The Elastic Mind

This woman speaks of the integration of design and technology- a concept I am using for my thesis.



And.... here is my thesis brief and my literature review. Enjoy

My Thesis Brief

Working Title
Effective Clean Design

Research Question
How can businesses and organizations apply both the principals of consumer behaviour and sustainable design to their policy? How can this new convergence of design theory and sustainability effectively engage both customers and employees to adopt sustainable practices?

Context
With current environmental issues, I feel that the people who discover and recognize problems (environmentalists, activists, scientists, etc) do not communicate and work with the people who create products and solutions (designers, marketers, business persons). In the large part, each side rejects each other due to lack of common language and understanding. From personal observation through work in both feilds, many people in the environmental movement view any kind of business and marketing as negative, harmful and instruments of large controlling corporations. In turn, the business world fails to recognize that in the long run, the environmental and social problems they can create are costly and damaging to the very societies they make money from. This is not a sustainable business practice; it’s closer to cancerous behaviour. There also seems to be a view that environmentalism is a hindrance to ‘business as usual.’ As of September 15th, we once again see that business as usual doesn’t work.
In this age of design, it is important to find solutions to our current environmental and social problems. Thus, we must apply the effective tactics of mainstream marketing and consumer design to environmentalism and it’s movements. Each realm in turn helps the other at developing a healthier world. A healthy world is good for business.
There have been many firms that have specialized in this field of marketing and design theory fusion, I plan to leapfrog on their developments to create more effective solutions.

Aims/Goals
To develop methods of advertising, marketing and design that lend themselves to environmental and sustainable design.
To explore previous successful and non-successful ‘green’ products and to examine the successful characteristics of those products so as to apply those concepts elsewhere.
To probe into non-eco popular phenomenon to see what made them so successful. Ex. Ipods, Youtube, Ray-bans, Unconventional Thinking, Lavalife, Cooler Solutions, Cobrasnake, and other industry leaders. Simple case studies of each company will highlight their main points of effectiveness. This will lend itself to further marketing and design solutions.
To examine sustainable events to seek the same understanding about how people operate in large group productions.

Objectives
• To play with design concepts and receive feedback from ‘average’ individuals about how they feel about the product, not just how a person familiar with sustainable design would perceive it.
• To create simple product design solutions to fill in the gaps in design theory, strategy and approach I find.
• To make people want to live sustainably, to make it sought after by the masses.
• To make this thesis project reflect it’s content. This project will utilize tactics learned and be both sustainable and engaging- making you want to read this and adopt it’s tactics. (Therefore guaranteeing me an A.)

Justification
There can be no business done on a dead planet.
Companies don’t become bigger and better because they stop ameliorating their product/service/idea The same should go for sustainable design. Just because in recent years things have been made better does not mean they are made the best. I predict that through this exploration of consumer behaviour in regards to sustainable products I will achieve greater understanding of the issues. This will allow me to create new products and systems.

Methodology
• The study of current design publications, as in magazines and online blogs to study the most recent product/policy developments.
• Design a ‘mind-map’ of products for a visual reference to where products are going/have been.
• Interviews of current industry leaders and professionals.
• The study of old historical books and manuals to see what was not effective in the long run. (Asking the question: Did that work? Is this product/system a success?) Examples are sustainable manuals from Olympic events, or Fairmont Hotel policies.
• Careful editing of products and systems, and examining each subject on the same criteria. Create surveys.
• Extensive amounts of sketching.
• Extensive amounts of reading, and writing to document analysis.

Creative Outcome
A tool kit to help companies/organizations be more sustainable. Possible outcomes are flow charts, instructional kits, labeling guides, advertisements, convenience products, and videos. I would also like to create a ‘visual’ reference of sorts to map out design products, or maybe an evolution tree of sorts.
Film the process of the interviews. Create a documentary. Even if this cannot be graded because of her input, it would be a good addition to our collective.


My Literature Review

Research Question
How can businesses and organizations apply both the principals of consumer behaviour and sustainable design to their policy? How can this new convergence of design theory and sustainability effectively engage both customers and employees to adopt sustainable practices?

Review of Research
The main issue I have had with this project so far is weeding through the hundreds of books, articles and videos to find what is relevant to my project. There is much information dealing with sustainability in terms of science- why and how a certain product is sustainable, but most of the time very little to how the customer interacts with the product/campaign outside of theory. Or the human element is not treated in a humanistic mater, and is sterile and one sided. To further that, the subject matter may not relate to fashion or marketing at all.

Big Concepts:
• LOHAS- Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability. This is the main target focus of many sustainable companies, relying more on psychographics then demographics for data. This is the new opinion leader in many marketing segmentations. By targeting these innovators, which are the people willing to pay for more expensive new products, companies have paved the way to make sustainable technologies more affordable and available to the public. By using these people as a role-model and the new ‘ideal’, we can influence people who are looking for the next best thing. The trick will be to keep them there.

• Visualization- Humans need to see things to conceptualize, connect and believe in things. When politicians go to Greenland and see the shrinking glaciers, they no longer deny global warming. When people look at Chris Jordan’s website, and how it visually quantifies how much we consume, they understand better what is going on in the world. Edward Burtynsky’s photos helped conceptualize the giant industrial power that is China. The same goes for people visiting forests and nature, inner city youth often show greater compassion for environmentalism after being exposed to nature, which before was a foreign concept. When the human element is added in, by seeing speakers or documentaries, understanding and response is also greater.

• Access to information- Language is a barrier, from profession to profession, ideology to ideology, class to class, etc. Using common language to communicate between scientist and businessman seems like it should be a given, but is often overlooked. Another point- If someone is overloaded with information, which tends to happen when sustainability is the topic, people can ‘shut down’ or not absorb all the information at once. If a new learner is unfamiliar with a new concept, it is called ‘Cognitive Dissonance’. This is the feeling of uncomfortable tension, which comes from holding two conflicting thoughts in the mind at the same time. This can be used to change people’s behaviour, but it can also be a motivator for people to come up with reasons to justify their behaviour. Ex. “Humans aren’t able to change the climate, so I can keep driving my SUV.” Ewa Piwowoz-Hjort, a Swedish sociologist, believes that society’s ability to ignore the bad news may result from our tendency to shy away from things that seem frightening or ominous.

• Media and Peer Pressure- humans are social animals that are only products of the knowledge and experiences we are exposed to. For the most part, we believe what we are told, what the media shows us, and do what our neighbors expect us too. Media dictates how we should act, what is new, and what is acceptable. Most people operate on how they believe the rest of the world behaves. Sheena Iyengar’s research at Columbia University proves how group pressure influences our choices. Understanding this may prove to be useful in persuasion, as changing behaviour takes more than just information.

• Kaizen. Japanese for "continuous improvement”, is a Japanese philosophy that focuses on continuous improvement throughout all aspects of life. This model also doesn’t place blame on past oversights or failures. It also encourages participation from on levels on improvement from factory worker to company president. Toyota, a company known for it’s innovation in sustainable design, operates on the Kaizen system. The theory of Conscious Evolution plays out many times when talking about the greater good of social enterprises.

• Reframing the system- you have to consciously change the system in which your business operates, be it internal or external (Company policy, government laws). On an internal level, by evaluating where a company is by setting benchmarks and schedules, a company can follow how they have improved, and it keeps the company motivated. This concept is used heavily in popular and effective weight loss systems, and by personal trainers and life coaches. Externally, lobbying the government and being an active citizen is crucial. Also, the question of WHY we have commerce and why we trade is an issue as well. Is it for money? Or is it for the betterment of everyone? If we reframe the reasons why we consume, we change what we consume.

• Creativity. Sustainability requires thinking outside of the status quo. The new term for this concept is Integrated Design Thinking. It’s toted as the new paradigm shift in design theory. For example, GE encourages it’s employees to use their ‘ecomaginations.’

Many of my ‘leads’ come from quotes in interviews. I find that without the lens of the writer, people often have very true insight into events. Some are as follows:
• “How do you sell someone social values in their coffee?” –George Roter, Engineers without Boarders founder, raising the question of effective social marketing.
• “We Focus on behaviour change and marketing, one concept is to promote the ‘Successful Deviant’, a farmer who did something different and prospered.” - George Roter, Engineers without Boarders founder, when talking about how they effectively change behaviour in Ghanaian farmers.
• “When we tell a story of war, we sensationalize the story. Without that human face, there is no context, no hope.” – Ishmeal Beth
• “Journalist have little to no education in the sciences, so they don't know how to address it. They know politics, celebrities- but if they have a scientist on their show they get nervous.” - David Susuki, when asked why do you think journalists dropped the ball in 1992 on the climate crisis.
• “Integrated design thinking is the real break through, not gizmos.” – Peter Bushby
• “When infrastructure is doing its work, it’s non-existent in the public mind. When you’re getting water from the faucet, you don’t think about how it got there. How do you build stewardship for something that is not part of your consciousness?”- Micheal Lehrer

Inspiration and insight has often come from strange places. I was watching The Simpsons, where in one scene Homer ran to the curb and was yelling at a car. To my surprise- the Simpson family had a recycling and green bin on the curb along side their garbage bin. This was far, far away from the round, metal garbage bins of old. The Simpsons are about as mainstream American as apple pie, if they are going green it will be noticed. It also showed how the greening of North American is being shown, and lead by the media. This single 5-second clip demonstrates the concept of peer pressure and visualization.

In conclusion to preliminary research, I see that by narrowing down what I focus on and looking for the human element of sustainable design, I can find the key to how to communicate sustainable behaviour and messages through visuals and language. By learning from established research methods such as publications, I can rationally qualify what veins of interest to follow. By learning from established and proven working marketing techniques, I can further focus on how to communicate to audiences. By paying attention to the human element of the research, I can focus on what emotion or energy to communicate. This will all ad to a holistic approach to marketing sustainable behaviour.


Bibliography

Birkeland, Janis. Design for sustainability [electronic resource] : a sourcebook of integrated, eco-logical solutions. http://innopac.lib.ryerson.ca/search~S0/a?Birkeland+Janis

Changing Minds. http://changingminds.org/index.htm. Nobember 2nd, 2008.

Chris Jordan Photographic Arts. Jordan, Chris. http://www.chrisjordan.com/. October 14th, 2008.

Colchester, Chloë. Textiles Today. Thames & Hudson. 2007.
Earls, Mark. Herd: How to Change Mass Behaviour by Harnessing Our True Nature. John Wiley & Sons. 2007

Eco Textile News. October 2008. Issue No:18. Mowbray Communications Ltd.

Edward Burtynsky Photographic Works. Burtynsky, Edward. http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/. October 14th, 2008

“Green Museums in the Golden State.” Azure Magazine, “The Green Revolution”, May 2007. 47

Hernandez, Iyengar et al. What Drives Whom? A Cultural Perspective on Human Agency. Columbia University Business School http://www.columbia.edu/~ss957/whatdrives.html

King, Romana. “Ex-Child Soldier Urges Business to be Responsible.” Business Edge Magazine, Jully 11th, 2008. 6

Friedman, Thomas. Hot, Flat and Crowded. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. New York. 2008.

Future Fashion, White Papers. Earth Pledge. New York, 2007.

“Is Toronto Ready to be a Green City?” Spacing Magazine, Fall 2007

Levy, Madeline. “Who Cares?” H&M Magazine, Summer 2008. 36-39

Mau, Bruce. Massive Change. Phaidon and the Institute Without Boundaries. 2004.

McKenzie-Mohr, Doug. Fostering Sustainable Behaviour. New Society Pub. 1999.

Gleason, Jeb. “Trend Watch: The Rise of Precycling” Global Cosmetics Industry. http://www.gcimagazine.com/events/coverage/33830964.html. November 4th, 2008.

“Q&A: Peter Busby.” Azure Magazine, “The Green Revolution”, May 2007. 36.

Roter, George. “Introduction to Engineers without Boarders.” Engineers Without Boarders Ryerson University Chapter. Engineering Bulding, Ryerson University. October 6th, 2008.

Selling Sustainability. NESTA. London. June 2008.

Susuki, David. “Sustaianble Campuses Tour.” Canadian Federation of Students. Business Building, Ryerson University. October 14th, 2008.

Solomon, Zaichkowsky, Polegato, et al. Consumer Behaviour, Buying, Having and Being. Pearson Custom Publishing. Toronto. 2008.

“Waking up and Catching up.” The Economist. January 27th, 2007.

Wilcox, Palassio, Dovercourt, al et. GreenTOpia. Volume 3. Coach House Books. Toronto. 2007.

Wilson, Mowbray et al. Eco-Textile Labelling Guide. Mowbray Communications and Messe Frankfurt. 2008