Sustainable Redesign

In Silicon Valley the consumer electronic product reigns. Giving ID students an in-depth and detailed experience in the design of a consumer electronic product is layered with teaching them about life cycle analysis, strategic design methods for sustainability, and new thinking in materials and processes for manufacturing.

Students learn about the breadth and depth of the consumer electronics industry, buy their own CE product, take it apart and analyze each part by weight, materials, and fabrication process. From this, a monster-sized “system bill of materials” is developed which includes calculations for materials, process, transport, energy use, lifetime of the product, and end-of-life scenario. They then work on conceptualizing, strategically, ways in which they can reduce the impact of the product.

Each concept is run through a simple LCA evaluation in order to compare it to the original product – the goal is to reduce the product impact by 50% or more. Students then build appearance models and the corresponding packaging, as this is often the highest impact area of the product.

Protective Clothing for Field Workers

A student team I directed worked to submit a proposal to Proctor & Gamble to work on a collaborative, multidisciplinary design project. Their proposal was selected as one of six across the nation to work on a project of their choice, focused on a subject that addressed human need.

The team focused on researching problems in the large agricultural region in central California. They engaged in deep user research, co-design activities, technological investigation, engineering, fashion design, identity design, branding, and marketing. The team, consisting of student industrial designers, graphic designers, and chemical engineers, devised protective gear and sensors that would alert field workers when pesticides were present.

The result of the project, dubbed Seguro (the Spanish word for safety, security and dependability) were presented by the team to P&G at their world headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio. As a result of the project a further study was conducted by a select group of design students. That work is confidential and cannot be shared presently.