Please describe a domain or an area of opportunity that you’d like to use as the focus for the design of a PRODUCT that supports or promotes sustainable behaviors and practices for INDIVIDUALS in day-to-day use.
For this first design project, focus your thinking on:
- a PRODUCT -- something physical that can be manufactured, distributed, purchased, and potentially held in your hand or carried with you.
Please share your initial thoughts in a few paragraphs below…
The domain that I’d like to focus on is….
I am focusing on the domain of shopping locally and reducing consumption. In our current culture, overconsumption perpetuated by large companies is generating excess waste — in terms of both products and carbon — exploiting workers, and detracting from our local economies. This aspect of sustainability has gotten increased attention, particularly in the fashion industry, with stories on “fast fashion” companies and the tons of clothing waste they’ve accumulated in places like the Atacama desert in Northern Chile. Despite this increase in awareness, there is a lack of tools to help individuals change their behavior besides the general guidance to “reduce consumption.” Although we do need to consume less, people still need to meet their baseline material needs. This means consuming more thoughtfully.
I’ve observed this phenomenon on campus before, but I was reminded on Wednesday when I saw a few of my peers online shopping during class. I must admit that I have done this myself, too; however, I still think it warrants investigation: why are we choosing to shop during class, a time where our attention is inherently split? What does this say about our attitude and behavior towards consumption, and how does this limit the potential sustainability of our shopping habits? I believe we have room to grow, and there are ways to increase the sustainability of consumption by shifting our attitude, our approach, and the tools we have access to.
On campus, this could look like getting coffee at Coho/Coupa instead of Starbucks, or shopping at the Farmer’s Market/thrift stores instead of ordering through Amazon. This also could mean helping students/community members determine:
- the products they actually need/will use,
- how to make a well-informed choice in terms of material/production practices the product uses,
- and where they can find those products locally
to minimize the negative impact of our daily consumption. Both the less we consume in general and the less the products we are consuming travel/utilize harmful practices will reduce our carbon footprint and contributions to unsustainable economic/labor practices. Although this is a small piece of the sustainability puzzle, leveraging our consumption for good (i.e., supporting sustainable products, ethical labor practices, and local businesses) can begin to heal our relationship with consumption and pair it down to its most essential level.
This area is important/interesting to me because….
Increasing the sustainability and ethics of our consumption matters to me because, as the daughter of two public school educators, I have seen how hard my parents work, how much they care about their community, and yet, how limited their time is to invest in shifting their behavior. For instance, my mom only has the time and budget to shop from places like Amazon. By creating tools to minimize the time and effort required by people already stretched thin by their living/working conditions, we can help those with good intentions realize a more sustainable lifestyle, particularly with thoughtful consumption habits.
Brainstorm
- shopping local / reducing consumption
- hard to think of a product
- phone case with mini compass to where local shops are?
- daily tracker for what you consumed, where it was sourced, what materials it uses
- closet rack sorters to help determine the clothes you actually use, what you need
- could sort by material, by brand, etc.
- also include a swapping guide for different brands
- observation opportunity = dorm, clubs on campus
- compost — students not composting in their rooms
- we have the buckets, but why don’t students use… need bags, need lids
- observation opportunity = dorm
- reusing containers instead of buying new products
- big barrier for college students is that we often have limited access to sinks/washing supplies to reuse containers
- portable dishwashing product/kit?
- mini dishwasher? solar operated?
- observation opportunity = dorm, tressider, dining halls
- (domain = reducing plug loads in dorms)
- saving electricity in rooms / ambient lighting that is still aesthetic
- something that reduces plug loads/turns off automatically
- charges up during the day; operates on timer
- soft, ambient lighting
- observation opportunity = dorm
Colin’s Comment: Is this connected with any particular observation you had since the class meeting? Maybe you were shopping online yourself or you noticed one or more persons in a particular place at a particular time doing shopping. (I say “doing shopping” because there is window shopping too).