industry-hyped sustainability practices and materials, because they may not be as effective as green marketing efforts would have us believe. Take a material like bamboo, which is lauded for its rapid regeneration rates when

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compared to wood. But do we know where it’s cultivated? What amount of fuel and resources does it take to harvest and ship it to manufacturing facilities? Are we informed about bamboo farming practices, like the use of pesticides or how laborers are treated? There probably are decent bamboo providers, but we need to get into the habit of digging deeper to verify if our first instinct about a material’s or a practice’s environmental footprint is actually correct. Inviting peers, business partners, and manufacturers to be not just aware but also knowledgeable of the impact their decisions creates a culture that feels incentivized to make informed decisions on sustainability. Businesses can then approach their customers with authentic wins in green design and manufacturing, instead of perpetuating industry greenwashing. In researching the Haven collaboration between Mike & Maaike and Watson, I found the design process exhibited a beautiful marriage of practical solutions that meet the needs laid out by Watson and its clients. These solutions, if not principally guided by environmental sustainability, take into account factors like materiality and fabrication that are environmentally conscious when considering the grander scheme and impact of the designs at hand. While reflecting on that process, they each identified areas where they could enact greater change and opportunities to foster a more informed and accountable industry. The Desire to Change Beyond cultivating internal awareness at the individual and company levels is a philosophical question many industrial designers must ask themselves and those they partner with: Is there a desire to address these changes, and if not, can one be motivated? Truthfully, the answer is not the same for everyone. Simonian noted, “Many companies have that awareness, but they don’t have a desire to change. That determines how successful you can be engaging with a company to improve. And if there isn’t a desire, then you’re not enabled to make changes. But if there is a desire, that’s a huge open door because now you can say, well, you want to do this? Here are some ways.” Because the desire to investigate and invest in new processes and materials was present in their working

relationship, Haven contains design elements that balance environmental and nonenvironmental concerns, creating a line of products that serves and considers the people interacting with them while aiming to be environmentally responsible. These design elements can be broken down into the following camps:

With the Haven pieces, besides a few electronic components in an optional light, they’re fairly simple structures. Wood, steel, or whatever the finish selections make these products easier to repair and easier to responsibly dispose of when these particular pieces reach the end of their respective life cycles.

• Dematerialization and resource conservation: An intersection of sustainability and business is the mutual drive to conserve resources. Consuming less and maximizing the use of what you have saves the costs of raw materials and, for manufacturers, the cost of storing and shipping those resources. It means less material needs to be recycled or wasted at the end of a product’s life. In Watson and Mike & Maaike’s previous collaboration, they created a commercial furniture line that was built very robustly, but with Haven, Simonian explained that they achieved the same level of structural integrity using less material: “We worked with the engineers to find how we can change the angles of the legs in a way that allows the frame to be strong just through the geometry, kind of like the way a triangle is inherently stable so that we could use much thinner materials and still get a really strong, stable product.”

A Necessary Shift It’s apparent that the far-reaching effects of designing and manufacturing products from furniture to technology are overwhelming in scale to a single individual. But in making a shift toward looking at the complex reality of the design– manufacturing pipeline, there is an opportunity to build momentum. We can choose to mold and participate in a culture that values informed, gradual changes that move the needle toward sustainability in a way that has measurable impact and that embraces transparency when discussing the reasoning behind these decisions. People generally want to feel like they’re doing the right thing. But let’s change our understanding that “right” comes in various shades of gray. The only way to know is to be rigorously curious about the choices we make and build momentum through this shift. As Evers puts it, “Transparency, and looking at how complex this issue is means showing where you want to go, which is a great way to connect with like-minded organizations and people to help move towards that greater goal—it’s kind of like when you see little waves that go in the same direction. They can only be so big. But if you have more coming together, they can join and become that big momentous wave, be that big push of energy.”

• The simplicity, form, and relevancy of the design as a whole: Simplicity is at the core of most good design. Using simple shapes to achieve a timeless aesthetic means products are designed for longevity in an era of rapid change. Simply put, the simpler the form, the less likely a piece is to age as tastes change, making it functionally and aesthetically relevant for longer. Simplicity also aids in the product’s ability to adapt to multiple work modes and settings, fitting the needs of many users and preferences throughout a piece’s lifespan. Sustainable design, perhaps most of all, needs to design for longevity. • Material composition and use: Simplicity transcends form and function to include to material selection and use. The materials in a product, how something is constructed, and how many unique materials are brought together in a single design all impact how recyclable and how repairable a product is.

—Katie Kuffel kkuffel@watsonfg.com Katie Kuffel is a content strategist and multimedia artist currently working at Watson and is passionate about fostering internal accountability to consumers through honest marketing efforts.

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DESIGNING BETTER CLIMATE FUTURES TOGETHER

Digital sustainability solutions like Footprint Business (above) empower multiple stakeholders in a company to collaborate in a collective process of transformation.

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he last few years have been challenging for most consumers and businesses, resulting in a new sense of responsibility for social well-being and the environment. According to a study by the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV), 93% of consumers globally state that COVID-19 changed their views on environmental sustainability and social responsibility. The IBV study has also shown that 79% of consumers are more loyal to purposeful brands. Therefore, it is only when companies respond to changed consumer behaviors and needs that they can create long-term customer retention. By both addressing environmental issues and putting the focus on the consumers’ values, businesses might lay an important foundation for their success and positively influence their image. Ripe for Change Consumers are demanding sustainability from the brands they buy. The IBV study reports that more than two-thirds of consumers say that environmental issues are significantly important to them. The core question is then, In what way can designers contribute to sustainable solutions? According to the BBC Smart Guide to Climate Change, our everyday gadgets supported by the internet and systems account for about 3.7% of the overall global greenhouse emissions. At the same time, we are facing increased consumption of resources and higher energy costs. By raising awareness and sparking a discussion about sustainable design, we are getting one step closer to new solutions. Especially as designers, it’s about approaching problems from different points of view to identify the true consumer needs and create a unique experience. The Need for Shared Ownership Design is a response, an activity you do in the break between gaining information and considering a wide range of options. To drive large change, which is often needed to make a significant impact in the context of sustainability, requires many stakeholders to formulate and explore the options. A service-design mindset and new methods around circular design provide a valuable canvas to facilitate that process. As designers, we often put a lot of pressure on

ourselves to come up with innovations or improvements. The reality in the context of sustainability is different. It’s not about you as a designer being the focus—and that might be a good thing. You have to leverage the expertise and knowledge of different domain experts to understand where the actual problems are. Doing so reduces the pressure on you and empowers you to be the facilitator of the problemsolving process, instead of the single innovator. As designers, we are trained to learn quickly, adapt to environments where we do not have strong expertise, and formulate our insights and perspectives into a narrative and artifact that materialize a response. That is exactly what designers can focus on in this facilitation process: Listen and create the solution together with the experts. Setting up the right mindset for all stakeholders is also key as there might be assumptions, biases, and quick judgments that could stand in the way. Often innovation is counterintuitive, so educating your stakeholders and moderating that process is important. Your goal should be for other stakeholders—if possible, key decision-makers— to take a front-stage role in the journey. You want to have as many signatures on the response and final concept as possible and collect “co-authors” who feel strong ownership of the final idea and actions. If these people are also involved in the implementation, maybe because of their role within the company, there is a good chance that your innovation will survive and be executed. This not-invented-here syndrome stems from a lack of shared ownership and is a common problem with large innovation initiatives. Employees and stakeholders are much more likely to implement innovation if they feel like they were a part of the creation process. Your goal as a designer is to create shared ownership by involving these exact people. Infusing Sustainability It’s estimated that 80% of the decisions that influence sustainability are determined in the design phase. With that in mind, it’s time for designers to use their voices to infuse sustainability into key decisions throughout the development process. To be successful, business empathy is key. As designers, we are taught to have empathy for our

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users, and when it comes to system change and executing more sustainable solutions, we should apply the same consideration to our business stakeholders. Listen and try to understand what problem they want to solve and what performance indicators are driving them. Then use this information to create a win-win between their goals and a more sustainable design—in other words, don’t just talk about sustainability; you must address the stakeholder’s objectives as well. Unfortunately, many key decision-makers believe that sustainability increases costs, a bias that might stand in your way. Architects and urban designers address this problem by talking about how their design reduces a project’s cost and increases its durability, attractiveness, or longevity or by highlighting other tangible benefits of a design concept. They do not talk directly about their project’s environmental impact, even if that is exactly one of the positive effects. Digital interface designers can do the same by talking about how reducing download sizes will help a website load faster, how decreasing the number of steps a user needs to perform will decrease mobile data usage, or how focusing on flexibility when integrating a design system will enable it to be easily changed later without new coding efforts. All these efforts also reduce the environmental impact of a site design—but it is not the argument you should lead with. When you position sustainability as an add-on to the other benefits your design promises, you will be more persuasive—not only for your design itself but also f or sustainability. To drive system innovation, you must first identify and align with the outcomes. As Matt Wallaert wrote in his book Start at the End, aligning with your desired outcomes and key performance indicators before beginning a project and exploring what the road forward looks like, you will not only accelerate the innovation process but also unite stakeholders. Oftentimes, this requires a speculative design approach. You may end up creating a prototype of a solution that doesn’t yet exist and that you don’t yet know how to implement. Exploring what the potential, probable, and preferred futures are can reduce the risk for the stakeholders. Failing to explore will leave key decision-makers without the knowledge of what nonaction could lead to.

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Let’s look more deeply at how designers can facilitate this process: • Materialize futures: As designers, we contribute to system innovation through facilitation and materialization. We facilitate the stakeholders’ process of problem-solving and help materialize ideas and futures. We can support stakeholders by using narrative storyboards, visualizing ideas via quick doodles in brainstorming sessions, editing a concept movie, or discussing or designing a physical or digital prototype of the ideas. In this case, it is more important to be fast than to be correct. You want to fail and learn quickly. By visualizing information, you have the chance to align everyone’s theoretical ideas and thoughts about what they mean and produce an artifact that brings everyone together on the same page. This will take you one step closer to the actual outcome. • Have a MVP mindset: A common mistake is to appreciate only full system change. While it is good to aim high, don’t underestimate the impact that can be created if your solution only reduces its environmental impact. While it is good to explore a larger vision and how you can maximize the impact of a broad business transformation, the reality is that these changes take a lot of time to implement, especially when you work with a larger corporation. It is important to celebrate and appreciate the small achievements at the start. As an example, even if you can only slightly reduce the packaging design, you can produce a tremendous impact if you consider how often the packaging is consumed and how the impact of the reduction is therefore multiplied. • Empower communities: The ultimate goal of system innovation and a circular-design mindset is to have a lasting impact by educating people to take action themselves. Sustainability is not a department but rather a mindset across a whole company. One thing I learned from talking to Robert Fabricant, co-founder of Dalberg Design and former vice president of creative of frog design, is the importance of including local communities. Often, the urban transformation of rural and fast-growing areas of this world comes from outside stakeholders; local citizens don’t

“Sustainability is not a department but rather a mindset across a whole company.” participate in the innovation and transformation process because they lack education. Compare this dynamic to the situation in business: You want to empower departments and stakeholders so they can innovate without you being there. • Design for transparency: Nowadays people demand more transparency about the environmental impact of products and business offerings. From over 100 user research sessions, I’ve gained many insights into the importance of transparency. By relaying the impact of your solution on reducing carbon-dioxide emissions through a QR code, for example, you can create trust and transparency with consumers about the environmental impact of your product. If it is a climate-neutral product, you can further indicate how this was achieved, such as by protecting endangered rainforest trees with a certified carbon-removal project. Communicating your efforts to reduce the footprint of your product and making your goals and processes transparent will further demonstrate your commitment. Unfortunately, the average consumer lacks a general understanding to put carbon-dioxide values into context. To mitigate this, you can equate your reduced carbon footprint to real-life actions, for example, how many vehicle miles, paper coffee cups, or steaks your product saves. Make sure to not overload users with information; give them the option to drill deeper and see more detailed information when and if they are ready for it. Creating awareness and making this information relatable will enhance communication efforts around the actual product design. When you can help users celebrate the amount of carbon dioxide they saved by choosing a more sustainable option, like your product, they are likely to share it with their network.

to make more sustainable products but also with what problems the user is trying to solve, and reflect if certain actions could reduce the product’s footprint. To foster behaviors in your digital products, you may want to ask yourself how you can create a hook to incentivize positive actions. Creating a habit-forming product starts with a trigger, a feeling such as hunger, and is followed by action. Designers can shape people’s decision-making process by nudging them toward a sustainable option. Begin to earn their loyalty by giving them an unexpected variable reward, such as a level increase or impact score. The users’ investment in the product will then grow as they have already invested time in it and collected rewards.

March Forward Never before have designers had as many tools and methods in place to address global problems as today. In addition, design as a discipline has never been as relevant in business as it is today. Many stakeholders have started to recognize that strategic problem-solving can be enhanced by involving designers. The global issues we face today cannot be solved by designers alone, but we can help to accelerate the process by supporting and teaming up with science and other disciplines and working toward better futures together. —Sebastian Gier info@sebastiangier.com Sebastian Gier is the co-founder of Footprint, a climatetech startup that helps businesses reduce the climate impact of employees and products. He is also the host of the Designdrives.org podcast.

• Design for behavior outcomes: Thinking about user behaviors when interacting with your product is important. Try to reflect on your intentions to foster sustainable behaviors and ask yourself how you can nudge users toward positive interactions. In terms of digital products, this is true when it comes to visual hierarchy and what interactions you emphasize with button colors, for example. Make sure your call-to-action buttons align with your goal

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DESIGNING WITH SUNLIGHT “We have ten years to nearly halve global carbon emissions to stay below 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming from preindustrial levels.” —Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, All We Can Save

he climate crisis has created an urgent need to transition out of fossil-fuel-based transportation and into lower-carbon options like active mobility (walking and biking), micromobility (electric bikes and scooters), and clean public transit. Our car-centric cities need new infrastructure and innovation to support low-carbon mobility and transit-oriented housing and to untangle communities from traffic congestion and pollution. According to the EPA, in 2019 transportation accounted for 29% of US greenhouse gas emissions, while 25% is attributed to the electricity. What role can designers play to drive climate adaptation strategies and sustainable behavior change worldwide? When I was a design student at UT-Austin, I bought a used electric scooter during the 2008 economic recession, a time of shocking gas price hikes similar to what we are experiencing today. I quickly learned that all I needed to charge my electric scooter was one solar panel and an inverter-connected battery system costing less than $500. Traveling around the city with my lightweight solar scooter

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was both affordable and liberating. That initial ride generated the momentum that carries my work forward today. Now, as I work with cities in Texas and California on solar and micromobility infrastructure connecting to public transit, I see increased awareness that most cities need basic protected bike lane networks to encourage commuters and everyday cyclists that it’s safe to give up private vehicles. According to the 2019 US census data, only 5% of commuting is done with public transportation and 40% of that is in New York City. Look at the way the pandemic has shown us how sidewalk and safe street adaptations, like parking-spot dining structures and residential traffic-reduction barriers, support public health, exercise, conviviality, and dining. Dr. Destiny Thomas, a transportation planner and founder of Thrivance Group, a firm working on safe public spaces especially for Black, Indigenous, and transgender people, reminds us that community support for slow street projects is crucial: “By design, their ‘quick-build’ nature

overrides the public feedback that is necessary for deep community support. Without that genuine engagement, I feared that pandemic-induced pedestrian street redesigns would deepen inequity and mistrust in communities that have been disenfranchised and underserved for generations.” Google Maps shows 75 miles of slow streets in Oakland, CA, which are currently being evaluated to determine who is benefiting from these transformations. Could we make the first- and last-mile transit problem easier with communitysupported urban street improvements for pedestrians and bicycles instead of cars? Solar Design Basics Ed Mazria of Architecture 2030, a nonprofit focused on mitigating climate change, reminds us that there is great promise in non-fossil-fuel technology: “Designing and constructing energy efficient buildings, combined with a massive harnessing of renewable energy, makes it not only possible but also profitable for buildings to operate without fossil fuels.” Solar rays can be harvested as solar electricity through photovoltaic panels made from semiconductor solar cells that can directly power a device like a fan, be stored in a battery, or be distributed to the grid with net metering. Passive solar energy uses the placement and design of a building to reduce energy consumption, using windows to collect and store thermal energy, reducing the need for artificial indoor lighting during the day, and passively storing heat to warm water, floors, etc. Rooftop solar applications have become more popular and affordable with the availability of creative homeowner financing, an increased economy of scale for manufacturing, and improvements in technology advancements. Could future construction policies require new buildings to be designed with solar-design benefits in mind? While working with people new to the field and with my industrial design students at the University of California Davis, I developed the Designing with the Sun solar curriculum,

an in-depth educational tool covering renewable energy, electricity basics, solar energy design principles, solar job training, and solar mobility innovation. This resource is free to use and can be found at adaptingcitylab.ucdavis.edu. The curriculum is designed for students and designers to learn how to decide what solar technology—solar panel type, energy needs, materials options, and product life cycle— would be most suited to their project goals. How could solar power your projects? Sustainable design strategies and principles have evolved over the years to reduce planned obsolescence and disposability (design for the dump), extend product life cycles and durability, encourage circularity and efficiency, and use better materials and manufacturing processes. The production of solar panels generates emissions, but they can produce clean electricity for 30 years. Battery research, investment, and innovation are reducing the environmental impacts of lithium extraction and cobalt mining while improving battery recycling systems. The Electric Drive Solar Kiosk is a key example of my studio’s completed projects. Winner of the Austin Green Award, the kiosk is part of Austin Energy’s Electric Drive showcase at the Seaholm EcoDistrict. It combines solar technology, public art, and civic placemaking while providing shaded seating, LED lighting, and free solar power for charging electric bikes, electric wheelchairs, and mobile electronics day and night. The design repurposes an iconic 1950s gas pump outfitted with electrical outlets and solar battery storage. The goal of the project is to spark conversations about renewable technology, community well-being, and culture change. Sited on a demonstration green-energy street that invites the public to use state-ofthe-art charging options for electric bikes, scooters, and cars, this station provides public furniture, information on bike and car sharing, and access to local hike-and-bike trails along the Colorado River.

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Top: The MacArthur BART Mobility Hub concept design for Oakland, CA (designed by Beth Ferguson and Jovita Wattimena, Adapting City Lab, 2022). Bottom: The Electric Drive Solar Kiosk in Austin, TX (designed by Beth Ferguson and Dallas Swindle, Adapting City Lab, 2017).

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Mobility Hubs In his book Ecological Design, architect Sim Van der Ryn says, “In many ways, the environmental crisis is a design crisis. It is a consequence of how things are made, buildings are constructed, and landscapes are used.” According to the “Making COP26 Count” report from the C40 Cities Mayors network and the International Transport Workers’ Federation, “Public transport must double in cities over the next decade to meet the 1.5°C target” and prevent extreme climate change. We cannot rely on electric vehicles to decarbonize the transportation sector. Investments in electrifying expanded public transit fleets and safe walking and biking infrastructure will promote economic growth while supporting communities that rely on public transit for healthcare, school, and employment. Could updated mobility hubs increase public transit ridership by enhancing a connection to active mobility (walking and biking) and offer solar charging stations for personal or shared electric bikes and scooters? In spring 2021, the Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) launched a Mobility Hub competition using its MTC Mobility Hub Implementation Playbook tool to help establish sites that bring together high-capacity public transit, bike/car share, and forms of mobility other than private vehicles. Mobility Hubs have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by highlighting low-carbon transit options, equity, ridership growth, and universal design and amplifying alternatives to private vehicles nationwide. Eight projects around the Bay Area have been chosen to undertake this communitydriven mobility hub design transformation at locations that include bus, ferry, train, bikeshare, and pedestrian facilities. The MacArthur BART plaza was awarded a MTC Mobility Hub grant to implement wayfinding, transit information, solar e-bike charging, and universal design to support the visually impaired. The team consists of Tian Feng, the BART district architect; Greg Kehret of Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired; and me from Adapting City Lab at UC Davis. The MacArthur Station is an important BART transfer point in North Oakland near the heart of the Temescal district. The team’s project improvements reduce greenhouse gas emissions by highlighting low-carbon transit options (walking, biking,

micromobility, and public transit) and encouraging healthy alternatives to private vehicles. Micromobility Services Micromobility services—shared bikes, e-bikes and e-scooters—are seen everywhere around the world, often by offering affordable last-mile rides from public transit hubs and urban centers. Sharing the public right of way is vital to the growth of micromobility, but it’s rarely wellplanned, resulting in obstacles and safety issues like sidewalk riding and trip hazards from abandoned free floating e-scooters. There is an exciting future for adaptable green infrastructure and regenerative placemaking that will meet the needs of different urban climates, terrains, and communities. Industrial designers, now is the time to get moving on the clean mobility revolution! What can we do to ensure the equitable distribution of sidewalk seating, shared micromobility, and car-free zones and prevent our streets from becoming clogged with vehicles (parked as well as moving) and reduce emissions, heat, and stress? It’s Time We’re past the tipping point. Responsible designers and innovators have an imperative and opportunity to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. As a global IDSA network, we must strengthen renewable energy research, development, investment, and implementation. Urban design that supports active mobility and public transit connectivity must be prioritized during our low-carbon transition and include dense housing affordability, accessibility, universal design, and social infrastructure. This vital transition will help the planet stay below the 1.5–2 degrees Celsius climate targets identified by the Paris Agreement in 2016 and prevent catastrophic harm to our irreplaceable planet. —Beth Ferguson, IDSA bferguson@ucdavis.edu Beth Ferguson is a designer whose practice blends solar mobility, climate resiliency, and public engagement. She is an assistant professor of design at the University of California Davis and the director of the Adapting City Lab.

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BREAKING BARRIERS FOR PLASTIC PRACTICALITY

sking where the design world would be without the semiconductor and microchip industry is the same as asking where the new product development world would be without the plastics industry. Plastics surround us daily; are woven into the fabric of our daily lives, and are one of the most versatile, malleable, and durable materials. The sheer volume of effort dedicated to processing and refining plastic materials in the last decades is almost immeasurable. The time we, as research, design, and development (R&D&D) innovators, spend in the field with our research participants is precious; it is vital for us to be in the same shared spaces as them in context and in the moment. Going where life is lived, we explore their worlds in their homes and places of work, gathering the rich data we need to paint a nuanced picture of a population or cohort in these spaces. Until the 1950s, people treated plastics the same way they treated other precious materials: They saw value in it, but it was difficult to acquire, produce, and craft beautiful output from. After World War II, consumergoods companies discovered the many advantages of plastics, and manufacturing became easier. By the early 1960s, billions of plastic items were starting to fill landfills or were incinerated. Unfortunately, there has not been a commensurate focus on managing plastic materials from cradle to reuse

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proportionate to the revenue the plastic industry generates. With that, a key question must be asked: With the incredible capabilities at our disposal to reset, recycle, and reuse plastics with appropriate technology and research and development efforts, why has there not been more appreciation shown for such efforts and what we can do to increase such a focus? The quick answer to that is that although there are many issues that must be addressed and opportunities to uncover, one such area to pay particular attention to is the growing demand and appreciation of recycled plastic being used in many new product development and innovation products and services. Where We Are Today Looking at the raw data, every year an estimated 31.9 million tons of mismanaged plastic waste are produced. This equates to a loss of roughly $16 billion. The crux of the problem with recycling is accurately separating the different plastics, for example, PET, commonly used for most consumer products, from HDPE. If these materials are not separated to the highest degree possible, the quality of the recycled plastic and its reusability suffers. This then directly addresses a key barrier to more wide-ranging recycling and where big corporations such as Veolia or Suez have made substantial efforts to make HDPE, PLA, and PET recycling possible. Interestingly, although PET and HDPE are widely

recycled in the United States, these types of plastics make up only a quarter of the world’s plastic trash. Mechanical plastics-separation technology, which has been in use the longest, shreds and organizes the materials via density in a liquid medium. The materials to be separated are submerged and followed by infrared separation technologies, but this only works with larger items. Ocean waste or plastic that has been worn down to smaller composite levels cannot be accurately identified with infrared. While chemical recycling has been praised as a new alternative to mechanical recycling, it extracts oxygen and applies heat and, thus, is highly energy intensive. This process emits 3.34 kilograms of carbon dioxide per unit of plastic produced, thus creating further negative environmental effects. Interestingly, through pushing the barriers of existing production methods and the development of new technologies by the scientific community, more efficient recycling is increasingly possible. Examples include

Starbucks creating an entire Partner Waste Program as part of its Greener Stores Innovation Challenge to focus on full recyclability, and in 2020 Costa Coffee, Starbucks’ largest competitor in Europe, committing to recycling 500 million coffee cups a year along with all their plastic waste. Then there is Coca-Cola’s Sustainable Packaging Design Program with the goal of by 2030 having at least 25% of its output by volume sold in either refillable/returnable glass or plastic bottles or in fountain dispensers with reusable packaging. Or the even more aggressive Pepsi and its Pep+ Initiative vowing to reduce 35% of its virgin plastics use by 2025 and targeting an incredible goal of 50% by 2030. Plastics-focused NGOs have emerged to support the development and production of systems to attack this exact problem. Prince Charles’ Sustainable Markets Initiative, in conjunction with Jonathan Ive and LoveFrom, launched the Terra Carta Seal to recognize organizations committing to a future that is sustainable and puts nature, people, and the planet at the heart of their efforts. The Ocean Clean-

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EDUCATION SYMPOSIUM ( R E ) C O N N E C T The academic community invites ALL to come together for an IDSA Education Symposium like no other. We say good-bye to just listening and hello to reconnecting with one another face-to-face. We aim to reintroduce students, faculty, professionals, and industry to the playful spirit of design, by disrupting our mundane (virtual) routines with fun, inspiring and engaging physical and mental activities. We seek to re-establish genuine friendships and re-energize.

( R E) P L AY

(R E)F U EL

Join us to get inspired through stories and play. We aim to recover and uncover knowledge by embracing and addressing our shortcomings and historical blind spots, such as Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and Sustainability. We will also celebrate what’s gone right to learn how we can continue on this path.

Get invigorated and inspired through hands-on activities, discourse, and place-based interactions connecting the events with the larger environments and the people within.

(RE)F R A ME Focusing on the future, we will investigate and re-envision industrial design and where we should head as a community of practice.

September 13-14, 2022 Seattle, Washington IDSA Educators can take advantage of a deeply discounted registration rate which includes all portions of the highly popular International Design Conference. www.internationaldesignconference.com 36

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Up organization is building both vessels and machinery for beaches to clean up the Atlantic Garbage Patch, which is 1.6 million square kilometers, equivalent in size to the 18th largest country in the world. The Alliance to End Plastic Waste is bringing together corporations, municipalities, the public, and NGOs to exchange knowledge and raise awareness about the issue. These are some of the countless organizations and individuals helping to bring nations and our world together to save our natural environments. They are also enabling designers and engineers to pursue futurefocused research, design, and development activities using plastics, composite plastics, and innovative material science efforts stemming from plastics. The challenge for designers, engineers, and innovators is the lack of transparency that haunts the plastics industry. Figures about recycling effectiveness differ between studies, the disclosure of waste export and the volume of recycling is often unclear, and data collection is tricky, especially at remote locations. However, by raising awareness and with designers and engineers focusing on new product development using recycled plastics, international companies can both highlight their achievements and address the pain points of recycling and the circular plastic economy. Different entities can then come together to work on new innovative efforts by manufacturers of plastics recycling equipment to develop new and breakthrough ways to tackle the complexities of identifying and quickly and easily recycling an ever-smaller scale of plastics items found in our oceans and landfills. Where We Can Go Next New perspectives and mechanical systems born from advanced research, design, and development are currently being devised that provide even more flexible and mobile ways to recycle plastics to suit the geography and infrastructure of areas that suffer the most from micro pollution (smaller than normal plastic recycling identification and sorting systems) in places such as Indonesia and Thailand. RecycleEye is focused on using AI technology to accurately identify different materials for recycling. FloatSync is launching recycling units that fit inside a

shipping container and decentralize plastic separation and micro separation for up to six types of plastics. These technologies help international retailers such as Stroodles, which is reducing single-use plastics by utilizing alternative organic materials and offering multiple consumer-focused new product development projects, and Damn Plastic, which has created and launched international retail outlets to sell non-plastic alternative products and specialty recycled plastic designs of everyday objects. Many efforts are converging to create a full plasticsrecycling ecosystem where designers, engineers, and innovators can push even further to make a difference in the plastics world. The capacity of the recycling plastics industry and those in research, design, and development focused on reducing plastic waste continues to grow. By harnessing existing methods of separating plastic and mechanical recycling through the rise of ESG (environmental, social, and governance) investing, thought leaders and innovative fullcycle mechanical systems manufacturers can also further push the development and improvement of such systems. We have a long way to go, but we are getting closer to a world of at least 50% fully recycled cradle-to-end product efforts that harness advanced new product development and manufacturing capabilities. It’s an exciting time to be sure. —Gregory N. Polletta Gregory Polletta is a designer, engineer, and innovator; a professor of design, engineering, new product development, and innovation at Harvard, RCA London, The ENPC PhD Engineering and MBA Program Paris, The Parsons School of Design, and many others; the founder of iGNITIATE, an innovation and new product development firm; and co-founder of the award-winning international design brand gregorysung.

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WILL CIRCULARITY BE ENOUGH TO SAVE US FROM ENVIRONMENTAL COLLAPSE?

he COVID-19 pandemic has unsettled society in unexpected ways, making sustainability—the goal of humans living in balance with nature—look more distant than ever. The comments and discussions at the 2021 IDSA Sustainability Deep Dive were great indicators of the co-existing passion and anxiety felt by participants, highlighting the need for sustainability to be the focus of any plan for the future. Both presenters and participants cited circularity as the most promising pathway to sustainability, almost akin to a magic bullet that would save us all. Since 2014, the European Union has been pursuing industrial strategies to move to a sustainable, low-carbon, resource-efficient, and competitive economy that would see the economy evolve from a linear model into a circular one. I have chosen to not tiptoe around the topic, selecting plastics, a material class with a huge ecological footprint, to see how they fit within the narrative of circular economies. According to the findings published by Livia Cabernard and colleagues in “Growing Environmental Footprint of Plastics Driven by Coal Combustion” in Nature, plastics, which are derived from oil and natural gas, are one of

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the most visible examples of environmental pollution from extraction, formulation, and production all the way through to consumption and disposal. These materials are completely synthetic, and their unique structures make them immune to the natural decomposition and regenerative processes that would allow them to be a part of the natural nutrient flow that sustains life on Earth. In this essay, I will present arguments on why circular practices based only on recycling—whether it be through design or the economy—will not lead to sustainability and must be coupled with reductions in consumption. What Is a Circular Economy? According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the circular economy begins with the question of what it will take to transform our throwaway economy into one where waste is eliminated, resources are circulated, and nature is regenerated. It is an economic system based on decoupling economic activity from the consumption of resources. Driven by design and transitioning to renewable energy and materials, the principles of a circular economy

can be summarized as eliminating waste and pollution, circulating products and materials at their highest value, and regenerating nature. The circular economy is an ambitious concept that sets its sights on providing tools to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss while ensuring prosperity, growth, jobs, and resilience, all while still cutting greenhouse gas emissions, waste, and pollution. Critics say that this vision of the circular economy misses the key point that endless economic growth is not possible on a finite planet. Researchers point to findings that indicate that human activity has exceeded the limits of the nine processes that regulate the stability and resilience of Earth systems. This concept has been visualized by a team of 28 scientists at the Stockholm Resilience Centre and clearly indicates that without reductions in the consumption level of affluent countries, we can never achieve any of the goals set out by the circular economy. There is no plan in the current definitions of the circular economy that points to reducing consumption levels anywhere. Instead, the dominant idea seems to be about moving toward an unlimited form of circular consumption. Economic growth is calculated as the percentage of changes in the gross domestic product (GDP). GDP measures the value of the final goods and services produced and is the most popular indicator of a nation’s overall economic health. But as economist Peter Victor argues in his seminal book, Managing without Growth, in reality, GDP measures the throughput of material and energy through the economy. Victor, along with fellow economists Richard Easterlin and Mathias Binswanger, has noted that economic growth does not necessarily increase well-being since often environmental externalities (unintended consequences) and other adverse social effects of economic growth may be rising faster than personal incomes, so they outweigh the benefits of increased private consumption. Changes in GDP are calculated based on the last reporting, so, essentially, by closing the loop of material flow, circularity is proposing a GDP of zero in which the economy remains the same size. Since the current rate of consumption is exceeding the bio-capacity (the regenerative capacity) of our planet, regenerating nature, another key goal of the circular economy, will require that we reduce our consumption of resources to a level that allows nature to

regenerate, which would be even lower than the 0% GDP mentioned previously. Recycling Resources Back into the Technical Stream One of the key tenets of the circular economy is recycling, which itself is not a new concept since humans, who have long been faced with the challenges of acquiring resources, have always tried to maximize the use and lifespan of products and only recycled them as a last resort. “Throwaway living” is a term first published in a positive context in Life magazine in 1955, heralding a shift from the thrifty lifestyles of the past toward a new carefree style of living. With the advent of industrialization, new energy sources, and ease of extraction, economies driven by the quest for profit maximization have favored the ease of continued extraction of virgin resources over recycling. Internal documents have uncovered that even from the earliest days of the plastics recycling program in 1974, oil and gas executives understood that recycling plastics was not economically feasible, but they embarked on advertising campaigns to persuade the public otherwise. In a 2020 investigation that aired on National Public Radio titled “How Big Oil Misled the Public into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled,” Laura Sullivan provides compelling evidence about the ploy to make billions of dollars selling the world new plastic. Recycling results in downcycling, with the plastic degrading along the way even if you begin with homogenous batches of cleaned plastics. Since most plastics are custom formulated with specialized additives to enhance performance, most plastic components become too complex to recycle. On March 2, 2022, the United Nations Environment Assembly voted to create a legally binding global plastics pollution treaty by 2024. While all parties initially claimed victory, there seem to be very different views on how this treaty should be outlined. The petrochemical industry has already indicated that it will not support caps on production and instead wants to focus on recycling and waste management approaches. This could be a major hurdle. Studies, as John Geddie and Joe Brock report in “Analysis: Big Oil’s Plastic Boom Threatens U.N.’s ‘Historic Pollution Pact’ ” in Reuters, indicate that less than 10% of plastics are recycled as new production is so plentiful.

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BIOSPHERE INTEGRITY

E/MSY CLIMATE CHANGE

BII

(Not yet quantified)

NOVEL ENTITIES (Not yet quantified)

LAND-SYSTEM CHANGE

STRATOSPHERIC OZONE DEPLETION

FRESHWATER USE

ATMOSPHERIC AEROSOL LOADING (Not yet quantified)

OCEAN ACIDIFICATION

P N BIOGEOCHEMICAL FLOWS

Below boundary (safe) In zone of uncertainty (increasing risk) Beyond zone of uncertainty (high risk)

An illustration of planetary boundaries showing that climate change, biodiversity loss, land use, and the nutrient cycles for nitrogen and phosphorus have exceeded safe operating limits, taking our planetary systems into unprecedented territory. Designed by Azote for the Stockholm Resilience Centre, based on analysis in Persson et al 2022 and Steffen et al 2015.

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This seems to eliminate the possibility that the oil and gas industry would be held accountable or be forced to cut production of plastics until they finally live up to the unsubstantiated fairy-tale claims of the recyclability of existing stocks. This would be a critical first step in moving toward circularity, but until that time, we need to treat plastics as what they are: a nonrecyclable, nonrenewable resource that we are wasting on frivolous consumption rather than saving for future generations. Regulating Material to Protect the Public You may be wondering if besides my unwavering optimism I have any other reason to believe that the plastics industry can be forced to take ownership of the glut of plastic pollution that exists and implement real recycling solutions. In the past, there have been many cases where collective good has caused governments to regulate the types of material that can be used in society. One such example is the removal of lead from the solder in the electronics industry. Tin-lead solder is a metal alloy that is melted and used to bond electronic components. The health and environmental risks of exposure to high levels of lead are known to cause anemia, weakness, and kidney and brain damage. Despite overwhelming reason to remove it from use as the industry standard, it was hard to imagine a future of making electronic components without lead in the solder. As of July 2006, European Union guidelines banned the use of lead solders, leading to the creation of several other production methods, including laser spot welding. This allows producers to meet the European guidelines on electrical and electronic equipment waste and enables the reduction of hazardous substances. The way CFC and BPA were phased out of production offers two additional examples of how industry was able to pivot from established materials to innovate and create new, less toxic substitutes. While these examples point to the benefits of regulation to protect the health of the public, can this type of environmental regulation benefit industry? In 1992, economist Michael Porter hypothesized that strict environmental regulation can induce efficiency and stimulate innovation for polluting industries, leading to increased productivity. This hypothesis has been extensively studied and become the subject of much debate, specifically around ways polluting industries can reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In 2017, George Van Leeuwen and Pierre Mohnen published a comprehensive study titled “Revisiting the Porter Hypothesis: An Empirical Analysis of Green Innovation for the Netherlands” in the Economics of Innovation and New Technology. It examined the effect of

environmental regulation on green investment leading to innovation and productive efficiency. This study used data from three separate surveys conducted on thousands of Dutch firms over six years. This research concluded that it was possible to have a win-win situation for environmental protection, as well as growth for industry, as long as the conditions were stringent and comprehensive. Final thoughts Kris De Decker (2018), creator and author of the LowTech Magazine blog, has extensively studied resource consumption and concludes that more responsible resource use is a great start but not sufficient for circularity as 71% of all resources (including the plastics I have used as an example) cannot be recycled or reused. Currently, 44% of resources are used as energy sources and 27% are permanently used in buildings, structures, and products with long life cycles. Without a reduction in consumption, circularity will remain a soothing swan song as we hurtle toward environmental collapse. We can see that the move to sustainable futures is not just about materials and their manufactured life cycles but about a holistic approach to how humans live and interact with the world. This approach necessitates the ability to look beyond the lens of centering humans as the focus of profit-driven economic activity and to consider how we can lessen our impact on the world. I draw upon the progressive concepts of Tony Fry, who in his book Design as Politics sheds the mask of neutrality in design to argue that design is a political act. Designers acting as a service industry are directly responsible for eliminating future pathways for sustainability, a process he names “de-futuring.” The first step in meaningful action is recognizing that industrial designers can accomplish so much more than designing products for industries focused on the continued reckless extraction of resources. Using our collective talents and creativity, we can begin the difficult journey of transitioning from sustainability to regenerative practices by reducing consumption, lowering carbon footprints, and focusing on social well-being —Sayeh Dastgheib-Beheshti, IDSA beheshti@sayeh.ca Sayeh Dastgheib-Beheshti is a PhD candidate at the York University Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change. She is also the chair of the Toronto chapter of IDSA.

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CMF: THE GLUE THAT BINDS

ith the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic and remote work, I’ve had time to reconsider what a successful CMF design team looks like and how it can make great strides in sustainability when an organization is motivated. Successful CMF has grown well beyond its initial promise of delivering a well-considered color and material execution to the shelf. It is the result of collaboration between flexible and creative partners who together can elevate the best parts of a concept underpinned by the fundamental skills that blend artistic vision with engineering feasibility and, increasingly, sustainability advancements. The Ingredients A successful CMF program starts with designers who embrace the relationships around them, lean into empathy (for the customer and their teammates), and know the power of asking the right questions at the right time. This approach also leads to strong design and intentional CMF making it into the world and into the hands of someone for whom it matters. Creating a successful program is to build a team with purpose, support, and partnerships, namely, partnering with other designers, engineers, and suppliers. CMF designers who are in the position to be key partners in process development and business assessment, not surprisingly, deliver better results. The success of their craft depends on being included and creating space for questions, adjustments, and challenges to production. The best projects of my career have been a marriage of ID, CMF, and engineering. These partnerships were not always equal but were so interwoven that it’s hard to recall now who owned what and how we ended up with a product we could all be proud of. CMF designers aren’t mystics who magically make production reality. Nor are they coloring bots to be activated to apply the right color and finish at the end of the line. Recently, someone told me that CMF designers—and the actual CMF—were the glue of a larger project or team.

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That made me smile; it’s really quite true when things are going right. CMF strategy and process cannot only connect parts to each other and products to people but also hold concepts together through milestones, over the hump of design, into production, and even bleeding into marketing. CMF designers are not always innately gifted to be the design glue. I tend to believe that the discipline invites those with passionate curiosity and pervasive empathy, qualities that are part of the CMF secret sauce. I also believe that hesitancy to own these qualities can create challenges for CMF design. When only our artistic eye is regarded, we often don’t step up to correct assumptions or represent our own skills. While there is art in the CMF discipline, there are also complementary skills (taught and fought) that create sensorial strategies around experiences. These skills involve properly researching and synthesizing trends, creating road maps and plans, and knowing the technical limits of materials and processes and where to push for advancements. There is also great potential when you recognize the power of CMF glue. The term “political” is dirty in all the design organizations I’ve worked with, but understanding relationships and roles and creating connections to deliver better results together leads to clean design. Aligning a vision with ID, sourcing the right material with supplier connections, honing an execution with engineering, communicating the big idea over and over—this is where great designs or design advancements are lost when the CMF glue isn’t strong. The glue mindset needs to be as pervasive as your organization allows, be it a team of two or 30. Sustainability Designing for sustainability goes far beyond assigning a recycled material to a spec sheet. Sustainability, like CMF, is a poor name for such a huge topic. It takes teams of experts to evaluate and break down the impacts of not only the materials we design with but also our design’s larger impact on the earth and the communities touched in sourcing, production, and consumption. Sustainable

design isn’t as simple as material assignment; there are tradeoffs and shifting compromises along the path of product development that aren’t cut and dry. Even when Team Glue is strong, sustainability can still struggle at scale. Within normal processes and constraints, once mass-production details conflict with natural variance, or if the risk of newer sustainable materials challenges established standard metrics, the drive for breakthrough sustainability can be derailed. When the job demands quantity, standardization, and speed, most CMF designers find that emerging sustainable materials and processes can be at odds with the industry. It’s not difficult to understand why some of the most striking examples of sustainable CMF are accomplished in smaller, artisanal, or independent productions. At Logitech, when we initially set out to design for sustainability, we first looked at our shortcomings: expertise, experience, and education. The most obvious task has been to build out internal and external capabilities and partners in sustainable operations, sourcing, engineering, and materials. Investing time into concept projects (with plenty of trial, error, and assessment) has created learnings for our cross-disciplinary teams and built our baseline knowledge. Educating ourselves with experience and creating pathways

to share and learn are the biggest challenges and the biggest opportunities. Externally, addressing greenwashed misinformation, outdated methodologies, and the disparity of centralized sustainability frameworks across industries and regions is a daunting task. Of course, where we can and must start is with ourselves. For some teams, this mindset is an additive to our design glue. For others, it’s using the glue to bring sustainability along anywhere and everywhere we can. We are constantly learning and evolving, and our glue allows us to look ahead and make big bets on sustainable design innovation. The bets and strategies we continue to invest in yield results for our designs, our teams, and our sustainable impact. But if the last years have made anything certain, it is that truths change fast. Luckily for us, part of the CMF process is to continue to question, be ready to flex, and hold things together. —Courtney Der cder@logitech.com Courtney Der currently leads Logitech’s Material Futures program for sustainable design innovation. On and off the clock, she’s a student of people, materials, and the planet.

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THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX FOR SUSTAINABLE DESIGN IN AFRICA

s momentum toward sustainable and circular design increases, it becomes increasingly apparent that industrial design has a key role to play in challenging conventions of materials selection and proposing creative alternatives. Nowhere is this opportunity greater than in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), many of which have the contrasting scenarios of abundant indigenous sustainable materials and the inability to effectively recycle waste materials. Academic research provides a route with which to explore new ways of thinking about these realworld problems to prompt commercial and governmental decision-makers to initiate change. In addition to the obvious roles of teaching and occasional consulting, an increasing number of industrial design educators are undertaking academic research in much the same way as their counterparts in fields such as science and engineering. Funded by national agencies through a process of competitive peer review, applied academic research can be carried out by industrial design educators to generate new knowledge that solves practical problems. Academic research operates within a framework of academic freedom that exempts educators from external influence, providing them the opportunity to identify issues they believe warrant investigation and for which they have capability researchers. As such, applications for research funding inevitably require robust justification and a methodology capable of standing up to peer review and academic scrutiny as part of the highly competitive selection process.

Operating outside commercial and governmental constraints, academic research is distinctive in its aim to generate new knowledge through transparent, impartial practice with the capacity to seek unexpected yet impactful solutions. Where appropriate, this typically concludes at a point where commercialization can then take over to deliver innovation and change in the public domain. Despite the challenges, academic research provides distinctive opportunities to explore ways in which industrial design can contribute to social change by addressing global challenges. To demonstrate ways in which academic research can contribute to earth-saving design practices, this article provides two case studies: Thinking Materials and Circular Plastics. These projects were supported by the UK Research and Innovation through its Global Challenges and Research Fund, which was established to address one or more of the 17 United Nations sustainable development goals. Both projects focused on the use of industrial design to translate theoretical positions on sustainable design and manufacturing into innovative product opportunities. While it was beyond the scope and resources available to implement change on a national or global level, the outcomes were intended to demonstrate potential and provide inspiration for the adoption of innovative working practices. Thinking Materials The aim of the Thinking Materials project was to explore how industrial design could add value to indigenous sustainable

Opposite: The fold-out Thinking Materials design tool to inspire the use of sustainable indigenous materials in low- to middle-income countries.

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materials in LMICs through the identification of innovative new export product opportunities. Employment opportunities would then be created through the ensuing supply chains. In addition to two UK-based universities, three academic collaborators were based in Kenya, Uganda, Indonesia, and Turkey (all LMICs). Following a documented materials audit in all four LMICs, brainstorming and co-design supported by industrial designers generated innovative materialsled product opportunities with which to demonstrate the commercial potential of sustainable indigenous materials and stimulate entrepreneurship through their use. The outcome was the Thinking Materials resource, which identifies creative product opportunities designed to make extensive use of indigenous materials and crafts as alternatives to more conventional, high-volume, and often polymer-based manufacturing processes. It demonstrates the potential of supply chains in which an LMIC is always the country of origin for the manufacture of a product and the growth and production of materials. The resource was translated into an open access web-based format, but the limited availability of computing in LMICs necessitated an additional low-cost and readily distributed option. This was achieved through a paperbased fold-out tool that embedded the same levels of information as the online solution. When using either resource, each product concept card is identified with a number, title, product image, and brief description. A highlighted manufacturing tab identifies the product as being produced using one of three scenarios: full in-country, partial in-country, or overseas. A highlighted material tab identifies the generic nature of materials used in the manufacturing process, with the abbreviations “C,” “S,” and “G” indicating ceramic, stone, and glass, respectively. Following the launch of the initiative with presentations and exhibitions in Kenya, Uganda, Indonesia, and Turkey, copies of the physical fold-out tool were distributed to all 146 LMICs around the world. The project was also exhibited

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at the UK Research and Innovation Arts and Humanities Research Council Design Research Showcase at the 2018 London Design Festival. Further details on the project are available at www.thinkingmaterials.net. Circular Plastics The Circular Plastics project was a collaboration between three universities and one NGO in the UK, with project partners in Kenya, Rwanda, and Nigeria. Its aim was to develop an integrated industrial design and technology-led strategy to transform used plastic water bottles into products to support entrepreneurship in LMICs. The approach was based on adding value to plastic waste by converting it into 3D printer filament using an extruding process developed by the team that meets the distinctive requirements and limited resources of LMICs. Prior to the extrusion process, it was necessary to devise ways in which used water bottles would be collected, washed, and shredded. This created both employment opportunities and technical challenges. With project team members based in Rwanda, Nigeria, and Kenya, despite the travel restrictions due to the COVID19 pandemic, it was still possible to undertake the planned technical development of the filament extruder and co-design activities with communities in the three countries. It was also fortunate that one of the two industrial designers in the team had joint UK/Kenyan citizenship and was able to travel between the two countries to support prototype testing. The outcomes were what might be described as niche products to solve real problems at the community level for which more volume-focused manufacturing processes would not be viable. Acknowledging that there was a larger picture to the project than economic viability alone— namely, self-sustaining employment entrepreneurship and sustainability—six products were developed for the agriculture, mineral extraction, fishing, and mobility sectors: Customized fruit picker: Fruit is easily damaged during harvesting, resulting in significant loss of saleable product. A

Above: Gourds are grown in molds, hardened, and pained to produce product components. Opposite: This speaker enclosure is produced from a gourd and simple metalwork.

long-reach attachment was developed with tangs that can be customized for specific types of fruit as well as a pole attachment socket matched to locally sourced materials. Adaptable boat baler: The use of dilapidated boats can lead to sinking and loss of life. The boat baler uses discarded drinks bottles to enable the roll and pitch of the boat to pump out water through a syphoning action. A degree of customization enables the baler to fit varying sizes of gunwales and bottles. Non-electric milk cooler: Milk quickly sours in tropical heat due to the scarcity of electricity and refrigeration. The complexities of the structures in this milk cooler made possible by 3D printing create a matrix for the rapid evaporation of water for powerless cooling. Customized machete peeler: The machete has a tendency to remove a significant amount of produce when peeling vegetables such as cassava. This is significantly reduced by placing the cutting edge at the optimum angle for the food that is being peeled. Sand dredging adaptor: Manual sand dredging for the building industry provides much-needed employment. The efficiency of sand dredging is increased with a customized scoop that fits the profiles of locally available buckets to help guide the sand in and quickly allow water to escape. Modular fish farm system: Aquaculture enables smallscale enterprises to rear fish for sale in local markets. An expandable system that integrates single-component floats and connectors uses a central void for buoyancy and can

be tailored to locally available bamboo and reeds to connect components together. In addition to providing a specification for a mobile manufacturing unit that could travel to communities to co-develop needed products and utilize waste material in their manufacture, workshops in the African countries confirmed the viability of the approach and provided training in the underpinning technologies. Further details on the project are available at www.circularplastic.net. From Theoretical to Practical Academic research in, through, and for industrial design has enormous potential not only to contribute new ways of thinking about societal problems on a theoretical level but also to translate these into practical solutions that directly engage stakeholders. While the necessary followon funding required to turn some of these ideas into reality may be significant, the distinctive capacity of the discipline to envision future possibilities with varying degrees of viability means that its presence at the relatively new table of academic research should start to expand and be actively encouraged. —Mark Evans, PhD, FIDSA m.a.evans@lboro.ac.uk Mark Evans is a professor of industrial design at Loughborough University in the UK.

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DESIGN’S HEROIC MISSION HOW MATURING THE DESIGN CULTURE LEADS BRANDS TO SUSTAINABLE OUTCOMES

n an age when information travels around the world faster than at any other time in human history, we have the means at our fingertips to solve just about any problem known to

humans. Yet through the endless social and political upheavals, unprovoked wars, and surviving a multiyear global pandemic that changed the fabric of modern society, the fate of our planet still hangs precariously in the balance. Humanity can’t seem to get out of its own way. This is the world we design for. We can’t ignore these realities or hope to see change without collective agreement to do our part, because where there is no agreement, there can be no progress. This is where designers can engage, but only the heroic will thrive.

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Shifting Priorities The burden of responsibility that brands carry today is incredible. Gone are the days when simply a catchy slogan or a fancy logo could convince people to buy into your brand. Today, relevance is everything—making it incumbent on brands not just to represent the products they offer but to be a lens through which to view the world and, in the process, stand for something bigger than itself. Not every brand was born to be a hero, but through design and innovation culture, any brand can become one. Take a brand like Moen, for example, a name-brand plumbing manufacturing company that introduced the one-handle kitchen faucet to the world back in the 1940s at a time when it was normal to have separate taps for

hot and cold water. How does a legacy faucet brand stay relevant in complex times such as these? How does it go from being a classic fast follower to an award-winning tech company? How did its products go from everyday value to winning prestigious design awards like IDEA Gold and many others? The answers may be surprising to those on the outside looking in, but to those who lived through the culture change, these results are anything but. The groundwork for this design maturity journey began with a strategic brand shift in 2018. Moen retired its longlived “Buy it for looks, buy it for life” slogan in service of a higher calling: to be a hero for water. This intentionally broad mantra became the internal anthem for thinking differently about the products the company makes, the

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experiences the products enable, and the impact they have on the world at large. With this change, Moen leadership made a strategic decision to elevate design and innovation within the organization, changing its reporting structure, tools, process, and even personnel. This gave design greater authority to prescribe and defend design quality. Additionally, Moen created an entirely new digital product focus for the business called the Consumer Connected Channel, which is responsible for the rapidly expanding connected-home portfolio. Next, Moen partnered with like-minded outside organizations to help push its new vision forward. Partnering with organizations like Nebia, Flo Technologies, and 5 Gyres gave way to launching award-winning luxury water-saving shower offerings created from upcycled

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materials, like recycled ocean plastic, and data-generating water management systems that prevent water-borne catastrophes in the home. These were just the beginning of a larger focus on sustainability. While everyone’s lives were changing around them in 2020, Moen was innovating. And when other companies were scaling back, Moen was investing and reinventing itself from within. With all the change Moen was experiencing, it now had a new mission—a heroic one. Design Maturity in Action Design maturity is about creating space for inspired ideas to flourish while orienting business processes, objectives, and incentives around the customer. One of the key markers of Moen’s transformation was the creation of the Mission

Moen initiative, an ambitious top-down sustainability strategy to serve as the epicenter for the company’s heroic water conservation ambitions. The first act in this mission was to understand how much water flows through Moen products in a year. Contextualizing the macro information would serve as a constant reminder of Moen’s impact on water and how important it is to be responsible for it. There is an important lesson to learn here: Information is powerful—it brings clarity to ambiguity. After all, to paraphrase Peter Drucker, “We can’t manage what we can’t measure.” Moen leadership emerged with a staggering set of goals aimed to not just challenge the internal teams but to also declare their intentions to the broader industry. Moen aimed to save 1 trillion gallons of water as well as remove and repurpose 2,000 tons of recycled ocean plastic by 2030. The proverbial gauntlet was laid down. No longer content to follow the taillights of the competition, Moen stood up strategic capabilities internally to forecast and develop road maps. Now it needed a subject-matter expert to lean on. After taking out a fullpage ad in the New York Times, it found its water director, Nina Kshetry, an experienced environmental engineer and entrepreneur with a demonstrated history of working in the environmental services field. Together with Kshetry, Moen defined specific areas of design and innovation focus that would soon change the consumer plumbing landscape and with it the trajectory of the brand. As Moen’s categorical reach expanded, it required not just more designers but different designers. Central to its design maturity journey was the diversification of disciplines. Moving from a group of industrial design generalists to a department of design specialists meant changes in personnel and leadership. By utilizing a plurality of design disciplines— like trend strategy, user experience, and design innovation alongside traditional industrial designers—Moen design evolved from design-doing to design-thinking competencies. And as design influence becomes further embedded in its guiding operational strategies, it continues to move closer to design-being, where words like “sustainability” and “circular economy” aren’t just empty buzzwords but actionable requirements. Our Mission as Designers Our climate is in crisis because manufacturing companies are incentivized to endlessly produce. In the past, sustainability only meant what could sustain a business financially, for which the answer is only endlessly more. “Design-being” companies are obsessively focused on what’s best for their customers—and, as it turns out in a rapidly deteriorating world, saving said world is actually best for everyone.

Meaning, now your business needs to be in the business of making our world a better place to live because, at least currently, it is the only place we can live. Designers have a unique responsibility to help their business counterparts see the value of doing things differently. But it can’t only be a design-led initiative. The responsibility falls on everyone in the business to empathize with the problem and choose to engage. For this to work, it requires the type of multithreaded thinking designers contribute daily being spread to every corner and function of a business. It takes an obsession with human centricity and an understanding of how every part of the business is responsible for upholding the values that ultimately manifest in the products they collectively create. It is how the product is forecasted (grounded in human-centric insights), designed to meet customers’ needs, and produced and packaged (with sustainable materials). It is how the product is designed to last so it doesn’t need to be replaced and how it is designed to fight the consumeristic models that got us into this climate crisis in the first place. This kind of transformation occurs when businesses commit to leading with a human-centered purpose in place of the typical win-at-all-costs business strategies. After all, what good is it to be the best in the world when there is no world left to be best in? This isn’t something they typically teach in business school, so it falls to designers to be the beacon of hope in every business, leading by example to show our cross-functional counterparts that sustainable isn’t just possible—it’s desirable. As designers, we must demonstrate how sustainability doesn’t mean we have to give up what we love about the products we make; it’s about making them even more desirable and demonstrating how less can actually be more. This is the inherent power of design and the true superpower we as designers possess. Our mission, should you choose to accept it, is to inspire the change we desire to see. Without inspiration, humanity has shown that it will default to the path of least resistance, and we’re running out of runway on that strategy. But with inspiration, we can overcome even the most challenging climate obstacles. Be the heroic spark that inspires the change in your own realm of design responsibility and together we will make the necessary difference. —Jayson Simeon, IDSA jayson.simeon@fbgpg.com Jayson Simeon is the senior director of global design for Fortune Brands Water Innovations, a design maturity advocate, a speaker, and the IDSA Cleveland Chapter Chair.

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USING AN INTERDISCIPLINARY BIODESIGN CHARRETTE TO PREPARE FUTURE SUSTAINABILITY LEADERS

he challenge for design education is often striking a balance between teaching the basics and preparing students for the future. Ideally, upon graduation students should hit the ground running and be contributors now and leaders in the near future who enact change. Given that design operates within the present and near future, this balance is possibly most poignant when considering how to deliver a curriculum that’s grounded in environmental sustainability. Currently, this is a challenge we’re looking to address at Syracuse University through a multipronged approach: within the core curriculum, as an interdisciplinary sustainable design minor, and through guest speaker events and yearly design charrettes. Here we discuss our inaugural sustainable design charrette. At the crux of our approach was to provide our students the tools to make informed decisions about materials and processes used in design and rethink how they can optimize this to have a minimal or positive impact on our planet. However, simply making informed decisions feels superficial given the accelerating rate of climate change.

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It’s generally understood that as entry-level designers our graduates won’t be in a position to drive suppliers (or senior management) to dramatically change their material and process choices. Therefore, our collective need to embrace 100% closed-loop product systems remains unobtainable. As educators, we want to put a positive spin on our future; however, science suggests the collective outlook is sobering, at best, if we don’t take radical action. Given this call to action, we challenged our students with a three-day interdisciplinary biodesign charrette to take a collective step forward. As is often the case, charrettes represent a brief sprint in which time is a key constraint. Therefore, each team was asked to present their solutions (imperfect or otherwise) at the end of the third day. For some, this may have appeared to be an impossible task; however, as educators, we placed our collective faith in our students rising to the challenge. Pre-Planning: Creating an Environment for Success For this charrette, we pulled together a team of biodesign

Second-year IID student Marcela Santamaria speaks with Yves Michel and her team during the biodesign charrette.

experts from outside our school. Their charge was to formulate a design prompt, offer a series of keynote lectures (to help build momentum and biodesign awareness), and serve as a roving group of experts to meet with teams periodically. Key to this was the decision to have biology and chemistry professors in the mix as well as industry experts. To an outsider looking in, this might not appear to be a groundbreaking approach. However, rarely does this kind of interaction happen in studio-based design classes. As Janine Benyus would say, when contemplating the design of any product, it’s essential to have a biologist at the table. The challenge with formulating the prompt was that it needed to have enough scope for students to diverge in their ideation process, and given the short time frame, it needed to be relatable and an extension of the student experience. What is their common lived experience with broad scope? At Syracuse, the School of Design is located within a renovated furniture warehouse, called the Warehouse, that’s known for its raw post-industrial spaces. Between the various studios, workshops, and lecture spaces, the

building has a rhythm and energy that changes throughout the day. This led us to the 2022 biodesign prompt: “To promote the forward-thinking design approach and to outfit the Warehouse for the 21st century, the university has hired your team as consultants to design the Warehouse’s metabolism based on Biodesign principles. How would you rethink the air filtration systems? How would you rethink the water filtration systems? How would you process human waste? How would you process food waste? How would you design the building’s metabolism as a salutogenic (health-promoting) ecosystem?” Charrette Programming During the week before the charrette, we generated a list of articles, podcasts, journal papers, and book chapters for the students to review. Given that the list could easily grow to an overwhelming size, we worked to edit this to a manageable scale that students could digest. Day 1 began with the director of the biodesign challenge, Veena Vijayakumar, offering a broad introduction

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to biodesign as told through multiple examples of pioneering projects. As a rapidly emerging field, Vijayakumar also focused on multiple areas where the field is growing in multiple exciting directions. This talk became the basis by which our next speaker, chemistry professor Dr. Davoud Mozhdehi, took the audience on a journey through his groundbreaking research. In his lab he works with protein structures to change the DNA of future materials. This became a powerful springboard to suggest that we’re about to experience significant innovation in the creation of a wide array of materials. He highlighted how it is incumbent on engineers, chemists, biologists, and designers to work together to define the performance characteristics, creation, and application through design. Mozhdehi was followed by biology professor Dr. David Althoff, who used a variety of references found in nature to frame a discussion about what nature does well and where the limitations of nature represent challenges for future innovation. Althoff punctuated his lecture with the message that humans are part of nature; however, only humans can conceptualize new or different worlds. Finally, we shifted from the world of biology to a presentation by a practicing designer. Montreal-based designer Yves Michel presented a talk about how biodesign fits within his practice and why it represents a strong directional compass in his work. Michel spoke of both the immediate translations as well as the ability to embrace future-based concepts, each of which is grounded in science. He set up the students for an afternoon of ideation. Day 2 featured two presentations, the first from industrial designer Grace Knight from Ecovative, who talked to the students about the application of mycelium in the packaging and textile industries. The second was from PhD candidate Elena Sabinson, who discussed the differences and opportunities in biodesign, biomimicry, and biophilia and gave an exciting glimpse into the world of bio-based robotics. Day 2 consisted of largely free design time for the students and meetings with the biodesign experts as needed. The final day was mostly dedicated to design time for students to finish their proposals. It also included a drum circle exercise to loosen the students up and take a well-earned break before the final presentations. Each team was given five minutes to pitch their design ideas to an audience of their peers, our biodesign experts, and the design professors. We were insistent that the teams base their idea on or ground it in science. As a group,

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they could then decide to what level of future-casting they wanted to explore: Would their idea work tomorrow or in the near future, or does it sit within design fiction? As part of each pitch, they needed to start with the science. Beyond that, they had the freedom to present their concepts as they wished. The experts and professors awarded prizes to a team that met the following criteria: • Closest to the brief • Most visionary from a systems thinking perspective • Most inspirational from an actionable-today biodesign perspective • Best presentation Many teams chose to focus on variations of a hydroponic network that uses collected rainwater, greywater from the building’s systems, or the creek that runs next to the building. Other teams designed greenhouse structures to provide the community with fresh produce, and others envisioned a lab where we manufacture healthy prototyping materials. Many teams looked at ways to connect with the local community, such as collecting food waste from local restaurants for bioplastic manufacture or composting for gardens. Overwhelmingly, students wanted to improve the studio interior to positively impact their mental health and well-being. Triumphs and Challenges The major takeaway from the faculty was that designers need to collaborate with scientists from the outset, and for the most part, we as a faculty delivered on that imperative. However, simply having scientists at the table does not ensure that the teams will leverage this opportunity. We hoped that their presence would validate or confirm some of the students’ ideas while helping to shape or reshape them based on scientific precedent. The energy in the school during these three days was uplifting! Naturally, a charrette of this scale is challenging to organize and required funding honorariums to compensate the experts for their time. Thankfully, Syracuse University has a robust internal funding mechanism that helped us pilot this approach to interdisciplinary design. For further adventures of this type, we may need to look for external funding and design a program of research to measure impact. The other challenge was freeing up our students from their classes to participate. We had great buy-in from the school’s faculty, which helped, but students still needed to attend their nondesign courses during the three days. This inevitably

challenged some teams to keep momentum while their teammates were attending class. When talking with the faculty and experts, we received very useful feedback to help with the development of our next initiative. Althoff stated that he was “super impressed by the student’s solutions. They were many unique ideas and the depth of some of the design concepts was amazing. Students had really put a lot of thought and effort into presenting something that was exciting and novel.” Michel, whose practice is centered on sustainability, remarked that he was impressed by the engagement and the quality of work the students had produced in three days, especially considering it was a design approach they had not explored before: “The students had produced solutions that ranged from realistic to visionary with elements of biomimicry to biophilia. All teams had design solutions that were confidently presented with a range of presentation tools ranging from sketches to computer renderings and even animation. I hope next time that we can have chemistry and biology students involved in the charrette.” ID students of all standings participated in the charrette, including design MFA students and design studies students, which added a diversity of design approaches and experience to the teams. Their thoughts mostly mirrored our assessment of the charrette. We asked them to think about their experience, specifically what they liked and disliked about the programming and what they would incorporate into their own practice moving forward. Matteo Broccolo, a fifth-year students stated, “The three-day programming had good and bad attributes. The good part was that it was only three days; it didn’t take away weeks from other projects or classes. Also, with the collaboration between all years of students, as a 5th year it was cool to use everything that we’ve learned and really take the younger students through that. I was told by the first year that was in my group that he felt I was like his mentor. That was a huge compliment. The issue with the three-day programming was that it assumed that we had nothing else going on. What did change was my understanding of what materials and processes are available and what can make a difference. Talking with scientists that are exploring this world was helpful as designers. With the talks about mycelium, natural chemical and biological processes, and biodesign in general, it made me reconsider how I’m designing and prototyping.” When thinking about the fact that many students had not worked with each other before and had different

levels of expertise in the design process, Kai Patricio, an MFA design student remarked that “the short format was productive. However, it might have been nice if there was an introductory fieldwork/methodology stage at the start. The presentations were helpful, but the students were accustomed to that form already. Having them troubleshoot or understand more of the systems of the warehouse/brief would have been a good starting point. I do know that there was a fair amount of jumping to conclusions without this exploratory period in some groups. Also, it would have been an icebreaker for teams.” Similar to Broccolo, Joe Sherwood (IID ‘22) talked about how this experience was shaping his understanding of the designer’s role in sustainability. “Through this project I also was inspired to follow more bio designers on social platforms to keep up with the progression of design with our understanding of the world around us. If given the opportunity to do this again and spend some more time learning about how the actual science behind things on our planet work, I would absolutely participate.” Final Thoughts From our conversations with students throughout the charrette, we learned that the students want more of these types of challenges and sustainability-centered project briefs, validating our suspicions and interest in our sustainable design research. The present and future design problems are extremely demanding, and they understand that. However, they are up for the challenge! As educators of future sustainable design leaders, we need to weave together early design education with science from the outset. This should not wait. We should not wait. We believe that design should be part of the STEM sustainability curriculum. Unless design is viewed as such, then we won’t be able to move fast enough. If we don’t embrace this shift in design education, we will all live in a world where we share the environmentally devastating consequences. —Don Carr, IDSA, and Louise Manfredi, PhD, FRSA, IDSA dwcarr@syr.edu; lrmanfre@syr.edu Don Carr is a professor of design, coordinator of the School of Design’s MFA in design program, and coordinator of the industrial and interaction design program at Syracuse University. Louise Manfredi is an assistant professor of industrial and interaction design at Syracuse University and the director of the Designing Sustainably research lab.

INNOVATION SUMMER 2022

S U S T A INAB L E L E ADE R SHI P

AN ARCHITECTURAL SYSTEM INSPIRED BY A SHOE THAT WAS INSPIRED BY A BUILDING

love designing footwear. Shoes are one of those products that have to balance many parameters, which sometimes are mutually opposed: function and form, durability and comfort, new innovative thinking and current mass manufacturing techniques, family injection molding and hand-stitched craftsmanship. As a designer, I can push and pull these parameters like sliders on an equalizer to create an infinite number of unique variations. But all shoes have one thing in common, other than having to fit on a foot: They all wear out. At the end of their life, what happens to them? For years, Nike has had a consumer bring-back program. You will find a usedshoe drop-off bin in every Nike store that collects shoes past their prime. Nike separates the molded rubber and foam midsoles and outsoles from the textile and leather uppers and grinds them up for use in other products. The reground rubber and foam bits have found their way into commercial flooring tiles, high school track surfaces, and spongy playground flooring. There has never been a good,

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consistent use for the shredded textile and leather material that Nike calls Nike Fluff…until now. Making Magic In the eight years I spent at Nike, the last small team I led was responsible for designing more than 400 products a year! And that was just a small fraction of Nike Inc.’s total output. Little did I know that my experience there would later inspire innovations in a totally different field. Kirei has been one of my best clients in the consulting practice I founded in 2017. It manufactures commercial architectural wall and ceiling systems with a focus on sustainability and health. All its products have a recycled component to them and low VOCs, and most are manufactured in San Diego, CA. I work directly with the CEO and founder, John Stein, who is always pushing for what’s next. He is one of those people with boundless curiosity for new materials and who is always asking, “How can we do it better?” at just the right moment. I help shepherd Kirei’s innovation pipeline as a

consultant and ensure that the big ideas can be translated into manufacturable products by leading its internal product group, a difficult job as an external consultant, but I have found when there is trust with a client, we make magic. A few years ago, I helped Kirei launch a collection of ceiling baffles that I named AVIO. Each of the four baffles was visually reminiscent of one of the letters A, V, I, and O. In addition to sharing a love of design, Stein and I share a love of Star Wars, so it was impossible not to give a nod to the classic X-Wing, A-Wing, Y-Wing naming convention with the A Baffle, V Baffle, I Baffle, and O Baffle. Each is made from a material called EchoPanel by Woven Image, which is comprised of 60% recycled post-consumer PET. The material does wonders to absorb sound and reduce echoes in open architectural spaces. As implied by the name, the O Baffle is hollow on the inside. We always had a sense that there might be an opportunity to fill this space with another post-consumer material that could increase the acoustic performance of the product. This is when I remembered the Nike Grind program. We reached out to the swoosh for examples, and the team there recommended we look at its Nike Fluff product. The shredded textiles and leathers are very soft and airy, the exact type of material that is fantastic for eating sound waves. Echoes and reverberation are caused when a sound wave bounces off one or more hard surfaces and reflects back to your ears. These reflections take time, so what you hear is an echo of the original sound wave hitting your brain a fraction of a second later. Working in an echoey space for an extended period can be very taxing as your brain works double-time to process every sound you hear. When a sound wave hits a very porous material like Nike Fluff, it breaks up and bounces in hundreds of directions. These smaller sound waves have less energy and collide with one another, reducing their energy yet again. The net effect of introducing a large amount of this material into a room is a quieter, more muffled space. A product like the O Baffle would essentially act as a giant container for a large amount of Fluff. Nike set us up with enough material to make prototypes and test them. Now that we had a working concept, I wanted to bring a distinct visual aspect to it that would let people know there was something unique within the baffles. One of the things we all learned when designing at Nike was the idea of visible technology. The original Nike shoes with air cushioning systems completely hid the innovation in the sole. They worked great, but beyond big ad campaigns, like what Nike did around the Air Jordan 1, it was hard for people to understand that there was something game-changing inside the shoe. That all changed when Tinker Hatfield designed the Air Max 1. Hatfield was trained as an architect and was inspired by how the Pompidou Centre in Paris took

all the normal internal workings of the building, like plumbing and HVAC, and exposed them on the outside. Hatfield’s simple insight was to cut a capsule-shaped opening in the midsole of the sneaker to reveal the airbag cushioningsystem inside. Could a sneaker inspired by a building in turn inspire an architectural element? It seemed like a perfect fit. I designed the Kirei Air Baffle to have a capsule-shaped window made from recycled acrylic so you can see the colorful groundup textile and leather fluff inside the product. Most of Kirei’s products are very modern and straight edged. It is a look that helps them aesthetically fit naturally into almost any interior. But I didn’t want the Air Baffle to recede into the background any more than Nike wanted the Air Max 1 to be just another sneaker. I wanted it to pop. So I tapered the cross sections, angling the Fluff windows down toward the eyeline of someone underneath, and introduced some generous radii that would allow the light to play across the surface in a softer way, two very simple design decisions that have a big impact when multiple baffles are installed in a series within a space. New Purposes I have designed so many shoes throughout my career. It has been a real joy to design a product that can take these shoes at the end of their functional life as footwear and find a new purpose for them that has real performance benefits and keeps them out of the landfill for years. These kinds of circular design projects are difficult. There are tons of operational complexities to make this a reality that wouldn’t be possible without a company like Nike actively collecting and processing its end-of-life products. As designers, it is our responsibility to find opportunities for these materials that are unique and striking enough to evoke desire. —Michael DiTullo, IDSA md@michaelditullo.com For nearly 25 years, Michael DiTullo has been designing iconic products for brands like Nike, Google, Honda, Timex, Motorola, Hasbro, and Arc Boats. In 2019 he received IDSA’s Special Achievement Award for contributions to the industry.

INNOVATION SUMMER 2022

E X P E RI E NCE

WHAT IS THE EXPERIENCE THAT EXPERIENCE DESIGNERS ARE DESIGNING?

et me begin by briefly defending what is an odd thing to do: to directly discuss the philosophy of mind (i.e., epistemology) for a designer audience. The discipline of philosophy, in general, let alone epistemology, suffers from being stereotyped as idle speculation that can be replaced more productively by observation and science. Do we all see the same red? Are we actually brains in a vat, the victims of an evildoer giving us fake experiences by manipulating our input? If God is all-powerful, why do evil and tragedy exist? I have no interest in such questions, the types of unanswerable questions people seem to think philosophy is all about. On the other hand, epistemology offers some powerful and rigorous tools for examining our underlying assumptions, tools that can’t be replaced with observation and science because one’s most basic underlying assumptions are prior to observation and science. In fact, we need a foundation of underlying assumptions for observation and science to be possible in the first place. To observe, we need a point of view. To do any form of science, we need a metatheory that defines what to study, how to do research, and how to interpret the resulting data, as Thomas Kuhn so powerfully

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pointed out nearly 60 years ago in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Thus, observation and science can’t logically be used to examine our underlying assumptions. To use an analogy, the one thing we can’t use our glasses to examine is the glasses themselves. What I want to discuss, then, are our underlying assumptions regarding what experience is. The case I want to make is that there’s an interesting alternative to the way we’ve been thinking about it, an alternative that holds particular promise for designers. Our Common-Sense View of What Experience Is Designers have always been in the experience-design business in that what makes a design successful or not has always been a function of the experiences of those who use the things designers design. What’s changed over the last several years, though, is that designers are increasingly explicit in acknowledging their role as the designers of experience—not just interiors or gizmos or software interfaces, but experience. Thus, there’s been an ongoing discussion about the design of experience, and user experience design, or UX, has become an accepted

field of design, although what exactly it encompasses doesn’t seem to sit still. Despite all the talk of designing experience, however, there appears to be little reflection in the design world about what experience actually is. It seems that we tend to simply assume that we all know what we’re talking about when we talk about experience. If pushed to characterize what experience is—not a particular experience, but experience in general—just about everyone falls back on a story that goes something like this: The senses obtain input from the outside world and send signals to the brain, which the brain processes into mental images that are the building blocks of experience. This simple way of thinking about experience— as something in our heads—is taken as basic common sense in most, if not all, of the developed world. However, it actually reflects a particular philosophical paradigm that emerged in the 17th century with the work of René Descartes in France and the so-called British Empiricists, such as John Locke and David Hume, in the UK. Thereafter, this view seeped into the common sense of educated Westerners from the Enlightenment-era philosophers. Just to have a name for it, let me refer to this common-sense notion of experience as dualism, one of its philosophical names. It’s called dualism because it posits that there are two types of things—physical things and mental things—each of which has a fundamentally different status. Dualism seems to work just fine in everyday life. We appear to know what someone means when, for example, they say, “I have an image in my mind” or “I’m conjuring up a picture of what I saw.” However, the point I want to make here is that there’s a completely different way of looking at experience that has the potential to be particularly productive for designers. The alternative I want to discuss has already dipped its toe into the waters of the design world, as indicated by the widespread use of the term “affordance.” The Alternative to Dualism The notion of affordance—what something affords its users—is not only a useful concept for designers but one of the building blocks of the alternative way to think about experience that I want to discuss here. It comes from the work of the perceptual psychologist J.J. Gibson, particularly

INNOVATION SUMMER 2022

his last book, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. I’m going to rely on Gibson because I think his formulation is the most accessible way of describing what I want to describe, and his notion of affordance has already made its way into the design world. Let me make the point, though, that Gibson is not alone. His perceptual psychology is the application of large currents in 20th-century philosophy: the American pragmatism of John Dewey and others; the phenomenology of Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, and many others, primarily on the European continent; and the ordinary language analysis of Gilbert Ryle, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and others in the UK. Before describing Gibson’s ecological approach to experience, though, let me take a brief detour to describe how frogs see the world, a detour that will hopefully help to explain what Gibson was talking about. Over 60 years ago, Jerome Littvin and colleagues published “What the Frog’s Eye Tells the Frog’s Brain” in the Proceedings of the IRE. In the paper, they described a simple experiment. They measured the output from individual optic-nerve fibers of frogs while they presented various types of visual stimuli to their eyes. The optic nerve conducts impulses to the brain from the visual receptors (the rods and cones) of the retina at the back of the eye. They found that there were only four types of optic-nerve fibers, which respond, respectively, to: 1. Edges that move into the visual field and stop 2. Small moving objects that enter the visual field, stop, and start moving again 3. Large dark moving edges spanning most or all of the visual field 4. Overall dimming of the ambient light At the risk of being accused of over-simplification, let me summarize that Littvin et al. discovered that the frog’s visual system is designed to detect four things, corresponding to the four types of optic-nerve fibers: 1. Lily pads 2. Bugs 3. Predators 4. Darkness In other words, the world, at least visually from the frog’s point of view, reflects the narrow set of things the frog does: finding a place to sit, getting something to eat,

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keeping away from predators, and determining whether it’s day or night, presumably so it knows when to sleep. There’s nothing else. We can say, then, that the frog’s repertoire of actions is pretty limited, so the world it experiences reflects those limitations as is reflected in its visual system. The frog doesn’t experience objects, which it then interprets in certain ways. It simply experiences relevant affordances— the affordances of sittability, eatability, and so on. Gibson’s idea is that it’s the same for humans; it’s just that we have a lot more to do, so the affordances we experience are several times more numerous and complex. Gibson’s Ecological Approach to Experience One simple way to explain the difference between Gibson’s notion of experience and our common-sense dualism is to ask, What is the object of experience? Dualism’s answer is that the object of experience is an internal something or other—something in the head, for instance, a schema, a trace, an idea, a stored mental representation. Gibson, on the other hand, had a very simple idea: The object of experience is not internal at all but something in the environment. He was fond of saying that you simply “see what’s there,” a radical position, but only radical when we start talking about what experience is as opposed to simply experiencing. The irony is that when we’re going through life we don’t question if what we’re seeing is really what’s there, but when we step back and start thinking about what experience is, our simple faith that we see what’s there evaporates. Of course, any theory of experience has to account for the radical variation between what people experience in the presence of the same physical situation. This is where Gibson’s notion of affordances comes in. Affordances are characteristics of the environment described in reference to a given person or type of person. An affordance is what something affords a person or type of person (or organism in the case of the frog example). A particular chair has the affordance of sittability for me, but perhaps not for a baby or a person with paralysis. The sittability is not in me; it’s relative to my behavioral abilities. Thus, affordances are not subjective; they exist in the world. If I can climb a wall that you can’t, then the wall contains the affordance of climbability for me but not for you.

Here’s the core idea: This climbability and other affordances are what people directly experience. We don’t directly experience some sort of raw materials, like beams of light, and process them to comprehend their meaning. We simply experience the world through the filter of what it affords for us, just as the frog does. The achievement (to use Gilbert Ryle’s term to explain what perception words actually mean) is to see what you can do with it when you look at something. You don’t see something and then determine what you can do with it. To see it is to know what to do with it, although we may not see it fully because of, say, foggy conditions when driving. We may see the fog as an obstacle, but because of the fog, we may not perceive the additional affordances captured in the term “car” or “pedestrian.” This is not to deny that we need eyes and brains and nervous systems for experience to be possible. The claim is that the nervous system operates to allow us to directly experience affordances, just as the frog’s eye allows the frog to see the affordances of its world. Physical objects are just one particular set of affordances. In sum, the alternative to thinking of the object of experience as being internal and subjective is to think of it as being in the environment, but in the environment from the particular point of view of the one doing the experiencing—a point of view defined by the person’s capabilities and desires for action. The ecological approach really is an alternative way of conceiving of experience because meaning is no longer in the person but rather in the environment via the concept of affordances. There is no need for the notion of mental processing, for example, because the role of mental processing—a component of the dualist version of what the mind is—is to construct meaning from the meaningless input that is thought to characterize what the mind/brain receives from the senses. Dualism posits that the raw data from the receptors of the retina, in the case of vision, are used by the brain to create images by adding meaning to the raw data. But if you directly perceive affordances, there is no raw data to be processed. Furthermore, Gibson showed how, in the case of vision, affordances are carried in the dynamic pattern of the light that hits the eye, what he called the optic array. That’s a whole other story that will have to wait for another day. Suffice it to say that if you assume that the information for affordances is carried in the pattern of light that hits the eyes, you can find it,

as you can with the acoustic patterns that hit the ears or the chemical properties that underly taste and smell. For designers, the great advantage of following Gibson in taking the objects of experience as affordances is that affordances, unlike mental images or other “things in our head,” are something we can design. When we think of experience as involving images in our head, there are no obvious predictive consequences. However, Gibson showed how you can start with the conviction that we see what’s there and build an environmental description of what we experience that does have predictive consequences. This is what he called ecological physics. For Gibson, the world from the point of view of a given organism is an affordance structure: the sum total of what we can do with it—that’s what we experience. One’s affordance structure is a world relative to the experiencer but not a subjective world. In sum, there’s a fundamentally different way of thinking about what experience is other than as a subjective process that goes on privately in our heads. The latter’s fine for everyday use but has severe limitations for a vision (no pun intended) of what we’re designing when we’re designing experience. This ecological, or Gibsonian, alternative sees experience as: • A capability that grows out of the person-environment duality, rather than as a process that happens inside the experiencer. • The apprehension of objects (broadly defined) in the environment, rather than in the person. • Relative to the experiencer, but not subjective or internal. • Involving an affordance structure—the total of what the experienced world affords for one’s actions. In general, this ecological alternative suggests looking toward the environment—something that we designers can directly manipulate—for an explanation of experience rather than looking in the head, something we can’t directly manipulate. As the psychologist Bill Mace famously said in reference to understanding what experience is, “Ask not what’s inside your head but what your head’s inside of.” Implications for Designers Here are six practical implications for designers of this radically different notion of what experience is:

INNOVATION SUMMER 2022

1. Don’t expect cognitive science to be helpful. First, it’s good to know what not to do. It’s natural to expect that if you want to understand human experience, you should be able to get help from cognitive science, the discipline that focuses on the study of mental phenomena like thinking, perception, and memory. However, when I’ve asked cognitive scientists to describe one practical thing their knowledge of cognitive science allows them to predict, I have yet to receive a satisfactory answer. In fact, as humans, we can predict quite a bit about what people will say and do in different circumstances. I don’t believe that the cognitive scientist can do any better than the rest of us. The reason, I think, is that dualism is the foundation of cognitive science. The goal is to find explanations in the head/brain rather than in the environment. Thus, their models have a different purpose: to understand the internal mechanisms of mental phenomena. The problem for designers is that such explanations do not help direct environmental manipulation, which is really what designers do: alter the users’ environments in various ways to create positive experiences. Thus, cognitive science will, presumably, eventually lead to a better understanding of brain functions, and so on, but it is not designed to help us see how we can alter the environment to affect behavior, which is what we as designers are trying to do. 2. The insight that the object of experience is an affordance structure provides a practical way to understand human differences in experience: as a function of what people can do and what they want to do. It’s obvious to say that experience affects action; what we experience determines, to a large extent, what we do. The reverse is, perhaps, not so obvious but just as compelling. The ecological approach reminds us that our experience is determined by our modes of action—that our experience of the world is written in the language of what we can do with it; that’s what the affordance concept is all about. Therefore, a careful analysis of what people do and what they want to do should shed light on experience. Thus, we can predict that what a wheelchair user will experience as a pathway will be fundamentally different from what a person not in a wheelchair will experience. The skilled surgeon will see anatomy as involving vessels that

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can and can’t be ligated, connective tissue that can and can’t be transected, etc.—very different from how you or I see the same anatomy. The art critic will see the painting as affording certain types of discussion in their next article; the person who hasn’t been exposed to art history and theory might experience the same painting in terms of where it will look best in their home. The point is that thinking carefully about people’s actions in the context of objects and systems provides a useful tool for understanding the nature of their experience. 3. Thinking of design as the design of affordances provides a heuristic for improving usefulness and usability. A productive way to think about what we’re doing as designers is to provide people with various affordances. The chair designer is providing sittability but also, perhaps, storability, the affordance of being used as a stepstool, and so on. The signage designer is providing navigability. The car designer is providing transportation but also the affordances of carrying groceries, safely transporting children, providing warmth in the winter, etc. The ecological perspective suggests approaching design as a two-step process: making a careful inventory of the affordances that are to be provided by your design and then figuring out how these affordances can be presented appropriately. The goal is typically, but not necessarily, to make the affordances obvious. A game designer, for example, may hide affordances so that they can be found as part of the game. One thing I can report from years of working in design is that key affordances for users may not be known to the design team—for example, the ledge inadvertently built into the car that the person uses to sit groceries on while reaching for keys, the step of the ladder that’s used as a seat, or the lighting fixture that’s used as a surface to hold small objects. These examples demonstrate one reason careful observation of existing products and/or environments is valuable: to fully understand the affordances that a given designed object should provide. 4. The ecological approach has yielded some highly technical work that can help to solve certain classes of problems. The ecological movement hasn’t made as much progress

within academic psychology as, in my view, it should have. However, there’s some really interesting and potentially valuable work available for people tackling particular types of design problems. Flight and automobile driving simulations are, perhaps, the biggest success stories. Their development grew out of Gibson’s concept of the optic array, which he describes in detail in his 1979 book referred to earlier. There’s also the field of ecological psychoacoustics, a discipline that involves building acoustic models for natural sounds. 5. The ecological approach entails a reconsideration of the temporal dimension. Although I don’t have space here to discuss it in detail, ecological psychologists have shown how enlarging the temporal window of an environmental description can better predict what a person experiences. From an ecological perspective, experience unfolds in time, so the object of our experience is not just a given object or environment per se but our interaction with that object or environment over time. Put another way, what one experiences is a function of not just what happens today but also what happened yesterday and the day before. Thus, the design of experience, even for a static object, involves the design of something that unfolds in time. The starting point is a moving object, an unfolding experience that began prior to the introduction of our designed objects. The practical implications are twofold: In doing our design research, it may be useful to explore past interactions as well as those in the present to understand what needs to be designed. Also, in thinking of how our designed object will interact with the target users, it may be helpful to think of that interaction in terms of a larger temporal time frame than is typical. 6. Gibson’s notion of invariants can be a useful design tool. In line with the idea of direct perception of affordances, Gibson proposed that there are invariants that can be found if we look at the environment in the right way. Two simple examples from the work of Bill Warren illustrate what this means. He showed that if people are asked to identify the most comfortable stair riser height, their responses vary. Likewise, if people are asked to walk through gaps in a

wall of various widths, the gap width at which they begin to rotate their bodies sideways varies from one person to the next. However, in both cases, the variation disappeared when the dimensions were expressed not in inches or feet but as ratios of body dimensions. The ideal riser height is an invariant ratio of leg length; the gap that causes body rotation is an invariant ratio of shoulder width. In other words, there are dimensionless numbers (dimensionless because they are ratios of two dimensions, for example, riser height and leg length, so the dimensions cancel out). The point is that for objects and environments designed for humans, there may be dimensionless numbers that can be found so that once the relevant body dimensions are extracted from anthropometric data, the design dimensions can be optimized. Conclusion The affordance concept that most designers have some familiarity with is part of a radically different general notion of what experience is: a different way of thinking about experience in addition to our common-sense notion of experience as subjective and private. This ecological approach can provide the designer with some powerful conceptual tools that have the potential to lead to more effective design. One is the insight that studying the potential and actual modes of action of target design users can shed light on what they will experience and how their experiences can be designed. It also suggests that focusing on the temporal dimension of experience in a deeper way can be a productive way of producing better design. Our common-sense dualism view of experience is fine for everyday use, but I believe that we’re better off as designers to train ourselves to think of experience in ecological terms—as the apprehension of an affordance structure that is relative to a given person or class of persons. —Stephen B. Wilcox, PhD, FIDSA sbw@dscience.com Stephen Wilcox is the founder and chairman of the board of Design Science, which specializes in research to support the usability of products. He has a PhD in experimental psychology and is a pioneer of ethnographic field research/contextual inquiry.

INNOVATION SUMMER 2022

D E S I G N L ANG UAG E

HOW A CALIFORNIA SUNSET INSPIRED THE LUCID DESIGN LANGUAGE

art 2 of our series exploring design languages is a conversation with Sue Magnusson, director of color, material, and finish (CMF) at Lucid Motors. Brain Paschke, creative lead at Google/Fitbit, spoke with Magnusson at the Lucid Motors headquarters in Newark, CA. The interview also included an in-depth tour of the company’s flagship showroom and a test drive of the new Lucid Air. The two designers discussed the challenges and opportunities of building a brand and CMF strategy from scratch, where to find the spark of inspiration, and the importance of collaborating with multidisciplinary teams. In t h i s f o u r - p a r t s e r i e s , w e a i m t o p r e s e n t a v a r i e t y o f perspectives from designers working in different creative sectors about their experiences in creating, maintaining, and using design languages. Editor’s note: The following has been edited for length and clarity.

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Thoughtfully curated bento boxes are used in the Lucid showroom to communicate the materials from each the Lucid Air’s four interior themes: Santa Monica, Santa Cruz, Tahoe, and Mojave.

Brian Paschke: Sue, thank you for your time today. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you became the director of CMF at Lucid? Sue Magnusson: My history is somewhat unique. I wanted to be an architect, but I ended up going to school for interior design. My first job was designing high-end homes for the Hollywood crowd. It was eye-opening to design these spaces, but it was also not what I thought I was going to be doing professionally, and I wasn’t really enjoying it. I took a job at Designworks as a receptionist, even though I had a degree in design. There I discovered something called color and trim. This was a term specifically used in the automotive industry. At the time, Designworks was doing a lot of work for BMW. I really wanted to be on the design side, and eventually the department head agreed to give me a shot. I found myself working as a receptionist in the morning and being a CMF intern in the afternoon. I then took a job at Volkswagen/Audi, where my education in color and trim really began—we now call it color, material, and finish (CMF). After about five years, I went to work for an industrial

design consultancy to promote CMF as a discipline to its clients: Dell, HP, Microsoft, and many other consumer electronic companies that didn’t have this discipline on board yet. A lot of my job at that time was educating clients on how much color and materials can enhance their products and how much they can change things around. Derek Jenkins, our senior vice president of design and brand at Lucid, and I had met at Volkswagen years before. When he reached out to me about joining Lucid, I was impressed by the level of talent of the team, which was exciting and inspiring but also somewhat intimidating—that talent was impressive. Derek was confident that I could draw from all my different experiences, not only the car world but also consumer electronics. It’s been an amazing journey. Paschke: After walking around the Lucid showroom, it’s hard to delineate where one design practice begins and another ends. It feels all very designed, cohesive, and cinematic—a system, really. I can see your training as an architect coming through. Where did your team find that inspiration?

INNOVATION SUMMER 2022

Sue Magnusson (left) and Brian Paschke (right) discuss the unique geographic landscape of California and its influence on the Lucid CMF strategy.

Magnusson: It started with CMF and understanding what we wanted to say to the world about who we are as a brand. We knew we were a California company and were building a car in California. We felt that this wasn’t just about being another tech company, but there was inspiration here, which we would lean into. We had a poster in the studio of seven pillars defining what is unique about California, what sets it apart from the other states. This was a great place to start a conversation, which led us to where we are today. There was something compelling about all the beauty of California. Through a lot of discussion with the team, we felt our way through realizing that this was an authentic fit, and we moved forward. Paschke: Essentially you and the Lucid team faced the challenge of creating a new identity and design language for the company before anything really existed. Where did you start? How did you begin to weave in the California narrative? What are some of the tools and processes you and your team used? Magnusson: When I started, there was a clay model of the Air, the first model released by Lucid, but it was really just the beginning of working out what we now see on the road.

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There was an idea of proportion. We knew we could take advantage of the car’s interior space because we were no longer dealing with the typical combustion engine but rather an electric motor, which is much smaller. The architecture of that was just being laid out. What we didn’t have when I joined was a real understanding of where we were going to take the CMF. The brand itself, Lucid Motors, was not a name we had created yet. We understood who our target market was and that we were going to build a premium car. It was important to understand what our competition’s legacy was—the legacy of other premium OEMs. Some have 100 years on us. What are they known for in terms of their approach to CMF and design, and what might we do differently, and perhaps better? One of my first steps was to look at my methodology for building a CMF strategy that would be our own style, building our philosophy. It was the same process I used with every client project. The colors of our brand, the warm qualities and the natural aspects, all started there. It became natural and authentic, and we had a good feeling this was the right fit. There wasn’t a bunch of cross-checking with marketing; we were a small team. It was an intuitive sense that we were on the right path. Additionally, the digital UX

and UI teams started connecting to this idea as well, which enhanced and embraced our philosophy of creating a holistic experience. Paschke: It sounds like you created principles that inspire designers as a tool set. They are not so rigid, and they allow them to interject their own creativity. Are you finding that they have the right level of flexibility to move ahead, or are your team members wanting to change or evolve it? Magnusson: We certainly are much more sophisticated now than we were in the early days, but we’re just starting to establish our legacy. There are a lot of beautiful things about the Air that we worked very hard on by creating a product that’s very holistic. You see that in the retail studios when you walk in; they all have a very cohesive language that establishes what we want our customers’ experience to be—it’s more than just buying a car. Will we want to continue and improve? Absolutely. We’ve learned so much as a young startup company. When we release our next product, we’re going to make adjustments, incorporate new technologies, find efficiencies, become more sustainable, etc. We’re going to look at all of those things and how they impact the design, and naturally we want to continue to innovate. When I look at the history of Porsche, for example, to this day there still is a beautiful graphic language to the cars, from day one until now, some 75 years later. The 911 is the company’s iconic vehicle; it has a beautiful mix of form and function. I hope we can be that way too. I want Lucid’s legacy to stand the test of time. Paschke: The 911 is a good example of a design language standing the test of time. One learning in my career has been consistency equals trust for the consumer and end user. Let’s talk typologies. Even though electric vehicles are a quickly growing segment of the automotive market, you’re still working within the constraints of car topology and the regulations and infrastructure that already exist. Did you discuss this as a team when you were developing the Lucid design language, or were there always constraints you had to work with?

Magnusson: We knew we had a platform that was going to allow us to create a spacious car inside and where the exterior footprint was going to be quite minimal. We took advantage of something nobody else had done; not having a traditional combustion engine gave us additional room. It was really exciting to think about how we were going to use this space. How was it going to be different? From a CMF perspective, we were able to work around the idea of creating a backseat experience as a champion. Sitting in the back is really a first-class experience because you feel like you’re equally valued within the cabin of the car. Air has a huge frunk (front trunk) and an equally large rear trunk, yet it still offers an amazing interior space. We were trying to utilize the functionality of the vehicle but also make it very elegant in terms of its proportions. Joann Jung, the design director of interiors, really worked on designing the interior space for full comfort, space, and functionality, not just for the driver but for the passengers as well. We worked together closely, and she was open to modifying the design language to enhance the materiality of the car. I thought it was amazing that we could collaborate on this level; I believe we have a much better interior because of our collaboration. Paschke: In the showroom, there are bento boxes that act as a tool for communicating the different interior finishes, materials, and combinations a customer can select as a family. Users are able to literally touch the brand. From a storytelling point of view, what was the inspiration behind those? Magnusson: We created bento boxes as part of an early internal presentation. It started as a way to communicate by using individual boxes to showcase the materials from each of our four interior themes: Santa Monica, Santa Cruz, Tahoe, and Mojave. Using them in the showroom took hold because we found them to be a good way to contain and communicate our story. We also have a display of objects that were used as inspiration during the creation of our themes. This display of the objects is part of curating a unique experience in our retail studios, giving our customers insight to what inspires us: the simplicity of a form, details, craftsmanship, and artisans. There is a glass dish that

INNOVATION SUMMER 2022

Sue Magnusson (left) describes to Brian Paschke (right) the interior design and sustainable material selections used in the Lucid Air electric vehicle.

contains sand from a local beach in Santa Cruz. It’s a piece of nature that influenced our Santa Cruz theme, and it was another way to tell our story, our brand. Customers are interested in touching, seeing, and understanding the combinations of colors and materials that will be in their car, and the display provides this interaction. Paschke: You mentioned the digital side of the design language earlier, including lighting. Can you talk a little bit about working with that team and how you kept things so cohesive? Was it an organic process? Magnusson: It happened very early on. We immediately collaborated knowing that we wanted some of the visual qualities of the CMF themes to exist in the digital parts of the car. I spent 18 months collaborating with our lighting group on the interior ambient light working out the themes and the colors. It was not about leveraging the full capacity of what all these colored lights can do. It was about exploring the subtleties of light. We spent a lot of time in a dark room exploring the nuances of the colors and refining how the light played off the different surfaces and materials of the car. Paschke: At Fitbit, we have a design language principle called “Healthy World.” Fitbit’s mission is to help everyone in the world be healthier; therefore, we design with materials and processes that consider a healthy planet for us to all live on. What can you share about your work with CMF and language systems as it relates to sustainability at Lucid?

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Magnusson: It goes well beyond CMF. We look at it all the way from how our suppliers are producing their products to how they source materials. It’s not just where the raw goods come from but how toxic they are for the people in the factories. What does the whole carbon footprint look like? We have a matrix that helps us understand this, and it can impact who we select as suppliers. It’s not only important for Lucid but also personally for me as a designer. I’ve designed a lot of consumer electronics and often felt they were too disposable. When I joined Lucid, I was committed to doing things better: being more mindful and engaging in sustainability from the beginning. One of the things we focus on as part of sustainability is the idea of being efficient. Efficiency can translate into using fewer of our world’s resources. For example, our vehicles have the highest MPGe (miles per gallon gasoline equivalent) rating for the large vehicle class. Every extra mile we extract per kilowatt of energy means less charging and fewer emissions from the electrical grid. We want to make an impact on the global climate crisis by developing sustainable transportation, a holistic approach—environmental, social, and governance. Our EPA 520 range is more than 100 miles over the competition. We look past traditional definitions of luxury. Our focus is on post luxury to appeal to customers who expect more. We acknowledge that the definition of luxury in the automotive sector is shifting. OEMs in the legacy luxury automotive sector emphasize status, opulence, and indulgence. The Lucid brand embraces elegance, modernity, sustainability, and well-being. That’s really significant!

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