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….
reducing paper waste in the creative process.
This area is important/interesting to me because….
Reflecting on my personal experience in a core design course I took last quarter, our class's reliance on post-it notes was alarmingly evident. In almost every class, we went through several packs of Post-its for everything from brainstorming activities and organizing thoughts to group collaboration. However, the environmental cost was hard to ignore, with these practices all contributing to paper waste after every class session. This realization captivated my interest to find a more sustainable and accessible solution.
My observations made me realize that the physical interaction (i.e., visual and tangible manipulation) with post-its or other paper materials was the primary reason for their usage among a wide range of individual users. Despite their existence, the higher cost of recycled Post-its compromises their accessibility and deters users while the overarching issue of paper consumption remains unresolved. Additionally, due to their lack of hands-on physical interaction and simplicity, the reluctance to shift to digital alternatives pointed to a gap in sustainable solutions for both creative and educational processes. This personal experience has driven my interest in taking something as small as a post-it note and transforming it into a physical and sustainable solution. Through this process, I want to rethink how we engage with these everyday tools while addressing environmental concerns.
Colin’s Comment: Fantastic! We will use quite a lot of PostIts in this class too. Today even. I have tried doing virtual PostIts in Google apps before, but it’s not an equivalent experience. There are many opportunities with respect to paper and sustainability. In this class, we will consider several a variety of ways to incorporate sustainability…of course, starting with reduce, recycle & reuse…then going farther. There was a research project about 10 years back about the paper towels in the Y2E2 restrooms. Plus I also think of the household paper towels that got the extra perforation so that you could choose to use a smaller piece.