No matter if you are a UX-Designer, a graphic Designer, an Interface Designer or if you belong to any other design discipline, that is not directly related to the physical production of goods, we are all able to contribute to fight worldwide challenges. It's not upon product designers only to keep thinking about their impact on the environment because they are producing "real" goods.
As there are many different aspects of this topic, I will write some more Sub-articles on this overall topic within the next few weeks. Here are some angles I want to cover:
- Design Methods for approaching complex problems
Don Norman is the host of an interesting course at the Interaction design foundation called “Design for the 21st Century” offering the perspective, how designers can improve the world and solve global problems. He approaches this complex topic from the overall perspective of being a designer and which special skills designers in general have to apply to our real world challenges. In this case not only climate change, but all the 17 global sustainable development goals of the UN. While pointing out the importance of the application of Human-Centered Design, Don encourages the participants of the course to start acting. Here's a little video, Don speaking about 21st century design on youtube. Besides I want to show you other interesting thoughts within the domain of Design methods. - The project view on our carbon footprint
In contradiction to an overall systemic approach towards our impact, I reflect the way we work and which aspects have a sustainable impact. This will be a more critical reflection as it is easy to point a finger in one direction and say this is evil and we have to do it that way. I assume that's hardly true for anything. Sub-Topics will include the footprint of websites, designing for dark mode and some more thoughts.
... maybe more topics will follow.
First, I start with the why, why I want to write about this topic and share some thoughts or insights: From a personal point of view, I can’t deny to have some affinity to the topic of sustainability and a critical reflection on how we interact with the world on the cost of our planet. My current feeling is, that on an overall scale it is too late to keep up with defined goals, but in general we must question ourself now and start acting different as soon as possible.
My first paid job (a weekend job to earn some pocket money) was being an assistant at a recycling yard. I worked there for almost 5 years and helped customers to get rid of the things they didn’t want anymore. A great job at that time, as being an adolescent, I took many objects I found there for myself to give them a second life.
Today I would say, at least 90% of the people who went for the facility to recycle, didn’t really like sorting their waste. It was a pain in the but and I assume that for most it still is. But after all it wasn’t too difficult to sort the things. I assume the fact that is most frustrating about the topic recycling is, that government failed to implement a working system within the last 30 years.
Are there any learnings from the covid pandemic to be applied for a more sustainable world?
If i look at the Covid pandemic and the limitations we all went through all over the world, I doubt, it is still possible to reach defined climate goals. The effects we already experienced on a global level on our climate didn't feel strong enough regarding all the limitations we already faced during the pandemic. Whether it was less travelling in general, less commuter traffic, less production due to scarcity of resources, and many other restrictions we had to face. On a local scale there was success, such as a drop in Air pollution (see eea-data or nasa data) or returning animals and higher birth rates of animals (compared to lower brith rates for humans).
As an ordinary member of my western bubble/society, I would say the measures that were taken during the pandemic were already quite tough. Our governments used the whip and fear to make society move into a certain direction to fight covid. One could imagine that it will be far harder to make people reduce their carbon footprint, if the consequences are not directly at hand.
So what about climate change? How on earth should we ever be able to turn the wheel without getting even stricter regulations?
Is it possible to nudge us to change our behavior and life a sustainable lifestyle or reduce our carbon footprint with the help of design?
Maybe. Explore some interesting findings and thoughts around covid-19 or climate Change in the context of nudges:
- Behavioural nudges increase COVID-19 vaccinations
- Could behavioural nudges help us tackle the climate crisis?
Or is it a good orchestration of push and pull (Push-Pull-Mooring) to achieve behavior change?
Maybe. If we like it or not. But maybe it’s a mix of all tactics.
Designers have tools to change behaviors
As most of the mentioned issues circle around the change of human behavior, designers are able to have a crucial role in making the switch towards a more sustainable future by making the switch more comfortable for humans.
It is a complex topic and it is important to look at it from different angles. Sticking with designers, there’s no need to dive into all topics I mentioned. I raised this topics to make you aware, that there are more facets and many people all over the world are working in their domains to tackle big challenges. This is what i would call hunches, inspired by Steven Johnsons great video about where good ideas come from.
My target it to break down some concepts to make you more self-aware and to understand the systems better. As a designer you already have many skills needed and i hope I am able to activate you somehow to use those skills or deepen them. After all, it’s all about educating ourself, our communities and our future generations to tackle future challenges together.
Designers already use their tools to capture our attention
All design enthusiasts about a more sustainable world might already feel they already got picked up by my words but wait! Improving the world as a designer is far more than working on a sustainable future.
We as designers already created a world that is designed to capture attention. We used our skills and created dark patterns (as I wrote in my article on rebound effects in UX-Design) while trying to design desirable products to foster addiction. Though these skills might come in handy when trying to achieve a behavior change for society, it’s not the best way to treat people in general.
And maybe it’s even an abuse of the idea of designing for experiences that are meant to create delight or wellbeing. Designing for a better world also means that we are not designing for addiction for profit. Ethics, Inclusion, Accessibility and the design for wellbeing are important issues we must not forget on our path for a better tomorrow.