Posts Filed Under sustainabilty
Asia Design Journal 2010 Design for Social Innovation
This essay first appeared in the print edition of KDRI Asia Design Journal 2010 Design for Social Innovation, which also features articles from Jan Chipchase, Ezio Manzini and Jennifer Leornard.
“Global issues cannot be removed from the business world, as we only have one world in which to operate.” – Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia CEO
Today the world population is estimated to be just under seven billion and all together we are exceeding the earth bio-capacity by at least 25 percent. Here we are with infinite human potential, but finite earthly resources. A survey, by the International Telecommunications Union, an agency of the UN, shows that the total number of mobile phone subscriptions in the world have reached four billions in December 2008 and nearly a quarter of the world’s 6.8 billion people use the Internet. There are five times more mobile phones than computers, which makes the mobile phone the most widely spread technology and the most common electronic device in the world. More than one billion people are in possession of a Nokia phone.
In September 2000, world leaders came together at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to adopt the United Nations Millennium Declaration, committing their nations to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty and setting out a series of time-bound targets with a deadline of 2015. These goals, known as the eight Millennium Development Goals which range from halving extreme poverty to ensuring a sustainable development and developing a global partnership for development.
With the United Nations Millennium Declaration and the previous figures in mind, 10 designers from seven different nationalities and a variety of specialties – product design, interaction design, graphic design, ethnography, and prototyping, came together in California to work towards the most sustainable, ethical, and desirable communication solutions for Nokia by prioritizing sustainability above else and putting principles into action. If the intangible human benefits of communicating through Nokia devices are the rewards, it is the physical things people produce and consume that are the costs. With the invaluable help of colleagues and experts, the team designed a series of concepts, or questions if you wish in the form of objects, interfaces and services to join and foster the conversation.
Zero waste charger
If there are four billion mobile phones in the world, there are four billion chargers if not more. Two thirds of the power consumed by a mobile phone is lost when the battery is full but the phone is still plugged into a live charger. Recent mobile phones take only 60 to 90 minutes to fully recharge, yet most of us keep them plugged recharging for hours during the day at the office or while resting at night. Nokia has made a lot of progress in cutting down this waste – the AC-8 uses just 0.03W in no-load mode, which is 94 percent less than the Energy Star standard requirement but this, is still not zero.
To achieve zero, Nokia is developing and testing new technologies and designs. We created a true power-down charger with a simple switch and an automatic shut off to prevent unnecessary waste. You simply attach the charger to the phone, hit the switch and it will calculate how much energy the phone needs to be fully charged, and once it has reached this amount it will automatically switch off.
The design and engineering challenge is not to bring over time the consumption as close to zero as possible, it is to leapfrog to zero today – and the only way to achieve this, is to change our ways and be more energy intelligent. As designers we must facilitate this transition and help people contextualise and understand the energy usage of their appliances and devices. Devices like Wattson are already using graphs and charts to help visually represent energy consumption in the home, suggesting ways to save electricity. Inevitably, appliances and devices in the future will have to be energy smart by nature.
Communicating the necessity for behavioral change can be a hard sell. With the “Zero waste” charger, we have emphasized a recognizable branded element – the switch, symbolizing Nokia commitment to energy saving and reinforcing conscious consumption in the user’s mind. In the Republic of Korea alone, these small savings, when multiplied by millions of users, could liberate enough power to support seventy thousand homes annually. Similar to Bruce Mau’s Massive Change theory, this concept shows that small actions multiplied by big numbers can also lead to a massive change.
Remade
Drawing on the simple insight that in the not too distant future humanity will have extracted and worked much of the valuable minerals once buried in planet Earth. We will be compelled to reuse and celebrate what is essentially above ground. How can we turn waste into something beautiful? We imagined a global system of increasingly smaller production circles, where technical nutrients are reclaimed, recycled, and valued – ultimately changing the way we make things.
The idea behind Remade was to see if it was possible to create a device made from nothing new. Made from upcycled soda cans for the metal body, plastic bottles for the chassis, and rubber from car tires for the keymat, it is a conscious effort to preserve natural capital, reduce landfill, stimulate technical cycles of life, and allow for more energy efficient production. We have also looked at the components within the phone reducing their numbers and using new environmentally friendly technologies such as printed electronic components on non-toxic substrates, reduced superfluous interconnections, and improved chip-level efficiencies. This is the principle of economy in action.
Remade offers a realistic and beautiful interpretation of upcycling. In the five months leading to Nokia World in Barcelona in February 2008 where Nokia newly appointed Nokia CEO, Olli Pekka Kallasuovo, unveiled Remade, Andrew Gartrell -the lead designer of remade, iterated the design over 100 times. Andrew relentlessly sought the essence of remade through fast CAD iteration cycles, prototyping, and material research and development. As with all the other concepts – and any design really, it is a never-ending pursuit.
Wears in, not out
How do we encourage people to keep their products longer? So much so, they might even pass it on. As more and more services become available on our mobile phones, this concept explores how people could potentially upgrade their devices digitally rather than physically in the future, giving people an additional choice on how they use and update their mobile phones. We wanted to create a phone you want to keep and that sits comfortably alongside your most trusted possessions. Inspired by research on repair cultures and exceptional craftsmanship, the design decisions are driven by sustainability first with timeless design and interaction principles, upgradable components, noble materials – sapphire glass and fluted aluminum covers, and shrewd long term manufacturing investments.
Whether redefining a “voice classic” or supporting enduring features such as SMS, Internet, and clock, this device is grounded in mature technologies, open standards, and simple durable execution reducing Nokia dust-to-dust footprint. These ideas are about giving people different options and ways to make more sustainable choices. We are not suggesting that Nokia will stop making mobile devices, but that in addition to this, we could provide solutions that allow people to keep their existing device but upgrade it.
People first
If we begin designing for those who face daily challenges with current technology, we soon find communication solutions that benefit us all. The desire to communicate personally and conveniently is relevant to a banker in New York as a farmer on the outskirts of Mumbai. With a focus on human universals, the People-first experience strips away the complexity of applications, folders, and unpredictable navigation with simpler universally understood organizing principles: time, lists and faces. Content comes first, navigation is shallow, and there are no metaphors or abstractions to confuse. New content is generated at the top of a singular vertical list settling over time into a personal history of events. A dual layer display allows the user to balance energy efficiency with rich visuals. The user interface graphics are optimized for low-power and high-contrast black and white graphics. When an item is highlighted, a second full color display is partially activated in lieu of, or in combination with the first. In an effort to increase local relevance, dynamic keymat graphics, based on a low-power bi-stable display, allow a greater number of language variants at little to no extra cost and onscreen actions are presented in textual and iconic form making the system accessible to a larger audience.
Out of the box, People First allows users to simply connect synchronously (voice call or push-to-talk) or asynchronously (SMS or email), capture a moment with the camera, schedule an appointment with the alarm clock, and manage money with the calculator. These are what we believe the mobile essentials – features that are relevant everywhere for everyone. These essentials are however sometimes insufficient. Instead of second-guessing additional features, we are encouraging personalization, hacking, and entrepreneurial ventures with widgets support, accessible native programming language and freely available hardware and software specifications. Locally produced or crafted components and software provide relevance, while simultaneously reducing production efforts and the amount of atoms that need to be shipped around the globe.
These concepts are tangible starting points to help inspire and stimulate discussion on how mobile devices might be made in the future. They are example of a range of research and development projects within Nokia looking at potential new products and services that will help people make more sustainable choices. Taking these ideas into production is a longer-term project that requires further research into technology, manufacturing and availability of new types of materials. This is something Nokia is continuing to explore and the learnings will certainly inspire our products and approach in the future. Companies cannot address issues like the environment alone. By sharing some of our ideas and stimulating a discussion, we hope this will help to develop innovative new ideas that can be used both within our own business but also more broadly to drive environmental improvements.
* The Homegrown project is primarily Andrew Gartrell, Duncan Burns, Pascal Wever, Pawena Thimaporn, Rhys Newman, Raphael Grignani, Simon James, and Tom Arbisi.
Filed Under: essays, mobilephones, Nokia, sustainabilty
What can you buy for five dollars?
Slideshow from The Five Dollar Comparison on Flickr
This week my former bossman, Rhys Newman, presented the “Five Dollars Comparision” in New York and Toronto during a Nokia Design roadshow. It seems a good occasion to join Rhys, Jan and Julian and follow-up on my presentation at Design Engaged 08.
Since the mid-80′s, a handful of companies have manufactured and sold more than 3 billion mobile phones from the Nokia 1010 to the StarTAC (first clamshell) to the Nokia 5110 (simplex UI) to the Ericsson T68 (first colour display) to Vertu (first luxury phone) to the BlackBerry (first corporate digital leash) to the iPhone, but the only product that actually matters and has made a difference is the Nokia 1100. Since its introduction in 2003, 200 million have been sold, providing affordable communication throughout the world.
The desire to communicate personally and conveniently is as relevant to a banker in New York as it is to a farmer on the outskirts of New Delhi. In November 2007, the total number of mobile phone subscriptions worldwide had reached 3.3 billion, which also makes the mobile phone the most widely spread technology and the most common electronic device in the world. ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré announced in September 2008 that worldwide mobile phone subscriptions are likely to reach the 4 billion mark before the end of this year.
However, handset cost remains the biggest barrier to accessing mobile connectivity for the world’s remaining 3 billion people. Ongoing service costs, whilst significant, can be paid in smaller increments – as little as a few cents in some parts of the world. Today, advances in technology and manufacturing allow us to envision a world where the price of a mobile phone is dramatically lower than today.
Photo © Julian Bleecker, Montreal, 2008
As discussed with Aaron Straup Cope in the back of a taxi in Montreal with Julian Bleecker in the front seat, the global spread of low cost personal communication will have a profound impact on the world around us. It will change our perception of distance and time and affect our notions of community, authority and trust. In some communities, lower costs will introduce services such as personal banking for the very first time. With a phone number and the inherent credit identity it affords, access to financial services will be opened to the previously un-banked, and business opportunities will arise. In some emerging countries an increase of ten mobile phones per 100 people translates into approximately 0.6% growth in GDP, which directly converts into food on the table, a decrease in child mortality, and better education and health. In other communities the phone will become an object that is bought and disposed of on a whim, like a pen or a book. These changes challenge what and how we manufacture, and place a greater emphasis on sustainability.
Fivedollarcomparison.org is a small step to broaden the discussion, and explore the relative value of five dollars and how the impact of a truly connected planet might vary across cultures and contexts by asking a simple question: What can you buy for five dollars?
Recent submissions reveal that one can get a bowl of pork ramen in Shibuya, one porter to haul up to 25 kilos for half-a-day on the Inca Trail, a taxi with English speaking driver in Kabul, a cappuccino & 3 cookies at Blue Bottle Coffee in San Francisco, a set of customised rickshaw mud flaps in Ahmedabad, a live hen for supper in Kabale, a Motorola StarTAC on eBay, and a day labour at a farm in Thailand.
Please let us know what kind of object or service one can buy for five dollars in your neck of the woods by emailing your submissions to add@fivedollarcomparison.org or adding them to the five dollar comparison group at Flickr. Please read through the guidelines on Fivedollarcomparison.org/participate.
The fivedollarcomparison.org site is put together by Tom Arbisi, BJ Bandy, Julian Bleecker, Duncan Burns, Jan Chipchase, John Evans, Johan Frossen, Andrew Gartrell, Josephine Gianni, Raphael Grignani, Simon James, Phillip Lindberg, Rhys Newman, Pawena Thimaporn, Kurt Walecki and Pascal Wever.
Filed Under: communication, fivedollarcomparison, mobilephones, Nokia, sustainabilty
Lift Asia 08
Photo © Rachel Hinman, Jeju, 2008.
This is the video of my presentation for the session “Aiming for a better society” at the Lift Asia 08 on September 5th. Knock yourself out!
I would like to thank the Lift team Laurent Haug, Nicolas Nova, Sylvie Reinhard, and all the others for the invitation and the opportunity to share the Homegrown story with such an amazing audience in a breathtaking setting.
Thanks to the Nokia Design Homegrown team and extended contributors who made all this happen.
The slides are available here.
Filed Under: charging, conferences, Nokia, product, remade, sustainabilty, ui
Homegrown people planet profit
“Global issues cannot be removed from the business world, as we only have one world in which to operate.” – Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo
A few weeks after unveiling remade in Barcelona, we are excited to share the context in which remade and Homegrown came into being.
Our goal with Homegrown, the umbrella project, was and still is to work towards the most sustainable, ethical, and desirable communication solutions for Nokia. We’re not interested in sentimental greenwash, but the cold hard facts. If the intangible human benefits of communicating through our devices are the rewards, it’s the physical things we produce and consume that are the costs. Why are we doing this? The numbers tell the story – it’s our responsibility, it is everyone’s responsibility. And how? Principles in action – we are simply placing sustainability at the top of our design list.
Homegrown nurtured four case-studies: Zero Waste Charger, remade, Wears in not out, and People First.
“At present, phone chargers waste 300mW of standby power when left unplugged.”
There’re roughly 3,000,000,000 phones on the planet which means there’re also 3,000,000,000 chargers. The average charger consumes 300mW on standby. You can do the math. The waste is tremendous. In addition, most mobile phones take only ~60 minutes to fully recharge these days. Yet most of us keep them plugged for hours… while resting at night.
Nokia chargers are energy-star rated and some consume less than 40 mW in standby… but this is still not zero. The design and engineering challenge is not to bring the consumption as close to zero as possible, it is to leapfrog to zero. And the only way to achieve this is to change our ways.
How can we be more energy intelligent? By contextualising and understanding energy usage of the appliances and devices we are using.
Already devices like Wattson are showing us the energy our home is using (visualised in graphs and charts) and help us figure out ways to save electricity. But eventually, appliances and devices will have to be energy smart by nature. The Zero Waste charger is a true power-down charger with a recognisable branded element – the push-button. When pressed, the push-button reassuringly starts glowing, the charger delivers a 1-hour charge cycle and then shuts off. Off as in 0mW. The push-button symbolises Nokia’s commitment to energy saving while reinforcing conscious consumption in the user’s mind.
Contrary to Bruce Mau’s Massive Change, this case study shows that Small actions x Big numbers have a Big impact.
“426,000 mobile phones are retired in the USA daily.”
In remade, recycled materials from metal cans, plastic bottles, and car tires are used beautifully; whilst helping reduce landfill and preserving natural resources. The concept also addresses cleaner engine technologies, and energy efficiency through power saving graphics. It is about turning waste into beauty.
Previews blog posts on this site: Nokia remade, More about remade.
“After 25 years, mobile telephony is considered an established commodity.”
How do we encourage people to keep their products longer? So much so – they might even pass it on…
Created with good design and noble materials, it becomes a phone you want to keep – one that sits comfortably alongside your most trusted possessions. With design decisions driven by sustainability first such as shrewd long term manufacturing investments, timeless design, and no colour variants – this truly is a phone that wears in not out. Inspired from Jan’s work on repair cultures, repairable and replaceable components reduce Nokia’s environmental dust-to-dust footprint and keep pace with your needs. Whether redefining a “voice classic” or supporting enduring features such as SMS, internet, and clock – these devices are grounded in mature technologies, open standards, and simple durable execution.
In this context, personal digital content portability and software designed for decades of consumption are an integral and key part of the offering. A suite of services and physical doors enable to safely manage one’s growing digital lifetime. I will return to this topic later since it deserves more than a few lines.
“50% of a phone’s energy demand is backlighting.”
How can we clearly prioritize people first? If we begin designing for those who face daily challenges with current technology, we soon find communication solutions that benefit us all.
With a focus on human universals, the “People-first” experience strips away the complexity of applications, folders, and unpredictable navigation with simpler universally understood organizing principles: time, lists and faces. Content comes first, navigation is shallow, and there are no metaphors or abstractions to confuse. New content is generated at the top of a singular vertical list settling over time into a personal history of events.
A dual layer display allows the user to balance energy efficiency with rich visuals. The user interface graphics are optimized for low-power and high-contrast B&W graphics. When an item is highlighted, a second full color display is partially activated in lieu of, or in combination with the first.
In an effort to increase local relevance, dynamic keymat graphics, based on a low-power bi-stable display, allow a greater number of language variants at little to no extra cost and on-screen actions are presented in textual and iconic form making the system accessible to a larger audience.
Out of the box, People First allows simply to connect synchronously (voice call or push-to-talk) or asynchronously (sms or email), capture a moment with the camera, schedule an appointment with the alarm clock, and manage money with the calculator. These are what we believe the mobile essentials – features that are relevant everywhere for everyone. These essentials are however sometimes insufficient. Instead of second-guessing additional features, we are encouraging personalization, hacking, and entrepreneurial ventures with widgets support, accessible native programming language (as simple as html) and freely available hardware and software specifications. Locally produced or crafted components and software provide relevance, while simultaneously reducing production efforts and the amount of atoms that need to be shipped around the globe.
Homegrown is primarily Andrew Gartrell, Rhys Newman, Duncan Burns, Pascal Wever, Raphael Grignani, Pawena Thimaporn, Tom Arbisi, and Simon James.
Additional words and pictures are available on Nokia Conversations, the press section of Nokia.com, and Julian’s blog.
More about remade
The intent was to create a device made from nothing new, distilling utility from the materials already circulating above the earth’s crust. We drew on a simple insight that in the not too distant future humanity will have extracted and worked much of the valuable minerals once buried in planet Earth. We will be compelled to reuse and celebrate what is essentially “above ground”.
We proposed the mechanical skin & bones be made from materials readily available in the lithosphere avoiding the need for extracting resources and reducing landfill.
- Major structural elements are crafted from recycled aluminium courtesy of soda cans with the knowledge that recycled aluminium requires 95% less energy than processing its raw counterpart.
- More intricate plastic parts are moulded from upcycled post-consumer PET from plastic drink bottles, with a lower carbon footprint than any other engineering- or bio- polymer.
- Whole & shredded rubber tyres are increasingly redirected to landfills, but contain a wealth of nutrients that can be extracted and for example re-employed as flexible keymats, dust/water gaskets, or impact protection.
A typical mobile phone contains approximately 44 of the 112 elements known to mankind. Through a principle of economy, we have reduced the number of components within the phone and considered more environmentally friendly technologies such as printed electronic components on non-toxic substrates.
The concept includes a number of features improving the energy efficiency. Drawing upon the fact that more than 50% of the energy a phone uses comes from backlighting the screen, we developed a new graphical look and feel that save energy without compromising style. Additionally, we have prototyped a series of no waste chargers, which power down once the phone is fully charged. This saves the typical 300 milliwatts of standby power wasted when we leave a charger plugged in.
The many small actions illustrated above, when multiplied by large numbers, can indeed change the world.
And most importantly, it works 
Post co-authored with the remade team.
Filed Under: design, Nokia, remade, sustainabilty, ui
Nokia remade
With Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo presenting a short video of the REMADE mobile phone during the Mobile World Congress 2008, I am able to share one of the case-studies addressing sustainability our team* has been working on passionately.
The intent was to create a device made from nothing new.
We drew on a simple insight that in the not too distant future humanity will have extracted and worked much of the valuable minerals once buried in planet Earth. We will be compelled to reuse and celebrate what is essentially “above ground”. Thus we explored the use of reclaimed and upcycled materials that could ultimately change the way we make things.
In remade, recycled materials from metal cans, plastic bottles, and car tyres are used beautifully; whilst helping reduce landfill and preserving natural resources. The concept also addresses cleaner engine technologies, and energy efficiency through power saving graphics.
Remade offers a realistic and beautiful interpretation of upcycling and a tangible starting point for discussion. A discussion we have already started a few weeks ago when two designers from our team joined Jan Chipchase and a few others in Accra to discuss, test, and improve remade with the help of the wonderful people of Ghana.
A local repair technician assembling a remade phone. Jan Chipchase – Accra, Ghana.
Our design team is very excited to join the conversation and have the opportunity to engage and receive critical feedback from all of you.
The press release, short video and additional images are available in the press section of Nokia.com – under the materials section and in the Mobile World Congress 2008 press site. You may also find the short video on Nokia Conversations YouTube channel.
*Andrew Gartrell, Duncan Burns, Rhys Newman, Pascal Wever, Tom Arbisi, Simon James, Pawena Thimaporn, Jan Chipchase, Anne Coates, Peter Knudsen and myself
Filed Under: design, Nokia, remade, sustainabilty, ui
Sustain what?
Sustainability is certainly in the top 10 buzz words list of 2007 partly thanks to Al Gore, Greenpeace, and many other non/for-profit organizations. It seems to be a genuine concern for consumers, voters and citizens. It’s not a secret that Nokia is currently investigating and implementing solutions across the board to limit its ecological footprint. Nokia Design is actively participating in this effort. Yesterday, I have been asked this simple question, and I couldn’t answer it. All my answers seemed meaningless after 5 seconds reflection. Whether or not we continue at our current pace, it is reasonable to assume that Human beings and the planet Earth will “survive” – both will evolve. So what exactly are we trying to sustain?
*I have just been told that this provoking question was asked by Braden R. Allenby (Professor at Arizona State University) during the recent “Sustainable Mobility” Conference at the Art Center in Pasadena.
Filed Under: Nokia, question, sustainabilty