[IxDA Discuss] Ethical Issues for Interaction Designers

[Esteban Barahona]

Minkó Mihály misi at nexum.hu
Friday 12:44am

"I think I missed a definition here. The definition of "sustainable
design". I know what sustainable development is, but sustainable
design? Is there a must read paper describing this concept? Could
somebody send me a link of it?"

I was thinking of posting something about ecodesign/sustainable
design. I started studying Product Design few months ago. In talks
with the career Director Oscar Pamio
(http://www.uveritas.ac.cr/uv/index.php?id=145), this is a recurrent
topic. I attended an interesting seminar of someone that is pushing
ecodesign in corporations and institutions on Spain and Costa Rica.
The Product Design students are demanding more information for
ecodesign, sometimes it's the teachers who aren't that interested
(...some are). I haven't found sustainable design reference books
(there should be reference books of ecodesign divided by industry
that outlines best ecological designs/solutions).

Most of the ecological impact of products is because of wrong design
decisions. As a conceptual "bug" example: most part of the water
used to flush is wasted on standard (house) toilets. The technology
for saving water exists (the toilet for men that Duchamp used in a
photo) but is not implement in houses. In fact, there's no flush
mode for liquid wastes; everything defaults to solid. I don't know
how much water, but something is surely wasted. In National
Geographic channel there was a documentary of the tabu of toilets
(basically in all the world minus Japan)... I think it's silly that
this cann't be discussed (...and solutions designed and
implemented).

Personally, I think industrial society has something fundamentaly
wrong in its relationship with nature. Basically producers and
consumers doesn't care about nature. Changing this harmful mentality
and behaviour can be started and promoted from design (which is
responsible for planning the future, innovations, etc).

(there's no quote tag in beta.ixda.org?)


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Posted from the new ixda.org
http://beta.ixda.org/discuss?post=18831