Greener by Design: the View from the Field

"Finally, at the end of this conference on green design, do we get to hear from the designers," joked Joel Makower as he introduced the final panel at the Greener by Design conference.

As the conference wound down, the final two panels focused more specifically on the roles designers play in the movement, rather than the previous panels' emphases on specific tools, techniques and practices that companies have used to improve their design.

First up, technology and design veteran Terry Swack spoke with Michael Murphy from Dell and Autodesk's Dawn Danby about the possibility of a digital design revolution. Although everyone on stage agreed that perhaps the industry is not yet on the verge of a revolution, computerized design tools are starting to have the ability to make sophisticated green design easier.

Danby described Autodesk's goal as aiming to simplify and democratize sustainable design, and Terry Swack echoed that sentiment by saying that of all the CAD (computer-assisted design) companies, only Autodesk is open to talking about sustainability.

Danby said that a big obstacle to spreading the tools comes in the form of customers who say that their own clients aren't yet asking for sustainability tools.

Designers Have Their Say

At that point, four designers took the stage to explain the view from the trenches, as it were. Eric Wilmot from Frog Design, Chris Hammond at Kaleidoscope, Aiden Petrie from Item Group and Clark Schaffy from IDEO spoke with Joel Makower about the trends they've seen, challenges they face, and what trends are shaping the world of design.

Each of the designers agreed that, despite the general rule that designers make products that are sooner or later simply going to landfill -- Aiden Petrie said his company had "inadvertently become involved with the trash industry" -- the role of designers in shaping sustainability for their clients is on the rise.

When asked what one issue they would like to raise with their clients or prospective clients, the designers all said they'd like to be able to talk honestly about waste from the products they're asked to design, as well as reiterating that the path to sustainability is a long effort and not a quick fix.

After Eric Wilmot laid out the reasoning behind asking clients to consider the waste from products they're requesting, Makower paraphrased the idea to "You may have to change more than you think ... or else you may not be here," and which Wilmot shortened to "Do you have the guts to go through with this?" and Chris Hammond likened to the pioneer's saying for addressing a world of scarcity: "Fix it up, wear it out, make do or do without."

Clark Schaffy from IDEO said that although most of their clients come in with a "question 1" -- the motivation for the project in the first place, that he and his team strive to ask first a "question zero" to look at the impacts of the proposed project and/or taking a longer view of the client's goals.

Schaffy also brought up the idea of the Designer's Accord, a voluntary commitment among professional designers to raise exactly these kinds of questions with clients and to introduce a conversation around sustainability.

Clients, however, are all too often resistant to incorporating environmental goals into projects -- and that sometimes no amount of pushing will bring them around to making compromises in the name of greenness.

Petrie offered one example of a time when his company failed to convince the client about the benefits of going for a less-wasteful product. After developing a new version of a product that was 90 percent smaller than the original, using less space and weighing less in transit, but which resulted in what he called a minor consumer tradeoff, Petrie estimated that his team tried 20 different angles to convince the client that it was a worthwhile change, but the client refused.

In response to an audience question (posed by Lorrie Vogel, the former industrial designer and current head of Nike Considered) about inspiring icons in design and training future designers, Looking toward the future of design, everyone on the panel saw a distinct to add intensive training on sustainability and engineering principles to design-school curricula, as the need for both of these will only grow.

Chris Hammond aptly summed up the importance of sustainability in design: "What used to be a nice-to-have feature is now going to be your ticket to the dance, and if you don't have it, you'll be left out in the cold."