Chris Ryan Visit

Last Wednesday, Professor Chris Ryan gave a lunch lecture for the LCED course. Today, I also had a chance to meet with him along with David to talk more and ask questions. We specifically wanted to find out Ryan’s opinions on the possible contribution of interaction design towards sustainability. In his opinion, the greatest opportunity lies in feedback design; how to design appropriate positive and negative feedback. Ryan states that even with basic digital readout based feedback systems, users save 30-40% more energy (granted these users are lead adopters, and goal oriented towards energy saving). Furthermore, as people become both producers and consumers of energy, as we shift towards distributed economies, and towards increased social innovation, good and appropriate feedback will be important as we consider carbon positive design beyond carbon neutral design.

He, himself is situated somewhere between environmental and social sustainability, leaning more towards environmental sustainability. 10 years ago, he started, in parallel to the Dutch eco-design research program, an eco redesign program in Australia. These parallel programs sought to take the top consumer product from several leading companies and reduce the LCA impact while increasing market success. However, the focus of sustainable design has since shifted from such product focused innovation towards systemic, social innovation. Other examples he gives involve interface design with embedded scripting principles (washing machine which resets to the most ecologically friendly mode).

In general, the big picture Chris paints echoes the words of Manzini. He talks about systemic design and resilience, which reflects Manzini’s “Systems Capable of Evolving.” This is understandable because they collaborate on several (?) projects.

-- Lecture notes --

The main topic he discussed during the lecture concern the bi-directional transformations that are needed to orient towards sustainability, these are:

Design and Climate Transformation / Climate and Design Transformation

He states that the coming decades will be decades of transformation. Forecasts show that by 2025 or even 2015, drastic changes in our climate will occur. These changes will not be gradual, but will take the form of natural disasters (i.e. storms, floods, droughts, fires) and will result in enormous climate instability. Our current models are not accurate, and are unpredictive of the current climactic trajectory. For example, data shows that the earth is 30 years ahead of previous prediction models (polar ice caps melt?). According to Chris, there is no way to stop this change, only mitigation. The way to cope with these changes are adaptation and resilience; adaptation in terms of increasing resilience in systems and communities.

In Melbourne there has already been a drastic reduction in water supply. However, there has also been an increasing demand for resources, related to lifestyle. Melbourne experienced some of the hottest days recently, where other locations in Australia were flooding at the same time. These climactic changes have caused a breakdown in infrastructure, which exposes these infrastructures as unprepared for change. Ryan explains that the answer is not to create new infrastructures that will be outdated again in the future, but to retrofit existing infrastructures for 2015 targets.

Designers are critical to these larger problems of sustainability. Ryan explains that 30-60% of environmental impact can be eliminated during the design of a product (LCA analysis). Careful design, implementation of methodologies and technologies can affect large reduction. However, this is not enough. 80-90% reduction is needed.

In order to affect this change we will have to change our models of:

1. Consumption: our current economies are built on greater and greater consumption of goods. Even with increased efficiency of products, the total consumption is still increasing due to increased demand.
2. Lowering carbon-based energy: we have been dependent on 150 years of carbon-based energy development.
3. Adapting to a changed climate: there is no way to stop the changes that are occurring. The overall temperature of the earth is rising as well as sea level. This will lead to greater climate variability and instability. These changes will not be incremental.

To give a bit of background on the focus of sustainability, Chris describes the shift from reconstructing to reinventing the world. From 1972 until about 1988, the focus of “sustainability” was on cleaner production. The shift towards eco-design or redesign of products started in 1988, and it was only until 2007, that the focus was moved to systems design; thus from reconstructing to reinventing the world.

The trajectory of change towards a more sustainable world cannot be a totally technological change. It will take changes in technology, infrastructures, and lifestyles. It will take radical ideas, implemented systemically and a thorough understanding of patterns of living.

This will also require changing our paradigms, from economies of scale to networked, decentralized (distributed) economies. This will require a transformation of the systems that underpin our societies. Economies of scale operate under the fundamental premise that bigger and more specialized is better. However, in order to maintain the stability of such a system, a certain size has to be maintained to ensure its reliability. These large centralized systems ignore actual costs which are also hidden. In contrast, distributed economies (i.e. the internet) are more flexible, embody less risk, and are more transparent (i.e. renewable energy) because the distance is reduced between the production and consumer. This also means that there is increased feedback between producers and consumers. Towards this end, information technology is a great enabler of such distributed systems.

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Finally, Chris presents the case of Australia and some examples of sustainable innovation. These examples are listed below.

Example projects:

- Drip feed road barriers – using road barriers as a drip feed system for watering grass during the summer.
- Innovative architecture which pumps and cleans waste water from the sewer for use inside the building (everything but potable water) and to water trees outside (parasitic design).
- CBD (?) – getting policy makers to adopt a persona from which they imagine narratives of future living on developing sites.
- Electric cars that can only be used on specific sites to discourage stealing.
- City as catchment, water all plants in the city with non potable water
- Urban farming – grow all food within the city.

Other Projects:

1. VEIL – Eco-innovation lab, a small project that thinks in terms of 25 year futures. It involves four universities and all design areas.
2. Sustainable Societies Institute
3. Energy Institute (climate change)
4. EU Life program (individuals and communities)
5. Center of Alternative Technology (Wales) – educational program for children