In his recent TED talk, Julian Treasure treats sound as a material for businesses, an insight that changes the way designers should approach common spaces.
Experts make a to-do list for environmentalism
The Guardian reported today on the results of an expert focus group assembled by the UK’s Environment Agency. The panel was charged with coming up with a prioritized list of things we need to do to avoid. This list contains suggestions for government, companies, councils, religious leaders, and scientists, as well as actions individuals can take. The top 20 are all potential areas of design inquiry.
Building sustainability through design
Sustainability is a hot topic. Partial credit goes to Al Gore’s documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, and the devastation of Hurricane Katrina that preceded the movie. In the world of human-computer interaction, designers are now thinking deeply about the consequences of their creations. Last spring, IU School of Informatics professor Eli Blevis presented his research paper—”Sustainable Interaction Design: Invention & Disposal, Renewal & Reuse“— to the international CHI community in San Jose, California. This seminal work jump-started formal research about how design and sustainability are related.