Via | Core 77
Before environmental issues became part of the mainstream, the role of a designer was already starting to get much more interesting. Product innovation used to be the exclusive purview of R&D, where scientists and engineers tinkered away on technology-centered, proprietary advancements. Designers were left to style products for consumption and marketers worked further downstream to stimulate demand.
The emergence of more user-centered-thinking has given designers an influence well beyond the old drafting table. Upstream in the product development process, designers can now leverage tools like ethnography and sophisticated needs analysis. When given the opportunity, these methods drive the whole development process towards more meaningful and commercially viable innovation. These user-centered methods are the precursor for solving the green problem.
On the other end of the chain, the consumer has not yet been fully blended into the process, so the benefits and value of these new design approaches are less understood, and even prompt some level of suspicion. The way we go about asking these questions, and translating consumer needs back into business and design requirements, creates a wariness that has been uttered by some of the most optimistic proponents of green business. Do consumers mean what they say? Do they really want a greener future if it means dramatically changing their way of life?
