sustainability

sustainable links

In the past two years in my role as a sustainability advocate, I have written repeatedly on the topic of sustainability in product design. Much of the writing has occurred on this site (check out the sustainability category), but I have also written on the topic elsewhere. Whether you are already sustainably inclined or [...]

Tagged as: product design, sustainable product design

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You don’t need the new iPhone

I’m a big fan of mnmlist. A recent post touches on some things I’ve discussed regarding smartphones (are they good?), and I thought it was worth reposting here as a reminder that many of the things we consume (or create) are unnecessary. Here’s to creating things that are necessary. Many of you have seen the [...]

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tips for recyclable designs

A colleague of mine recently took a plastic design class at UMass Lowell, and was kind enough to let me flip through the notes. There is a lot of really great stuff in there, not least of which are some thoughts on what a product designer should consider when designing for recyclability. Just because something [...]

Tagged as: product design, recycle, recycling

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new vs. perfect

Imagine for a moment that a company – PP Inc. – had made the Perfect Product. That is, a product that is perfectly attuned to the human condition in the physical and emotional sense, is as cheap to produce as possible (and able to be easily switched to a new material when raw material prices [...]

Tagged as: perfect product design, philosophy, reduce

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zen and the art of product development II

On Friday I exposed you to a passage from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that artfully laid out the ambiguity inherent in product development. Well here’s another, no explanation required: “The result is rather typical of modern technology, an overall dullness of appearance so depressing that it must be overlaid with a veneer [...]

Tagged as: perfect product design, product design, zen, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

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zen and the art of product development

Long-time readers will know of my affinity for Thoreau and how his thoughts can be applied to perfect product design. Well I just read the following passage in a similar-minded book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (free link | affiliate link). I’d been thinking about optimizing/restructuring product development process and this passage seemed [...]

Tagged as: perfect product design, product design, thoreau, zen, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

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green plastics search engine

A while back I shared 6 of my favorite materials websites. Well I just came across another great site, courtesy of IDES, that I wish I’d included. The site is IDES’s new Prospector Tool, and it’s got some nice search features that Matweb doesn’t have (they’ve got some videos after the jump), but one in particular [...]

Tagged as: biodegradaility, materials, plastics, recycling

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UL + sustainability = the future?

Earlier this week I made my way up VC Hill to attend MassMEDIC’s Envirofoum. The two presenters, Robert B. Pojasek of Capaccio Engineering and Kevin Johnson of Siemens did a fantastic job, but one of the topics perked my ears up a little more than the rest: the recent rise of UL Environment. what is UL [...]

Tagged as: certification, UL, underwriters laboratories, validation

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recycled resins: sometimes they’re just better

The biggest hurdle to overcome with regards to using resin containing recycled content is something I like to call the performance bias. Our performance bias tells us that in most cases, second hand materials aren’t going to perform as well as their brand new counterparts. It’s a bias that generally serves us well, but during [...]

Tagged as: Injection Molding, recycle, resin, Valox iQ

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pre-consumer vs post-consumer recycled content

This past weekend I was flipping through the March 2010 edition of Metropolis and came across an advertisement for a new line of San Fransisco bus shelter. As eye candy, it was in line with the rest of the magazine, but read some of the copy and you see they are trying to sell it [...]

Tagged as: Koda XT, LEED, materials, polycarbonate, recycle

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a wake-up story

If you’re anything like me, you occasionally (read: habitually) flip through trade magazines, checking to see if any badass new materials have cropped off. Graphene you say? Sweet. Aerogel? Awesome. Transparent aluminum? Beam me up. Unfortunately, even as a sustainability nut I don’t think I’m in the minority when I say that my knee-jerk reaction [...]

Tagged as: materials

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best practices in usability testing

Beth Loring wrote a great post over at Farm on best practices in moderating usability tests. Her webinar presentation below touches on bias in user research, how much to interact, and dealing with failure. It’s a solid, high-level resource on a topic that isn’t as well-represented on the interweb as I’d like, and definitely worth [...]

Tagged as: bias, moderating, usability

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The dirty little secret about environmental impact

When it comes to sustainable product design, if it has a circuit board, it’s environmental impact is big. So big that changing the housing from a standard plastic to an eco-friendly option is often insignificant. How insignificant? Epically insignificant. Just check the stats (Thanks Okala). I used ABS as a benchmark because it’s something we all know [...]

Tagged as: environmental impact, PCB

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Thoreau on perfect product design

My brother-in-law got me a copy of Thoreau’s Walden for Christmas (Thanks Phil!). I’m only halfway through, but the pages are dripping with inspiration for good product design. Check that. Perfect product design. For example, Thoreau proposes that: “a man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to leave alone.” [...]

Tagged as: perfect product design, product design, thoreau, Walden

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