The Design for Environment Manifesto

I am firmly of the belief that on average people are mistake prone, have very little attention span and do not possess much in terms of initiative. At least that is what my wife says about me when it comes to household chores.

The best product designers and engineers take the above fact into consideration when designing new products or services. A great product or service has 3 qualities that make them stand apart.

• They anticipate our intention
• They are forgiving
• They surprise us (in a positive manner)

Take for example the Google Search service, hands down one of the 3 best products (any type) in the world. It is forgiving of bad spellings, bad sentences, jumble of words, and yet uncannily anticipates our intention and surprises us with the most reasonable search results.

OK, now back to the topic of the title of this blog. To be a well-intentioned environmentalist and be lazy is to end up with moral quandaries all the time. Did I switch the printer off or , Oh, well, it will only consume 40 watts over night (because I have to walk down stairs to switch the printer off) type of reasoning happens all the time.

So I challenge the designers and engineers to think about these moral quandaries and design products and services smartly so that I don't have to feel guilty or show much in terms of initiative to be environmentally responsible.

If I were to write a Design for Environment manifesto for millions of designers and engineers in the world, it would include the following:

1. Environmentally superior products are never inferior to equivalent not-so-environmentally superior products when it comes to performance and quality
2. The price premium of environmentally superior products is not so exorbitant that the products never have a chance of becoming mainstream
3. The products and services do not rely on customer's or end user's initiative to be environmentally superior
4. The products and services are environmentally responsible in a holistic fashion, not just from a limited or a single aspect point of view