A Sustainable Train of Thought

Over the summer I researched and wrote a series of blog entries for the RED group at Design Council in the UK. My work was an experiment to support the RED Energy Project, which is now available at http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/futurecurrents/. Although the RED group was focused on energy efficiency and reducing CO2 emissions, many of their insights are topical for sustainability in general.

I was checking out their Energy Rating design solution, which describes the following situation:

Why aren’t houses labelled for energy efficiency like fridges? Soon houses on the market will be rated as part of the new Home Information Pack but there is still no incentive to take action. If mortgage lenders required borrowers to improve their house’s energy rating, energy performance and running costs would be higher on home-improvers’ agendas. The energy ratings of homes would be publicly displayed on for-sale signs, in estate agents’ windows and on maps on home-buying websites. We could create a situation where it is socially desirable to show that you have a low-energy house.

This is describing a situation in which sellers of a home find it in their best interest to improve and advertise the energy efficiency of their home because the market values that action and information. Again, this essentially describes a linkage between action and communication and transparency and increased value in the marketplace.

I would describe this situation as essentially a consumer to consumer transaction, and essentially deals with a homogeneous social group: a house seller is also a house buyer, and the terms under which they understand and appreciate the increased value is essentially the same. A house seller who makes energy efficiency changes to his home will probably value such changes and look for similar information when buying a new house. Lack of this information will probably prove a point of negotiation between him and the seller of the new house, possibly encouraging the seller to value these changes as well and demand them of the new house they in turn buy. This has a very nice cascading effect amongst the consumer sphere as more homeowners begin to look for or are asked about energy efficiency in the homes they are buying or selling.

The one concern I have is whether adequate certification exists to legitimize the ratings or evaluations. For ratings to be effective, they need to at least use a common language and at best be performed identically with the same criteria and evaluation process. So, for example, a homeowner selling her home can get go through a rating or evaluation process and understanding the steps and criteria involved and can apply this knowledge when looking at the rating of a prospective home. If the rating schemes are different, the homeowner has to re-learn or translate the rating system into the one she is familiar with. An example of this situation is if different foods had different nutrition information labels. There is power from standardization.

The PDF RED Future Currents: Designing for a changing climate report has some interesting points about market transformation:

Market transformation

Market transformation refers to changes in the way markets operate. It involves a combination of labelling appliances of different standards of efficiency, procurement, rebates, minimum standards and education. The biggest effects so far, backed up by European standards, have been seen in the sale of fridges and freezers. The energy consumption of an average 140 litre fridge in the UK home decreased by 29% between 1990 and 2001. European directives are due for other appliances, especially across electronics. The apparent success of energy appliance labelling has led to the labelling of houses, which will become mandatory at the point of sale in the UK in 2007.

However, market transformation also has its limits. The energy efficiency gains have been partially wiped out by people buying larger appliances, or simply more of them – the so-called ‘rebound effect’. In the case of fridges about half the efficiency gains have been lost. This pattern is partly driven by rating schemes themselves, since it is easier for manufacturers to achieve an ‘A’ rating in terms of kWh per litre in larger appliances than in smaller ones. Although they have been keen to develop highly rated products, manufacturers are not interested in selling appliances with lower overall energy consumption per se.

In this case, policy has attempted to drive the market through influencing manufacturers. As with EEC, the Government’s market transformation strategy has achieved some impact, but is ultimately limited as it has not yet engaged householders directly, building awareness of and interest in energy use in appliances. A recent survey by the Association for the Conservation of Energy found that many people with labelled products did not know what the labels meant.

One thing I noticed is the focus on rating products, an approach which I think has some inherent problems (I’ll go into this in another post I’m working on right now). Another important point is that the engagement with consumers regarding labeled products isn’t optimal, reinforcing the importance and need for communicating value to consumers. It’s also not clear to me how the value of energy efficient products is communicated to manufacturers.

Another interesting part of the report:

A number of important design leads came out of our user research:

• The importance of making energy tangible, or visible. This in turn implies a need for information about energy use. Whereas the centralised energy system was intelligent at the centre and did not require the householder to have any feedback on use and the impact of changing behaviour, distributed energy requires information in the home. There is a rich agenda here, taking in home energy rating and going to smart meters, energy statements, control panel, online tools and beyond.

• Design for control – the importance of being able to influence the use of energy across a range of functions and appliances easily and quickly.

• The importance of understanding and appealing to multiple motivations (not just the limited financial version of paybacks). People have complex motivations linking to aspirations, long-term security and their position in relation to others. For example, rather than seeing micro-renewables in terms of an investment whose high capital costs and long payback times currently make them unattractive, the designer might seek to create a new aesthetic for micro-renewables, re-casting them in terms of consumer goods, as the latest must-have purchase. Domestic combined-heat-and-power systems (micro CHP) or photovoltaic panels (PV) have to be objects of desire as well as saving carbon dioxide emissions.

• Collaboration is a potentially valuable force for change. Acting together can save money, as well as allowing the sharing of knowledge and information on service providers. Alone, enthusiasts remain enthusiasts, but as part of an energy collaborative they are a powerful motivating force. The internet is an ideal platform to support such distributed intelligence.

Of these four points, I hadn’t thought of the last one: collaboration. I’m curious to see if there are other methods of or platforms for collaboration besides the usual suggestion of the internet.

I’m definitely concerned with making information relatable to people in terms they can understand or appreciate; tangible design is one possibility. Many factors are invisible with sustainability, such as draw-down in Third World countries, so it becomes an issue of making those connections visible and making them relatable.

I also want to make sure solutions provide means of action in addition to supplying information and promoting understanding. Ideally the vehicle for understanding and means of action can be as close together as possible—perhaps they can even be one and the same. To be clear, this does not necessarily mean a technological solution. Nutrition labels provide education and a platform for action in the supermarket, for example, in that they educate consumers about the nutritional content and provide a basis for choice at the point of sale. The crucial ingredient that may be missing is an understanding of how this information relates to the consumer on a personal, case-by-case basis. That relationship may best be illustrated via technological means because of technology’s ability to adapt and customize information.

I disagree somewhat with the comments regarding motivation, however. I think the aesthetic is important, of course, but just as important is the communication of value. There’s a disjunction between the understanding of how increased energy efficiency affects home value and the motivation for buying something based purely on the “latest must-have purchase.” Yes, people need attractive and desirable things, but not at the cost of the overall certification and valuation process, which must be valued as well.

If people could see how a purchase would increase the value of their homes, for example, that might be one way of counteracting the “high capital costs and long pay back times” listed as being undesirable. This approach might work because people already understand that homes are investments that appreciate over time. So once products are inserted into that time-scale instead of residing within the time-scale of most consumer goods, people can better appreciate the value such changes would generate. That is, if you say a wind-power generator benefits your home value, you can compare such a change against other investments you’d make in your home, such as replacing the shingles or adding insulation. One concern with making something like a wind-power generator sell on the basis of aesthetic is that people may decide to replace it every so often when styles change, which generates waste and inefficiency. Or they may not consider it inherently valuable, possibly even something akin to a pink flamingo on the front lawn.

Inserting the micro-generation solution into the time-scale of the house enables the certification process to perform as intended, with products rated based on their performance and contribution to overall home value, for example, instead of whether it’s red or blue or looks like a rocket ship. The thing to remember is that all of this technology and the benefits it provides can be quantified—we need to differentiate very clearly where aesthetic is important and where function and results should be emphasized. Of course we want things to look nice and be usable, but this is also one of the rare times when evaluations of “good” and “bad” design can actually be justified based on real data. A more effective energy efficiency or energy production solution is “good” compared to less effective solutions, and this fact should not be lost amongst the aesthetics. If we’re talking about changing the market, then along with the aesthetically “attractive” we must also focus on how to make long-term solutions that provide tangible, quantitative results and feedback “attractive.”

Over the summer I researched and wrote a series of blog entries for the RED group at Design Council in the UK. My work was an experiment to support the RED Energy Project, which is now available at http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/futurecurrents/. Although the RED group was focused on energy efficiency and reducing CO2 emissions, many of their insights are topical for sustainability in general.

I was checking out their Energy Rating design solution, which describes the following situation:

Why aren’t houses labelled for energy efficiency like fridges? Soon houses on the market will be rated as part of the new Home Information Pack but there is still no incentive to take action. If mortgage lenders required borrowers to improve their house’s energy rating, energy performance and running costs would be higher on home-improvers’ agendas. The energy ratings of homes would be publicly displayed on for-sale signs, in estate agents’ windows and on maps on home-buying websites. We could create a situation where it is socially desirable to show that you have a low-energy house.

This is describing a situation in which sellers of a home find it in their best interest to improve and advertise the energy efficiency of their home because the market values that action and information. Again, this essentially describes a linkage between action and communication and transparency and increased value in the marketplace.

I would describe this situation as essentially a consumer to consumer transaction, and essentially deals with a homogeneous social group: a house seller is also a house buyer, and the terms under which they understand and appreciate the increased value is essentially the same. A house seller who makes energy efficiency changes to his home will probably value such changes and look for similar information when buying a new house. Lack of this information will probably prove a point of negotiation between him and the seller of the new house, possibly encouraging the seller to value these changes as well and demand them of the new house they in turn buy. This has a very nice cascading effect amongst the consumer sphere as more homeowners begin to look for or are asked about energy efficiency in the homes they are buying or selling.

The one concern I have is whether adequate certification exists to legitimize the ratings or evaluations. For ratings to be effective, they need to at least use a common language and at best be performed identically with the same criteria and evaluation process. So, for example, a homeowner selling her home can get go through a rating or evaluation process and understanding the steps and criteria involved and can apply this knowledge when looking at the rating of a prospective home. If the rating schemes are different, the homeowner has to re-learn or translate the rating system into the one she is familiar with. An example of this situation is if different foods had different nutrition information labels. There is power from standardization.

The PDF RED Future Currents: Designing for a changing climate report has some interesting points about market transformation:

Market transformation

Market transformation refers to changes in the way markets operate. It involves a combination of labelling appliances of different standards of efficiency, procurement, rebates, minimum standards and education. The biggest effects so far, backed up by European standards, have been seen in the sale of fridges and freezers. The energy consumption of an average 140 litre fridge in the UK home decreased by 29% between 1990 and 2001. European directives are due for other appliances, especially across electronics. The apparent success of energy appliance labelling has led to the labelling of houses, which will become mandatory at the point of sale in the UK in 2007.

However, market transformation also has its limits. The energy efficiency gains have been partially wiped out by people buying larger appliances, or simply more of them – the so-called ‘rebound effect’. In the case of fridges about half the efficiency gains have been lost. This pattern is partly driven by rating schemes themselves, since it is easier for manufacturers to achieve an ‘A’ rating in terms of kWh per litre in larger appliances than in smaller ones. Although they have been keen to develop highly rated products, manufacturers are not interested in selling appliances with lower overall energy consumption per se.

In this case, policy has attempted to drive the market through influencing manufacturers. As with EEC, the Government’s market transformation strategy has achieved some impact, but is ultimately limited as it has not yet engaged householders directly, building awareness of and interest in energy use in appliances. A recent survey by the Association for the Conservation of Energy found that many people with labelled products did not know what the labels meant.

One thing I noticed is the focus on rating products, an approach which I think has some inherent problems (I’ll go into this in another post I’m working on right now). Another important point is that the engagement with consumers regarding labeled products isn’t optimal, reinforcing the importance and need for communicating value to consumers. It’s also not clear to me how the value of energy efficient products is communicated to manufacturers.

Another interesting part of the report:

A number of important design leads came out of our user research:

• The importance of making energy tangible, or visible. This in turn implies a need for information about energy use. Whereas the centralised energy system was intelligent at the centre and did not require the householder to have any feedback on use and the impact of changing behaviour, distributed energy requires information in the home. There is a rich agenda here, taking in home energy rating and going to smart meters, energy statements, control panel, online tools and beyond.

• Design for control – the importance of being able to influence the use of energy across a range of functions and appliances easily and quickly.

• The importance of understanding and appealing to multiple motivations (not just the limited financial version of paybacks). People have complex motivations linking to aspirations, long-term security and their position in relation to others. For example, rather than seeing micro-renewables in terms of an investment whose high capital costs and long payback times currently make them unattractive, the designer might seek to create a new aesthetic for micro-renewables, re-casting them in terms of consumer goods, as the latest must-have purchase. Domestic combined-heat-and-power systems (micro CHP) or photovoltaic panels (PV) have to be objects of desire as well as saving carbon dioxide emissions.

• Collaboration is a potentially valuable force for change. Acting together can save money, as well as allowing the sharing of knowledge and information on service providers. Alone, enthusiasts remain enthusiasts, but as part of an energy collaborative they are a powerful motivating force. The internet is an ideal platform to support such distributed intelligence.

Of these four points, I hadn’t thought of the last one: collaboration. I’m curious to see if there are other methods of or platforms for collaboration besides the usual suggestion of the internet.

I’m definitely concerned with making information relatable to people in terms they can understand or appreciate; tangible design is one possibility. Many factors are invisible with sustainability, such as draw-down in Third World countries, so it becomes an issue of making those connections visible and making them relatable.

I also want to make sure solutions provide means of action in addition to supplying information and promoting understanding. Ideally the vehicle for understanding and means of action can be as close together as possible—perhaps they can even be one and the same. To be clear, this does not necessarily mean a technological solution. Nutrition labels provide education and a platform for action in the supermarket, for example, in that they educate consumers about the nutritional content and provide a basis for choice at the point of sale. The crucial ingredient that may be missing is an understanding of how this information relates to the consumer on a personal, case-by-case basis. That relationship may best be illustrated via technological means because of technology’s ability to adapt and customize information.

I disagree somewhat with the comments regarding motivation, however. I think the aesthetic is important, of course, but just as important is the communication of value. There’s a disjunction between the understanding of how increased energy efficiency affects home value and the motivation for buying something based purely on the “latest must-have purchase.” Yes, people need attractive and desirable things, but not at the cost of the overall certification and valuation process, which must be valued as well.

If people could see how a purchase would increase the value of their homes, for example, that might be one way of counteracting the “high capital costs and long pay back times” listed as being undesirable. This approach might work because people already understand that homes are investments that appreciate over time. So once products are inserted into that time-scale instead of residing within the time-scale of most consumer goods, people can better appreciate the value such changes would generate. That is, if you say a wind-power generator benefits your home value, you can compare such a change against other investments you’d make in your home, such as replacing the shingles or adding insulation. One concern with making something like a wind-power generator sell on the basis of aesthetic is that people may decide to replace it every so often when styles change, which generates waste and inefficiency. Or they may not consider it inherently valuable, possibly even something akin to a pink flamingo on the front lawn.

Inserting the micro-generation solution into the time-scale of the house enables the certification process to perform as intended, with products rated based on their performance and contribution to overall home value, for example, instead of whether it’s red or blue or looks like a rocket ship. The thing to remember is that all of this technology and the benefits it provides can be quantified—we need to differentiate very clearly where aesthetic is important and where function and results should be emphasized. Of course we want things to look nice and be usable, but this is also one of the rare times when evaluations of “good” and “bad” design can actually be justified based on real data. A more effective energy efficiency or energy production solution is “good” compared to less effective solutions, and this fact should not be lost amongst the aesthetics. If we’re talking about changing the market, then along with the aesthetically “attractive” we must also focus on how to make long-term solutions that provide tangible, quantitative results and feedback “attractive.”

Our background research chapters were due Friday. Here’s mine, in a semi-completed form - the very end still contains an outline of further areas for elaboration and discussion, and some of the citations aren’t complete.

Dave Chiu – Background Research Chapter (v_4).pdf

After conversations with Victor and Tristam on Thursday, I believe I will have to work on re-framing my arguments and repositioning my thesis. Specifically, talking about sustainability first and then the specific interaction design areas and components I’d like to address as relating to complex systems seems to have the effect of making people’s eyes bug out at the mention of sustainability and subsequently ignore anything that comes afterwards.

The revised strategy consists of talking about specific interaction design areas and components as relating to complex systems and then using sustainability as a case study for a complex system. I’m of course still very much interested in and motivated by sustainability, and yes, this project spawned from my interest in sustainability, but talking about sustainability in and of itself doesn’t further the conversation concerning my thesis.

After rereading the material I’ve included thus far in the background research chapter, and after going over my Thesis Proposal again and finding it entirely supports this emphasis on systems and communication and interaction design, I am comfortable with rearranging material within the background research chapter to better reflect my ultimate intentions. Now I just need to do it…

Here’s a PDF copy of my thesis proposal. Feedback and comments would be appreciated.

Dave Chiu – Thesis Proposal

I’ve been exploring a variety of different topics outside of sustainability as a way of informing my work in this area. For instance, I’ve looked into Hernando de Soto’s work in Peru, talked with Nick Zambetti about ethics and philosophy as they relate to sustainability, looked at relationships between sustainability and Taoism, and considered the implications of rhetorical devices on sustainability. (It’s best that I discuss those concepts in their own entries.)

Today I was reading Cost Per Influence on http://www.corante.com, specifically:

What’s different with new media is simply that it’s not the number of impressions you make, but who you impress. In other words, instead of subscription counts, its the number of subscribers my subscribers have, discounted by the probability of my memes getting through. Cost Per Influence. my emphasis

I’ve looked into memes before outside of this thesis and have found the concept compelling and attractive for much the same reason I find rhetoric interesting: the construction of the argument or idea is a critical part of the communication process. While this article is concerned more with blogging and advertising effectiveness, the topic is just as relevant to the communication of ordinary ideas, not just advertising.

Another point that caught my eye:

Performance is a reader that decides to write about the original post.

In this case we’re talking about “stickiness” in a memetic sense—the attractiveness of a meme impacts how “contagious” it is and how long it will be carried by a host, which impacts the rate of transmission. As they’re using the concept with relationship to blogs, a “stickier” meme is one which will cause someone else to blog about the idea, not merely to read it and find it interesting—that is, they will find the idea so compelling that they take action. Of course this requires that this person is in a position to blog about the idea.

The relationship I can see to sustainability lies in the idea of “pressure points” and the concept of targeting specific areas/people/points which have potential to result in a larger effect than the action itself would initially seem to imply.

So if we’re talking about the stickiness of the ideas of sustainability, one component would involve making the ideas sticky, while a second component would involve targeting that sticky idea at influential people, which in this case means people who are in a position to further spread that idea.

The combination of these components would imply that either the idea is widely or universally attractive in its own right or that it can be altered to suit the target audience without changing the core value. The latter approach would imply a payload (such as a medicine) with different transmission methods: pill, capsule, liquid, spray, balm, aerosol, suppository, injection, sublingual, creme, powder, and so forth. As long as the core value is retained, the influential people targeted for maximal distribution can alter the idea to make it more palatable for their specific audiences.

As relating to my thesis, two points: the communication of the concept needs to be attractive or alterable with a core retained value (a payload), and transmission methods would target specific people or groups for maximum transmission (effectiveness). As I mentioned before, it comes down to having the idea itself be so compelling, or the packaging so compelling, that the recipient of the payload is compelled to pass it along. And ideally that person has a large sphere of influence and can affect (or infect) large numbers of people.

Malcolm Gladwell talks about this type of person in The Tipping Point when he describes Connectors:

...there are people whose social circle is four or five times the size of other people’s. Sprinkled among every walk of life, in other words, are a handful of people with a truly extraordinary knack of making friends and acquaintances. They are Connectors.

In the internet world, the idea of a Connector is more literal (web links) but there are again some people who have more influence. For instance, those people who run popular blogs or websites.

In one sense, this directly translates into using the web as tool to leverage existing blogs such as TreeHugger or TriplePundit or WorldChanging.

In another sense, this means that I will need to develop a vetting process to determine who to target, or at least be picky. In some sense I already have done this on a broad scale (industry and consumers), but clearly I need to develop further granularity in each particular field. I don’t think I can develop a concept that is universally appealing, because different people have different motivations—a certain appeal that’s effective with one group may be immediately dismissed by another group.

Although this concept really isn’t new in terms of how I can communicate my thesis concepts, I think the distinction between a universally compelling idea and a core idea with multiple forms of transmission is particularly compelling, if not a little scary. For instance, Salon recently ran an interview with Richard Cizik, vice president of governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, a group of 30 million evangelical Christians who are concerned about global warming.

The Bible also says that humans have “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing.” Some in your community interpret this as a license to exploit natural resources.

That is a deeply flawed interpretation. Dominion does not mean domination. It implies responsibility—to cultivate and care for the earth, not to sully it with bad environmental practices. The Bible also teaches us that Jesus Christ is not only redeeming his people, but also restoring God’s creation … we show our love for Jesus Christ by reaching out to and healing the spiritually lost and by conserving and renewing creation. Christ’s call to love nature is as simple as his call to love our neighbors as ourselves.

What specifically are you doing to get people involved in these issues?

We ask Christians to shape their personal lives in creation-friendly ways by practicing effective recycling, conserving resources, and experiencing the joy of contact with nature. We urge government to encourage fuel efficiency, reduce pollution, encourage sustainable use of natural resources, and provide for the proper care of wildlife and their natural habitats. There are still plenty who wonder, does advocating this agenda mean we have to become liberal weirdoes? And I say to them, certainly not. It’s in the scripture. Read the Bible.

This example of distinguishing between payload and enclosure raises some interesting questions, one of which is whether the means justifies the end. Does it matter how we achieve sustainability, just as long as we achieve it? Sustainability is about relationships and systems, which necessarily means considering the human social systems which exist within the sphere of environmental systems. Thus, I find it problematic to address one sphere while ignoring another sphere.

Where do I draw the line, then, with addressing different motivations? Do I appeal to all groups irrespective of their specific motivations and vehicles for activating that motivation? Or do I marginalize or ignore those nonessential groups? Or do I ignore the problem altogether and appeal to or motivate them on another, different basis?

I don’t have the answers at the moment, although my gut feeling is that looking at ethical aspects related to sustainability (yet another post) may provide guidance in this area. My sense is that it’s important to understand what motivations people have (what their pressure points are), and then make a cost-benefit decision whether it’s worth engaging particular motivations: is it worth my time and effort, in terms of return gained, to engage certain groups of people? And conversely, who are the particular people who I can utilize or activate for the greatest gain?

I’ve been spending the last couple of weeks working on a my thesis presentation, which is due tomorrow. Afterwards, hopefully I’ll have a chance to catch my breath and write some more…

In the meantime, I’ve got a thesis blog (A Sustainable Train of Thought) up and running here: http://www.d4v3.net/blog

It’s partly a brain dump, but also partly a way to externalize and expose my work and progress to the rest of the world. Nothing ground-breaking just yet, but some cool stuff (Thesis Proposal! Background Research Chapter! Thesis Presentation!) will be going up in the next week or so.

The thesis blog is running under WordPress, which, after some initial concern, was actually pretty easy to set up. The only tricky part involved a problematic .htaccess file and general permissions funkiness, but I worked around it and everything seems to be working fine right now. Editing the style-sheets and getting everything together was all-in-all pretty painless.

I’m actually considering shifting everything from this blog (hosted on Blogger.com) over to a WordPress platform—doing so would put everything under my control, and the customization aspects are much more user-friendly and robust than what I’ve found so far in Blogger (rebuilding the blog each time can get painful, but in WordPress there is no rebuilding, as changes are available immediately). Plus there’s cool stuff with trackback and searching. Hopefully I can use it for content management (I have WAY too many bookmarks, for example) as well as a platform for displaying my work and progress.

OK, back to the thesis presentation…

Worked on diagrams for my framework and revised my presentation based on feedback from Simona. Hopefully the diagrams make the relationships more obvious, as before they were getting lost in a sea of words. Really, it’s clear in my brain! And it seems I can explain it to people when given the opportunity.

This difficulty with externalizing the information in my brain sometimes means I overlook the obvious. So, for instance, there’s quite a bit of information in my Thesis Proposal which is relevant, but I haven’t included it in my presentation thus far. And sometimes I miss the concise summary which others can see more clearly. Taking breaks and stepping away from the material helps, but then again the timeframes aren’t always conducive to doing so.

One case of conciseness regards the issue of relationships: I’m now finding it possible to situate my presentation around this theme of relationships, which turns the whole presentation inside out—quite literally, with regard to the order of information—but it’s for the better.

And sometimes it’s just as important to point out what you’re NOT doing. I’m now mentioning from the outset that I’m not interested in objects; rather, I’m interested in relationships. One relationship is sustainability as consisting of economic, social, and environmental sustainability. Another relationship is the timeframes associated with each component. Another relationship is business with consumers. Another relationship is business with sustainability.

At some point after my presentation on Wednesday (2:30 – 3:00 PM), I’ll post the presentation online so you can get a sense of what I’ve been working on this past while. The Background Research Chapter and Thesis Proposal are both supposed to be posted online this week, so once they’re up you can peruse them as well.

The Background Research Chapter could use some work, but the Thesis Proposal is pretty much good to go…I just need to make a minor tweak in one particular place (and potentially others after I receive feedback from the Review on Wednesday).

Worked on my presentation today, and in the afternoon we paid a visit to Makio Hasuike and his studio in Milan. The building was incredible: four floors, with an exhibition space (currently empty) and two showrooms full of product, along with a model studio, offices, meeting rooms, and the design studio. There might have been some other rooms, but I was on the verge of getting lost whilst walking around. The building has a wonderful spiral staircase connecting the floors, and the exhibition space was impressive. I think there are pictures floating around which I’ll have to hunt down…

We sat down with Makio in the basement conference room and he talked about opening his design studio in Milan and the role his company plays with companies. His studio is so in demand that they don’t really get much opportunity to work on more theoretical work, but at the same time they get to work on implementing and producing their designs instead of just being involved in the design phase.

One of the more interesting points he made was with regard to quantity and quality. In his opinion, the way to reach quality is through quantity: just produce. Eventually you find what works and in this massive process of refinement you generate quality. I was also curious about process, which he said should be flexible to respond to the situation and needs of the particular project. I liken this approach to the “beginner’s mind” in Zen Buddhism, or the value of emptiness in Taoism: the classic example is that a bowl is only useful when it’s empty.

I personally subscribe to this approach, and hold it as a model of how to approach my work. Thus, I’m looking at a variety of sources and areas, going on intuition and gut feeling and simple exploration as much as inductive reasoning and analysis. Sometimes the most interesting things are the ones you find by accident. And even if you have a mental model of how things work, you always need to be open and flexible enough to change that model. We could talk about how successful I am in applying this line of thinking to my life beyond work, but that conversation belongs in another place.

Triple Pundit: Branding citizen

The following bit caught my eye:

“We can apply the four key components of brand equity (according to Brand Asset Valuator) to the Citizen as well: differentiation (from consumer), relevance (growing feeling of responsibility among people as an appeal), esteem (would be well regarded and respected), knowledge (people are familiar with the concept of Citizenship).”

These might be useful metrics around which to judge/create a solution. In particular, they offer some interesting possibilities once we’re further along the path of transitioning society…

Citizen is probably interchangeable with Customer in this case - I think they both fundamentally contain the same principles of education and knowledge (understanding) and responsibility (achievement), just further along the slope of the curve. An important linkage between short and mid-term (and possibly long-term).

Edit:

Actually, perhaps the question to ask is whether the progression is: Consumer -> Customer -> Citizen. Or is Customer = Citizen?

Is the Citizen the pinnacle of the Understanding/Achievement relationship? How much more granular can the progression become? Or is the Consumer -> Customer transition a subset of the larger transition of society towards Citizen? Since definitions are always useful:

Citizen: a formal member of a political community, membership of which confers rights (such as the right of political participation) and responsibilities (adherence to the rule of law).

It would seem the concepts are connected—I can’t imagine a society of consumers acting as citizens, as consumers are typified by passivity, exactly the attribute the transition to customer attempts to address.

Tamed the WordPress beast and now my thesis blog is up and running.

Paradoxically, I’m going to retrospectively add some Day-2-Day stuff from the last week just to keep things straight in my mind.

I’ll be tracking everyday stuff (like what I did at school today) and interesting sites (expect quite a few as I run through my multitude of bookmarks) and interesting books and papers (research that powers my thesis) and random thoughts and insights related to my thesis.

This blog is as much a tool for me as it is a window into my brain for you, so hopefully it all makes sense in the end…