Meaning
Meaning has been a growing point of discussion in the design world over the past four years. Even in the business world, meaning is increasingly addressed by strategists, entrepreneurs, and …
Accessibility
Making sure that a solution is usable for a wide variety of people, with different abilities, understandings, and capabilities, ensures that the solution can be used as much as possible. …
Simplicity Versus Clarity
One method that designers, developers, and (especially) marketers often use to increase usability is to make things “simple.” Often, the approach is simply to take away features and performance criteria …
Usability
The idea that solutions should be easy to use is hardly new, but frankly, it still doesn’t always result in usable products and services. This is especially true with technological …
Design for Use
Usability 189 Simplicity Versus Clarity 193 accessibility 195 Meaning 198 187 Enter code DITPDE for 15% off any Rosenfeld Media product directlypurchased from our site: http:Zrosenfeldmedia. com O ne of …
Putting Them All Together
The good news is that, despite how different many of the frameworks seem—all of them attempt to achieve similar ends, and there is a lot more overlap and similarity between …
Other Frameworks
These are, by no means, the only frameworks in use. There are several more and, undoubtedly, there will be new ones soon. Some of the others are focused on government …
Sustainability Helix
The Sustainability Helix11 is the result of collaboration between Natural Capital Solutions[28] [29] and students from the Presidio School of Management.[30] It is a framework for evaluating overall organizational commitment …
Total Beauty
Created by Edwin Datcheski to redefine the concept of what is “beautiful,” Total Beauty is a quantitative framework that offers a point system to calculate total impact of products and …
The Natural Step™
The Natural Step is a framework (see Figure 3.17) promoted by an international organization that proposes four fundamental system conditions to help stabilize the global biosphere. This approach is general, …
Social Return on Investment
Social Return on Investment (SROI) strategies attempt to measure social-economic impacts like LCAs measure environmental impacts (see Figure 3.14). This is a very new approach, and there are no still …
Even seemingly simple products can create deeply complicated LCA requirements
When a customer purchases an item, it moves from the manufacturing category to the use category. For some products, the impact during the use phase may be small (such as …
Life Cycle Analysis
The most exacting and accurate framework for assessing solutions is Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), an entirely quantitative approach (see Figure 3.9). There are several variations of LCA tools, but conceptually …
The Design Spiral
In the words of the Biomimicry Guild, nature can be “model, measure, and mentor.”[14] This means that nature can be used as a guide to translate functions into biological terms. …
Biomimicry
Like the Cradle to Cradle perspective, Biomimicry takes its inspiration from natural processes (see Figure 3.4). Promoted by Janine Benyus, Biomimicry isn’t so much a framework as it is an …
Cradle to Cradle
Also known as eco-effectiveness, Cradle to Cradle, or C2C, is a popular framework that demands significant change, for good reason, but represents a high bar to reach for most organizations …
Natural Capitalism
Also known as eco-efficiency1, the Natural Capitalism framework was developed by three luminaries of sustainability: Paul Hawking, Amory Lovins, and Hunter Lovins (see Figure 3.1). It is described in detail …
What Are the Approaches to Sustainability?
Natural Capitalism 83 Cradle to Cradle 94 Biomimicry 109 Life Cycle analysis 121 social return on investment 147 the natural step™ 154 total beauty 158 sustainability helix 172 other Frameworks …
A Better Way?
The reality of most sustainability measuring is that there are no perfect scores. At best, there is “better” and “worse”—and these aren’t often clear. Complex systems, by definition, connect to …
Which bag is better for the environment, paper or plastic?
However, the other side claims that plastic bags are better than paper because they weigh so much less per bag that the gasoline and diesel burned to move them around …
Putting It All Together
One way to test these concepts is to consider how they interact with real questions people have in the world. We’ll look quickly at two— not necessarily to answer them …
Financial Measures
How we measure financial returns says a lot about our values, just as it does with social and environmental returns. We can’t ignore finan- cial measures—even in nonprofit endeavors— but …
Cons
• High construction costs due to complex radiation containment systems and procedures. • High subsidies needed for construction and operation, as well as loan guarantees. • Subsidies and investment could …
Pros
• Lower carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases) released into the atmosphere in power generation. • Low operating costs (relatively). • Known, developed technology “ready” for market. • Large power-generating …
Environmental Measures
Environmental criteria are usually both easier to measure and easier to address than social issues—if only because the emotion and ambiguity surrounding most social issues aren’t part of the picture. …
Social Measures
But how does one value social issues? How do you measure the financial benefit of saving a life or not causing pain to an animal? And should you? Even in …
Measured?
You Get What You Measure 40 Social measures 42 environmental measures 50 Financial measures 57 Putting it am together 67 a Better Way? 77 39 Enter code DITPDE for 15% …
A Careful Balance
Lastly, no decision is perfect or comes without consequences. Design requires decisions that narrow possibilities, ultimately until there is one solution. Designing more sustainable offerings may require you to balance …
An Ecosystem of Stakeholders
While we’ve traditionally considered the important players in the development process to be the client (or company) and the customer, these are not the only two actors to consider. The …
Financial Vitality
For sure, innovative solutions, no matter how sustainable, can’t be effective if they aren’t financially viable. While designers, traditionally, eschew these considerations or assume others are “on top of them,” …
Social Vitality
To be considered sustainable and just, many designers require products to have a positive impact on the society they are serving (as well as those who helped create them). Product …
Ecological Vitality
There is no question that an unhealthy, unstable environment decreases efficiency and our ability to create stable, healthy societies and communities. Yet, human history is filled with examples where we …
Cooperation and Competition
Competition, while a powerful motivator in innovation, is not the only ingredient needed for successful, sophisticated solutions. Despite how we characterize innovation and design, nothing is created in a vacuum, …
Centralization and Decentralization
While it’s often easier to manage a few, centralized systems, these are often less sustainable solutions because, though strong, when they fail, the rest of the system fails with them. …
Diversity and Resiliency
Perhaps the best way to judge any system or solution is to assess how resilient it is. Systems that are resilient have a greater chance of lasting, evolving, and responding …
