Making Recycling Fun
World Usability Day is this week and the theme is “Designing for a Sustainable World”. In North Carolina, I’ll be attending an evening event hosted by Tri-UPA and Carolina HFES. My company has been hard at work redesigning recycle bins for the annual design challenge. Last year, we took a stab at redesigning bus stops.
Technology used to be the driver of new products; it determined the industrial design and components. Now, the size of devices is no longer determined by the size of the computer chip. For example, the iPod Classic sports the same basic design from 2004. The iPod does its job well and the only thing that could (and probably should) be changed include improvements in software and components.
We are living in a period of re-emergence of design. We are realizing that we need to start developing products that are not going to end up in a landfill after 2 years. We also need to design products that will encourage sustainability. Here’s a great example from Volkswagen that makes a game out of recycling:
Volkswagen also created two other videos (Piano Staircase and The World’s Deepest Bin). They created them as demonstration videos for The Fun Theory contest. The contest encourages designs that change people’s behavior for the better. Pretty cool.
No Comments Yet