[IxDA Discuss] Does Sustainable Interaction Design Exist?

[Oleh Kovalchuke]

I was looking for additional examples of importance of thousand year period
for interaction design when lo-and-behold Mike has raised the question of
sustainable design.

I think the ethics of interaction design come into focus and change on the
scale of thousands of years. Consider these examples of questions reflecting
heightened ethical awareness, which bear on eventual changes to interaction
design: "Does this design contribute to global warming?", "Do we really
need the tools facilitating cannibalism?" (cannibalism was widespread among
all cultures according to this source: http://tinyurl.com/jlqlb), "Who is
this God person anyway?".

The sustainable design questions have been added to the perception time
scale: http://www.tangospring.com/IxDtopicWhatIsInteractionDesign.htm .

--
Oleh Kovalchuke
Interaction Design is Design of Time
http://www.tangospring.com/IxDtopicWhatIsInteractionDesign.htm .


On 4/16/06, dcooney at umich.edu <dcooney at umich.edu> wrote:
> [Please voluntarily trim replies to include only relevant quoted
material.]
>
> Great question Mike!
>
> > But I'm convinced that there have to be
> > certain principles that interaction designers can follow that are
> > more environmentally friendly than others.
>
> I forget where I read it, but someone recently mentioned how
> informative it is to think of interaction design less as designing
> interactions with physical space, and more as designing interactions
> with time.
>
> > Obviously, the most environmentally friendly product we can create is
> > no product at all, and often interaction design is better at this
> > than industrial design when we are able to turn a product into a
> > service.
>
> The scarce resource might then be peoples' time, and the most
> attention/time friendly product could be one that doesn't exist!  But a
> product that helps me do what I need to do, in less time, or improves
> my experience of time AND (nodding to Nathan's quoted definition from
> http://www.sustainabilitydictionary.com ) does so not at the expense of
> my other life activities, or the life activities of others - that
> product might be considered sustainable...
>
> Dan Cooney
>
>
>
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>