Sustainable Design - otherlanders

In den Projektwochen sollen Recherche, Brainstorming und Konzeptentwicklung für interessante, sinnvolle und/oder Spaß machende Infografiken, Spiele, Mobile Services, Produkte oder Installationen für eine nachhaltige „gute“ Lebensführung, jenseits von Askese und Ökofundamentalismus stattfinden.

Zielgruppe sind nicht die etablierten postmodernen Ökohedonisten, sondern Kids, Jugendliche, Auszubildende und Studenten, die in der Regel ihren Lebensalltag ohne viel Geld gestalten müssen, die aber in den nächsten 60 Jahren immer stärker vom Klimawandel und von Naturkatastrophen etc. betroffen sein werden. Als Konsumenten von Morgen haben sie entscheidenden Einfluss auf den zukünftigen Ressourcenverbrauch.

The Probes

Our assignment was to investigate how new Germans experience Berlin from a green point of view, to get this information we were to develop Cultural Probes. The probes contained a variety of different tasks for our users to fulfill. We developed four different tasks that varied between to reflect and write about your daily routine to act as a super green super hero. With our probes we hoped to get a great variety of information that could act as inspiration for us since there are no right or wrong “answers”. We wanted to see how people that have grown up outside Germany experience Berlin and what they say is different from their previous home. We will here present to you all the tasks and all of our participants, how the tasks was fulfilled and what we got out of the whole experience!

The Participants

We chose our participants with a variety of previous home countrys, trying to spread them out as wide as possible over our globe. We gave them our probes and explained the tasks for them very short, relying on that the information included would be enough. When we after the weekend met them again we had interviews with them for about an hour, asking them about the tasks, and looked over the material together. If something was unclear we asked them what they meant by their solutions.

The Assignments

The Diary of usage

This task was aimed to get to know our participants daily habits and how they differed from the ones they had in their prior country. To make this as playful as possible we had a small book with illustrated stickers. The book was divided into different sections, Electrical Appliances, Consumer behavior and Transportation, we also had a section for Typical German. We encourage our participants to use the stickers, draw or just write down the things and habits that they noticed during the weekend. One of our participants divided the book spreds in two sections, one for her home country and one for Germany, even drawing happy or sad faces on the orange stickers, to point out if the new thing was good or bad! “Some how the TV is always on - maybe also because you become addicted to news and war propaganda... But her in Berlin we have no TV“ This was very useful for us and made us think of a way to improve this task if we would use it again. “Too cold - must use hair dryer, in Israel the sun is enough.“ We also had one participant that wrote almost a novel in the booklet, he wrote down his thoughts about the different areas that we were asking about and even taped in a cigarette butt to show a behavior he hated ”Does it make it OK just because it happens all of the time??”. He wrote about consuming and that he had a hard time everytime he went shopping “when it reads “made in Bangladesh“ on the tag I cannot, CANNOT help but call to mind the 2006 World press photo of a garment manufacturer beating a teenager with a 2x4 piece of wood because he was working too slow.“ “I haven’t owned or driven a car since I moved to Germany - five Years! In the USA only losers take the bus! Now I [heart] the bus!“ “Home computer off all day“ “I’m addicted [laptop-sticker] on all day“ “One thing that impresses me about Germany is that BIO products are not overpriced, nor are the exclusively sold at “speciality“ shops“ All these are examples and quotes of what the persons wrote and showed us in the booklets, some of them where more elaborated as you can see and some didn’t almost seemed to have been used. We probably should have encouraged the participants to write more since we discovered that just the stickers didn’t tell us much, with just a few words in addition it made a great difference for our understanding. We noticed that the task was interpretated a bit different between our test persons, some just showed us the things they had done over the weekend, others showed us their general behavior and habits and how they differed.

The Love letter

In this task we want our participants to show us their darlings. The focus is on gadgets and devices that use energy and that you love or could live with out. In the letter we ask them to give their things heart cards in order of three, where the biggest heart is the largest love. We also had heartbreak-cards, for the devices that you could live without but would have a broken heart when you’ll be forced to leave them. We got a lot of different answers on and with the heart cards. A few had taken pictures of the things that they loved and some had written the stuff down on the cards, or even put the stickers from the Diary task on them. We saw a pattern of the stuff that people mostly loved and there fore gave the biggest heart, it usually was communication devices such as their computer or their cellphone. “I in fact detest the mobile phone. Yes it is incredibly convenient at times, but I don’t enjoy holding it next to my brain“ The things that they would give away, where often entertainment things or kitchen appliances. “Biggest heartbreak would probably be my kitchen blender. I love my fruit shakes and ice cream blends, but not enough to consider this appliance something I cannot live without.“ One of our participants found that she thought there where two sides to her washing machine. It is a very good thing to have but it eats a lot of power, at the same time she used the top of her machine as a cutting board and for extra space in her kitchen. “This is the down side of every washing machine... the use of water + electricity... but we always wash on minimum temp. The top side of the washing machine was covered by a PVC and is now used as a cutting board/working space instead of buying a new furniture.“ One of our users also loved her vacuum cleaner since she thought that the dust was different here in Berlin then it was in Brazil. Many people pointed out small devices such as hair dryers and the toast with the smallest hearts. They thought this was unnecessary device but they used them since they had them in their homes or because of the fact that the weather is so much colder here then in their prior home countries, such as hair dryers and tumble driers. We thought that this task was an great way for the participants to easily show us the machines that they found to be their best “friends”. We had a great outcome with many different things, we don’t know if the majority of communication devices would depend on the fact that the people we asked are from other countries and therefore keep communication devices closest to their heart or if it just is because of the time that we live in.

The Super hero

With this task we wanted our participants to act as a super hero, or as a villain with the environment as the mission. We gave them a revers able mask, that was green on one side and black on the other. We also included two signs, on saying “Kaboom”, the other “Yeah!“. With these props we wanted the participants to show us with the help of photographs when they where a super hero or a villain. With the signs we gave them the power to blow up the stuff that they didn’t like or to show us the things that helped them with their mission to Our participants gave us a wide range of different things and habits that they saw as a help or situations when they were heros or villains. They thought about the small things as the compost bag and the unnecessary packaging net around the ecological oranges, to car elevators, daily baths and to have a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle. This task showed us that people are quite aware of all kind of things in their surroundings. Some habits will be hard to kill, and some brought their own interpretation and gave away a few tricks of how to make your everyday life even greener. One of our participants found out by doing these tasks that she felt that she was a bit of a hypocrite, since she disliked that she bought bottled water, but used her cotton bag and took the stairs. As an outcome of her participation she now thought that she would by a sodastremer, to make her own bubble water. This task was a great source of inspiration for us since the participants gave us a lot of different angels and showed us everything from products, to habits to problems with the modern lifestyle. We could get a lot of inspiration from all the participants photos.

Knowledge collection

For this task we asked our participants to use the plastic bag to collect their sources of information. So we could get to know from where they got their information about saving energy and waste management. We thought they could cut out sections in their news paper or give us packaging where it said how it could be recycled . We also included a paper which they could use to write down their sources if it was an web-page or they could also glue labels on it. We got a lot of different solutions to this tasks, some people had gathered a few different labels and put them on the paper, most had written down their sources. We found out that most people get their information trough their friends and in discussions with people. One of the users got most of her information trough CNNs web page, where they have a green section, which se use to check once a week. One of our participants wrote down a bunch of different books and web pages, “use the internet to inform yourself about what companies are socially responsible, which ones are not and what choices you can make to improve your lifestyle. Help others realize these same goals. Empower others with the knowledge!!!“ “Many times the reason for the energy saving is money saving - but as long as it is doing the job it doesn’t really matter - same result.“ When we asked our participants about this task many of them pointed out that it had been a bit hard to do it over just one weekend, since most of their information comes over a long time.

The Results and Ideas

From all this information we got a lot of ideas. We grouped our main ideas in to four different areas. - Reward - Visualization - Water usage - Informative stores From these areas we then had different ideas of how this could be reached. Reward We felt that people that are green need a bit of encouragement, this could also work as a way for getting more people in to the green-living as they also wants the reward. With this in mind we came up with the idea of Green Cycle. Visualization From the pile of visualization we got a lot of ideas. We want to make it easier to know what is good and what is bad. With this in mind we came up with the idea of the iPhone application with augmented reality, where you can see how much energy your machines at home use. We also thought about a big switch for your home, where you can turn of all the power in your apartment or house, except for perhaps the fridge and other essential stuff. The third thing we thought about was a Facebook application where you can show off your green-status to your friend with the help of the smart meters information. Water usage To make the use of water more visual we thought of two things. First we thought of the toilet that showed you how much water it uses everytime you flush, by using bottles. Giving you a more comprehensive way of comparing the water usage. We also thought of the way that you in other countries and often if you have a house can collect rain water. With this in mind we wanted to make it easier for the big city person to do the same. With the reversible umbrella you can easily collect water ever on your small balcony, since the umbrella is easy to fold together when it’s not raining. Informative stores Many of our participants pointed out that it was hard to know what was good and what was bad in the stores. Therefor we would like to develop a concept for shops that will be easy to understand and where the information about the products will be easy to find and easy to compare between each other.