Often discussions about design for sustainability fall short or repeat themselves by focusing around worn topics or vague social initiatives. This unique and informative panel discussion gave perspective about the business challenges in creating a ‘green product’ and also examined how we can take Sustainable Design beyond limited acts like recycling.

Click through for the full article from IDSA’s website.

http://idsa.org/realizing-good-intentions-through-product-design

Eastman’s Innovation Lab is featuring an ongoing series of videos on the HydroPack project, in collaboration with Hydration Technology Innovation and Modern Edge. Click here to see the whole series.

Gaylon White of Eastman on stage

Collaborators on the ‘Hydropack’, C. Austen Angell of Modern Edge and Gaylon White of Eastman Chemical presented a revolutionary new product concept. With the Hydropack, designed for humanitarian relief, they embarked on extensive research with the Kenya Water Research Project. The Chicago design community, and visiting associates, were excited to attend the premier lecture on this incredible, life sustaining, innovation.

http://idsa.org/content/content1/idsa-housewares-section-activities-2011-housewares-show

Read more about the Hydropack project

“It’s all about collecting feedback from the users and learning how people actually use the product before, during, after,” says Angell. “It’s not just about going in, ‘I have an answer and I’m going to perform triage.’ But it’s a matter of engaging the community so that they can help create the next generation of a solution.”

Read more in this project write-up article on Eastman’s news page

Modern Edge is collaborating with HTI and Eastman to improve the usage model, design, packaging and comprehension of the HTI HydroPack, a disaster relief hydration system. We’re currently gathering usage feedback and  insights from a wide variety of users, and usage scenarios.

Sharing tea with Etabo Achio while writing up some notes.

After leaving Western Kenya, the Modern Edge team traveled north towards the Sudanese border to work with the Turkana – a nomadic tribal people suffering from a decades-long drought and the resulting food shortages. Non-verbal and graphic communication among the Turkana can be very counter-intuitive from a western perspective, presenting unique challenges in the search for a strong universal design and usage model. We head back to the Budalangi region shortly for the conclusion of the ninety family pilot and to collect end-of-use cycle feedback.

Near the Turkana village of Kapua in northern Kenya.

HydroPacks from HTI in Kenya. Photo © Alan Lee, Uber

We’re on day three of the usage pilot and rapid ethnography study for disaster relief in western Kenya. We’re exploring a variety of usage and acceptance metrics regarding the HTI HydroPack hydration system and the phase one packaging system design. Interesting feedback on the preliminary logistics. Did you know some people discuss the distance between towns in terms of the cost of the bus fare?

Photo © Alan Lee, Uber

The Modern Edge team is busy preparing for our trip to Africa tomorrow.  We’re heading to Bumala, Kenya with HTI and Eastman for the world pilot program of the HydroPack, a phase one disaster relief solution for providing a clean, nutritious drink from dirty water.  For more information on the project, watch the videos at Eastman’s website.

Equipment staging in the conference room

Our team was in Eastern Kenya this past week working on logistics for a disaster relief project. Stay tuned for more information…

On the ground in Kenya for a disaster relief project.

Environmentally sustainable design is at a crossroads. The insight and emotion that drove the passionate early adopters is giving way to data-driven decision making. New software tools and design methodologies are gaining traction and the result is a new level of innovation. But there’s still work to do for greener design methodologies to go mainstream. This is the take away from the dialogue on Thursday August 5th, at the Sustainable Minds and Modern Edge design reception at the Modern Edge Studio in PDX. Three main areas of discussion arose:

Credible Greener Decisions:
The question has changed from “How will we save the world?” to “How can we make credible decisions and substantiate progress?”  It’s about putting credibility into the process of creating greener design. “Data is the common language; with good data multi-disciplinary teams can quickly come to consensus on the right steps to greener design.” It’s about changing emotion into rational action.

Education + Dissemination:
Of concern was the lack of “greener design” resources for educators and for those in third world economies. Educators and institutions who put practical sustainability tools into the hands of their students are giving them a true leg up in the green economy. As Ann-Marie Conrado of the University of Notre Dame noted, “Greener design needs to be a part of the basic design education curriculum.” In the third world, substantial challenges remain: how do we empower advanced sustainable design in the third world? Not simply re-purposing used goods, but true ground up innovation. Marianne Grisdale of Teams Design pointed out the difficulty of “greener” material sourcing in the third world (and to a certain extent cost factors in the first world). The common thread in this portion of the discussion was that the design information and approaches used at the front end needs to be linked to sourcing realities on the back end.

Consumer Driven Change:
Jennifer Peavy of Eastman noted a common need to “understand the definition of sustainability internally and externally to companies, as all customers and practitioners have varying definitions.” We need to quantify and improve our decision making process. It’s about giving companies tools and standards to share their progress with consumers. Mark Elliot from Yakima rightly commented that consumers do not want to compromise on performance. Change is going to come with market driven factors, so the greener decisions can’t contradict the design performance mission. Designers are in a critical position to see this change through to the next level. Shane MacGregor from Motorola summed up the tipping point: How can we help the customer differentiate what “IS” greener from what is “PERCEIVED” to be greener?

The next steps are up to us. Let’s get moving…

>> take a look at our image gallery for the event

50-60 Designers, Technologists and Educators from companies and organizations such as Nike, Motorola, Eastman, Yakima, Art Center, Children’s Hospital, University of Notre Dame, Ziba, Teams Design, and others, enjoy the patio at the Modern Edge Studio during a dialogue on improving sustainable design – hosted by Sustainable Minds and Modern Edge Inc. 25 of the first attendees to register arrived by sailboat from downtown Portland. We’ll be sharing the outcome from the dialogue in future blog posts.