Designers are always looking for new and easy ways to organize information because the better we are able to sort of visually organize all the variables involved, the better a chance we have of being able to make the appropriate connections that lead to smart solutions and innovations. Navigating through my del.icio.us/stiven network the other day, I came across a fun little mapping and visualization tool at bubbl.us. It lets you easily create vibrantly colored bubble maps on the fly that you can share with your “friends” through their portal. This makes for a great collaboration tool since different people can contribute and the maps can soon become the collaborative vision of many.
A couple of days ago at lighterfootstep.com I came a cross a great article that gave me insight to a few blogs I was not familiar with and so I decided to try and return the favor and make a bubble map of the best bright green blogs on the web or at least the ones that we consistently follow here at sustainable|day.
Read the rest of this entry »
A few weeks ago psfk.com held a little design challenge that read, “If you could design anything, what would it be and why? The prize was a couple of tickets to design2.0, the CORE77 event in Boston this past Wednesday Nov. 15. This is the proposal I sent.
If I could design anything, I would design a universal impact scanner. This device would scan for and measure the environmental impact of any product or material. So I would be able to simply point my impact scanner and it would automatically calculate all the variables involved and provide me with a read out that would inform me of a products complete environmental impact using a simple scale. One would be able to customize the settings of this device according to more specific personal considerations and interest such as; fair trade value, transportation method and distance, chemical composition, life cycle assessment, even a good corporate citizen measurement of the manufacturers and distributors involved. The reason for this design would be to trigger a domino effect for industries to move towards a transparent production model where users could make smart informed decisions about every product they purchase without much effort and become conscious participants in a movement towards sustainability.
It was good enough to win since it was well aligned with the events theme. So yesterday I flew out to Boston for the day to attend and was able to meet the four speakers. It was easy to take away something inspiring from each one of them.
Read the rest of this entry »