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"Today humanity uses the equivalent of 1.7 Earths to provide the resources we use and absorb our waste. This means it now takes the Earth one year and six months to regenerate what we use in a year.” - Global Footprint Network: https://www.footprintnetwork.org/

Scaling back this demand is essential. Innovating and emplacing solutions will require courageous design leadership, but it will also require leadership from many other sectors of society.

Graphic retrieved from :https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/tag/collapse-of-industrial-civilization/

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“What I have learned from my line of work, is when presented with an intimidating problem it is best to break it down into manageable components.”

In dealing with large an intimidating wicked problems, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the task. The act of breaking them down into their constituent parts starts to shave the fangs off the monster in our imagination.

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Many our cities and neighborhoods were designed to benefit economic priorities. In exchange, we’ve gotten increased traffic, air pollution, segregation, gentrification, and deteriorating health. 

But designers and planners are fighting back with new, human-centered designs that bring back our love of places and healing social ills while invigorating small to medium enterprises.

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The Value Dilemma

Should Design defend the value of beauty and be less aligned with the ideas of value that companies have?

Or,

Should Design let go of the idea of beauty as a goal, focus on opening up the creative process, and become more valuable as a service to companies?

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Design leadership should be synonymous with ethics and responsibility. Designers are growing more influential in the world of business. That power is being used to produce innovative and creative advantages. Those creations should be ethically informed, not as an additional feature or benefit, but as a core parameter of the definition of design.

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Kickstarter:

helps people bring creative projects to life,

donates 5% of its after-tax profits towards arts and music education, and to organizations fighting to end systemic inequality,

provides paid time off for employees to provide professional mentorship and skills training to marginalized populations,

reports company demographics and executive pay ratios to employees,

offers 25 vacation days and four months of parental leave,

provides education stipends,

provides health benefits,

and has a green roof at their Brooklyn HQ.

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Klean Kanteen: 

donated over $2 million to environmental conservation organizations,

identified BPAs as a dangerous substance in the bottle industry,

purchases renewable energy certificates and carbon offsets equal to their energy use and shipping impacts,

use France’s and Germany’s food-contact standards voluntarily because they are more stringent than the FDA’s,

hire locally, 

provide health, dental, eye insurance benefits to all employees,

provide retirement, bonus, maternity and paternity benefits,

politically involved to limit environmental toxins and reduce pollution,

requires all suppliers to meet measuring and reporting standards on environmental impact,

and practice safe and fair labor.

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In the wake of the Fukushima reactor meltdown in 2011, the outcry against nuclear power led German Chancellor Angela Merkel to close down 17 of its nuclear reactors. This stake in the ground carried the hopes of movement toward clean energy without the catastrophic dangers. But without a comprehensive plan to push the economy towards preferred energy generation technologies, coal quickly rushed in to fill the demand raising its share of countries generated electricity by almost ten percent.

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Planned obsolescence is an example of a design leader’s stake in the ground that, while helping pull the economy out of the Great Depression, has wreaked havoc on the environment and our well-being ever since.  

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Cotopaxi

I’ve recently purchased a pack and a jacket from this young and innovative outdoor gear company that has a strong ethical and sustainable ethos. Their founder, Davis Smith, was impacted both by the beauty and the poverty of the Andes near Cotopaxi National Park. 

Cotopaxi was founded as a combination of Smith’s love for traveling and his desire to combat poverty through business. His stake in the ground is one of a growing trend of budding business models that look at business as a force for positive change; not through an argument of theoretical economic modeling, but by more directly empowering processes that are aimed at benefiting different stakeholders.

Cotopaxi’s backpacks, as the video shows, relinquish several design decisions to its assemblers. Their motto: Gear for good.

In 2015, Cotopaxi met strict, verified standards for environmental and social performance, transparency, and accountability to receive its B Corp certification.

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BEFOFE | AFTER

A typical suburban home in the southern California transformed from a standard lawn to a farm that produces over 5,000 pounds of food per year while using 50% less water. 

The Kumar family, seeing the unsustainable practices that were fueling the drought in the region, created a small ecosystem on their property through rainwater harvesting, greywater recycling, and various other landscape design techniques with amazing results. 

They now work with their local communities teaching people how to grow their own gardens, providing consultations, and speaking out against plastics.

Their stake in the ground stance against unsustainable practices has nurtured a growing movement in their area. Members of the family have been invited to speak to congress on the harms of plastics.

The Kumar family continued to evolve through their mission by the development of, Brush with Bamboo, a more sustainable (though not fully biodegradable) toothbrush.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=151&v=OI1Pf2gMFCs

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Yang Liu, the head of the Department of Design Communications at the Berlin Technical Art University published a book that illustrates cultural differences between East and West in a humorous and visual way. These simple insights underscore the many different ways that parameters are affected due to cultural context.  

Retrieved from: https://digitalsynopsis.com/design/east-meets-west-cultural-differences-illustrations/

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“Culture affects Internet usage, e-commerce trust, information and communication technology adoption, Internet marketing, and website development.”

- Dianne Cyr, Associate Professor at Simon Fraser University

The Dutch are thrifty. The Germans are precise. Americans are individuals while Taiwanese are long-term planners. 

Stereotypes? Maybe. But ignoring the values, beliefs and behaviors of your audience is not a designer’s way.  

Retrieved from: https://blog.prototypr.io/ux-design-across-different-cultures-part-1-1caa12a504c0

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In designing effective solutions for combating cervical cancer, there are several parameters that must be considered. 

The pap smear test, while highly effective in detecting the presence of HPV (the viral infection blamed for causing cervical cancer), still requires patients to return to the hospital after an irregular diagnosis. In the US, about 40% of women with an irregular diagnosis do not return for treatment. “We have a problem with follow-up,” says Elektra Paskett, a gynecological cancer expert from Ohio State University. [1] 

In developing nations, the problems are compounded:

The cultural stigma associated with submitting themselves to such an exposing procedure to male doctors and staff put women off.

The cost to maintain the many specialists and laboratory to administer and analyze the pap smear makes the cost untenable for most women.

The belief that cancer, if detected, is anyway untreatable made women not even bother.

In India, where a third of the world’s cervical cancer cases exist, these parameters were considered and human-centric solutions designed for effect. Today, mortality rates in India have fallen from 28 in 100,000 to 11, saving over 22,000 lives per year. [2]

The solutions? [4]

Cultural stigma: All female staff and doctors operated the clinics. Women were allowed to come with their husbands. Women were encouraged to come in a group of their friends for all to be tested simultaneously. In addition to cervical health, the clinic screened for high blood-pressure, diabetes, dental problems, and other medical concerns to make the appointment for time-valuable.

Cost: Scientists at Johns Hopkins University and other institutions developed a procedure that involves rubbing ascetic acid, i.e. vinegar, on the cervix. Any present HPV would react with the vinegar after a minute or two making it easily detectable. Since only vinegar and a cotton swab were needed, the clinics offered this procedure for free.

Follow-up and Belief: If detected, the HPV can be easily removed with a squirt of liquid nitrogen. No follow-up needed. Simple cancer prevention.

[1] Retrieved from: https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/health/2013/06/03/simple-vinegar-test-cuts-cervical-cancer-deaths/

[2] Ibid.

[3] Retrieved from: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/in-india-a-secret-weapon-against-cancer-vinegar

[4] Ibid.

Image retrieved from: https://www.healthywomen.org/content/article/9-warning-signs-cervical-cancer-you-shouldnt-ignore

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In 2018, Indian corporation, Tata Motors, stopped production of the Nano after a ten-year run. This passion project was conceived as a solution to a very specific problem: mobility into the middle class. 

Through hard work, India’s poorest could upgrade from a bicycle to a scooter. But closing the gap from scooter to a car was a bridge too far.

Tata’s gauntlet to its engineers was simple. The design parameters limited the car’s price tag to $2,000. The resulting jelly-bean shaped car had the distinction of being cheapest car in the world.

Ironically, after a short-live initial success, the Nano’s undoing was due to a miscalculation of another parameter: emotional need. Unfortunately, the Nano gained the stigma of being a car for the poor. The functional benefits of owning the Nano were soon outweighed by the associated negative emotional benefits.

Lessons from this project, however, were used on Tata’s line of more affordable cars. But despite the failure of the Nano, Tata’s design leadership is obvious. Courage to attempt an impossible dream for the benefit of a marginalized population.

Image retrieved from: https://www.cardekho.com/carmodels/Tata/Tata_Nano

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In the search for the most effective, earth-friendly energy sources, nuclear energy, a non-greenhouse gas energy source, has a tarnished reputation (for good reason). Yet, some pioneers believe that nuclear’s problems can be solved, leading to an unprecedented source of green energy. 

Designing complex solutions to wicked problem, coupled with courageous leadership could, hopefully, lead to a brighter, cleaner, safer future.

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“The 16 largest container ships (which move products to our shops) emit as much sulfur as all the cars in the world together.” (1)

We often point to the large gas guzzlers in traffic as the main culprits of environmental pollution. But according to Babette Porcelijn in her new book, Hidden Impact, the largest polluter of human activity is the production and transportation of “stuff”, i.e. the things we buy. 

While it’s hard to imagine 16 cargo ships spewing out more greenhouse gas emissions than all the world’s cars, it’s even harder to contemplate the 50,000 total cargo ships that sail the oceans every day.

It’s good news, then, to hear that companies are design innovative solutions like the video above. Regardless of motivation, shipping companies should be encouraged to make the switch. The only question is, is it too little too late?

(1) Porcelijn, Babette. (2016). Hidden Impact: Everything you want to know and the things you can do to live an eco neutral lifestyle. Amsterdam: Think Big Act Now

Video retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13zDTnhcdog