Elisha
Otis did not invent the elevator.
Elisha
Otis did create the safety catch that would prevent a vertically
mobile enclosure from plummeting from great heights to great depths
at very high speeds, injuring its passengers. This invention was
demonstrated at the 1853 World’s Fair in New York, almost five
thousand years after the elevator first came into usage.
Technically,
Otis did not invent the elevator, although he is regularly credited
with it. But it was his incremental improvement to an existing
technology that launched what we now know as the elevator industry,
the great facilitator of skyscraping cities, of vertical living,
working, and buying.
Otis
exemplifies what I call the designer’s dilemma – the tension that
exists in the space between inventing and improving. If the
designer’s role is to drive innovation on a large scale, how can we
resolve ourselves to the incremental improvements that are
necessitated by today's increasingly complex culture?
Now,
this question is more relevant than ever: there is no single
innovation that can counteract the innumerable injuries we have done
to the global ecosystem. But if the key to tackling our environmental
challenges lies within this world of iterative change and cumulative
improvement – and I believe that it does – then what does this
mean for design as a whole?
Cultural
Pressures for Radical Change
An
oversaturated consumer market and increasingly sophisticated end-user
have made it difficult to differentiate products and services in
today’s economy. Design has become the de facto solution for
pursuing, and owning, the habits and routines of consumers. So
strident is the competition for shelf-space and mindshare that
incremental improvement is often thought akin to colossal failure.
While designers excel at making the small changes that shape everyday
experiences, in this competitive climate we are compelled to pursue
the next big thing with great ferocity. We seek change in the
Orwellian sense – paradigm-shifts, phoenix products, dot-something
web landmarks. And success has a short memory; we are measured only
by our most recent achievement: the last to-market, the newest
award-winner, the latest recognition by the digerati.
It
is a challenge, then, that in this time of fierce competition and
creative pressure, we are pummeled by the tsunami of the green
movement. It is virtually impossible to avoid the daily discussions
of climate change, G8 debates, and company manifestos. This is the
single most significant movement of our generation – a veritable
perfect storm of social awareness, corporate interest, and
technological advancement. All things “green” have entered the
cultural vernacular, and our contemporary currency is a fluency with
these issues. Just as the market pressures us to create more
individual design contributions, it has become obvious that the key
to meaningfully addressing environmental issues is through additive
change – continual improvement, rather than discrete invention.
There is no magic bullet, no single a-ha moment, no “iPod” of the
green movement.
So
in this time of transformation, when new thinking is so critical, why
are designers at a standstill? Why has design not been at the
forefront of this movement with new solutions and roadmaps for
change? In many ways, the green movement is threatened by the
prevailing mentality in design today – one that equates
sustainability with stasis, and collaboration with mimicry.
Of
course, there are the requisite resin-seeped art pieces, recycled
coated paper packaging explorations, and sunflower-seed kitchen
cabinets. But at this cultural inflection point, we need to do more
than create niche products and art pieces. We need to do more than
play corporate catch-up or throw our hats into the ever-enlarged PR
ring of greenery. We need to stimulate mass change.
In
the same way that we approach design challenges – not by purporting
to have all of the answers, but instead by assuredly asking the right
questions – we must recognize that we don’t have the solution yet
because our formula has been wrong. Our addiction to sweeping change
has hobbled us from seeing the most obvious opportunities for
improvement. In order to create a radical position around
sustainability, we need to change our concept of design. Our first
green products must be ourselves.
Perhaps
the most revolutionary characteristic of the environmental movement
is its sheer scope. Activist Paul Hawken describes it as the largest
and fastest growing movement in the world, comprising more than 2
million organizations worldwide. This vast reach provides a great
opportunity for facilitating change - but it also poses a unique set
of challenges regarding the management and self-identity of such a
broad, loosely connected network.
Designers
are just one of many groups clamoring to contribute within this
space. NGOs, commercial businesses, technologists, academics, and
governments are all forging ahead with their individual visions,
sharing the public's attention. Together, the many voices of this
movement form a harmony, deeper and more complex than any solo the
designer alone can offer.
Yet
this is a new and uncomfortable space for many designers to occupy,
indoctrinated as we are with the importance of differentiation and
exclusivity. To date, we have succeeded in our difference, not our
similarities. We are accustomed, in many ways, to known boundaries.
This is not to say that designers are not continuously pushing those
boundaries and rewriting our own histories and futures, but rather
that our design thinking tools and methods (narrative, motion, form,
virtuality) have remained relatively constant. Even as our industry
has evolved to integrate robust strategic and analytical
perspectives, our jurisdiction has remained clear. Even as we engage
in transformational thinking, build new business and brand models,
and tackle human-interaction challenges in emerging economies, we are
still designers. The horizon line moves with us.
Our
clients expect our ability to translate research and ideation into
concrete products and services. And they know we'll be able to
differentiate them - at least for a while - from their competitors.
But now we are not dealing with competitors, we are elbow-to-elbow
with people who share our ethic, and to engage in the traditional
competitive stance would be counterproductive. In a world where
everything is connected and we all share common goals, how do we
satisfy our deep instinct to create a unique position for ourselves?
We
need a new strategy.
When
in deep waters, become a diver
As
we redefine the role of design in this new world order, we must look
to each other for ideas and inspiration. Individually greening our
companies is not sufficient. By pooling our knowledge, we can create
a network in which every client is compelled to engage in a
discussion of sustainability - no matter which firm it selects as a
design partner. Together, we can advocate for the improvements -
large and small - that will produce lasting change.
By
creating independent "green design" practices that exist
adjacent to traditional industrial design, engineering, and digital
media design offerings, we only marginalize the issue. To effect real
change, we need to apply a green lens to all of our activities, not
just some of them. Environmental intelligence needs to be fully
assimilated within the entire design process, across the entire
field.
Of
course, in order to engage in an informed conversation with our
clients, we also need to commit to educating ourselves and our teams
about eco-friendly behaviors and environmental strategies. This
undertaking is significant, for as we ask more in-depth questions,
the answers become more difficult to locate.
frog*
has initiated a Kyoto Treaty of design - a call to arms for the
creative community around environmental stewardship. Our initial
thoughts and conversations have led to these basic tenets, but these
are just a start. We ask each member of the the design community to
commit to these principles and join with us in building upon them:
Collectively:
-
Helping craft a larger social equity protocol for the design
community
-
Publicly ratifying that agreement, and committing to its compliance
-
Contributing to the communal knowledge base for sustainable design
-
Advancing the intellectual understanding of environmental issues from
a design perspective
Individually:
-
Offering green analysis to clients, or partnering with others to
conduct this analysis
-
Providing material alternatives for sustainable product development
-
Investigating manufacturing processes and rewarding green innovation
-
Minimizing environmental impact from prototyping or model-making
activity
-
Publicly reporting the carbon footprint of our firms
-
Becoming educated about the environmental impact of our work
Everything
we know is inverted. Everything we rested our beliefs on is cast in a
new light. Change happens fast, and we need to act quickly. We are
revisiting our practices, our methods, and our philosophies. We are
talking to each other. We are leaving our egos behind.
If
you are ready for change, join us.
Text
by Valerie Casey
*frog
is a global design and strategy firm; the author was creative
director of design research and design strategy at frog.
This
article was the first written piece about The Designers Accord (which
at the time was named the "Kyoto Treaty" of Design). It was
featured in the frog Design Mind newsletter, summer 2007.
