Monthly Archives: March 2009

3 key aspects to green design

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It is tricky to design environmentally friendly products in an ever complex industrial world, but at the same time there is still plenty of room for improvement in today’s products. Here are some keys to help you identify the potential.

One: reduce waste by not designing it.

my contribution to paper waste

This week I came across a very nice piece of crafts made out of the core of toilet paper rolls. Then I stopped to think about it and realised that we can found very often coreless paper rolls in public places. I suggest, let’s not take things for granted and question why are they the way they are. Paper rolls were initially conceived with a core, because at the time the technology wasn’t able to do it otherwise.

Marriott Hotels are introducing coreless paper rolls by the end of 2009, they have a brief comment about it on their website.

 

Two: design reusable rather than disposable.

A significant fraction of our domestic waste is just disposable products. Reusable products minimize waste an costs. A good example for this is my last acquisition: the menstrual cup, a gem. It is a silicone device that substitutes sanitary towels an tampons. Since I have it I have saved money and literally stopped creating waste. 

 Image by Kellybelly

Three:  consider the whole material chain your product will go through.

One of my favourite design classics is the moulded pulp egg tray. Made of recycled material, reusable, recyclable, cost effective, resistant.

eggs from the supermarket

Moulding technology keeps improving and now it is not only about egg trays but any kind of protective packaging.

Is this the Windowszation of the iPhone?

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Apple recently announced the release of the new iPhone OS 3.0. Yes, it’s great and it comes with many new features we have been waiting for. One of those is worrying me a little bit: Push Notification.

Push Notification Logo

The Apple Push Notification service provides a way of alerting about new information, even when the user is not running the application. Alerts come in three flavors: it could be a numbered badge to be displayed on the application’s icon, it could also be a sound or it could be a text alert.

Picture by Engadget

Looking at the feature from the user experience point of view, in my opinion, the numbered badges are great, sound alerts are just "OK" but text alerts are wrong. Text alerts will be highly distracting and might remind to disturbing message alerts found on Windows systems, like this one:

Just an example of alerts on Windows

Alerts are a great opportunity for developers and companies, specially for the ones developing IM services or critical applications that need users’ attention. On the other hand, I can imagine that a lot of these people could be tempted to abuse of the feature; ESPN, for example, announced that they would be sending 50 million notifications each month.

Apple has been creating fantastic user interfaces and I can not believe they didn’t think about the implications of allowing this kind of disturbing messages on a device like the iPhone. We have to wait a few months to see how text Push Notifications will be implemented, maybe not allowing them by default could help.

Rediscovering materials

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Lately I have come across some interesting applications for conventional materials. Just to mention a few:

I received a packet last week and I tried to reuse the packaging chips that came with it for some domestic purpose. What a surprise when I realised they melted under water! they even somehow smelled of crisps…

 starch chips melting away

After some research I found out there is a wide range of packaging chips made of  vegetable starch in the market. It happens to be an envionmentally friendlier alternative to the plastic ones, also fulfilling the product requirements.

 

I didn’t know it, but bamboo is still used for scaffolding in many countries in South-East Asia, and even for skyscrapers. It is resistant, quick to assemble and disassemble and it also "tells you in advance" when it is going to crack down, not like steel structures (at least that is what its supporters say…).

Bamboo scaffolding in Singapore, bottom view

Well, bamboo is getting into a lot of new applications. You’ve probably heard about ASUS new nature friendly laptop; eventually only a part of the housing will be made of bamboo, but it was a nice try. There is a lot of other interesting approaches such as Amadana’s bamboo earphones, all kinds of speakers and modern crockery.

 

Adobe is basically a mixture of clay, sand and straw and it used to be a construction material for modest houses.  At some point it fell into disuse, being substituted for other materials, but now it has gained interest again mainly because of environmental reasons;

picture by Leto A.

Its good thermal and insulating properties (passive solar architecture).

It is a natural resource that goes back to nature at the end of the cycle (though I´ve discovered some new applications in which they mix it with asphalt).

Its manufacturing process is clean and simple.

It is usually a local resource, so minimum transportation is required.

A traditional local industry is revived.

When we design we are often limited by current conventions, and when it comes to material selection many of us designers tend to go for a safe choice. Experimenting with unconventional materials can turn into a nice new product. Here is an ICSID article that approaches the issue from a wider perspective.