Interactions - March/April 2009

Although a nice discussion could be had about what interaction design for sustainability might actually entail, there is more to it than just making the products themselves more meaningful, effective, and sustainable.

The bigger issue is the context for which these products are conceived and where they will be consumed. Take for example the context of luxury, which is not often known to pay much regard to sustainability. What could design develop in terms of an ecological and sustainable approach to luxury?

This requires a new sustainable consumption model, which goes far beyond the boundaries of our profession and practice. But as designers we can inspire and guide toward such a model, and help people better manage a sustainable lifestyle.

tion. It is only adopted when it adheres to the dominant innovation model: by promising immediate return on the investments made. In other words, people-centered design matters not because it is centered on people but because it makes money.

There are other paradigms. Some advocate applying the model of biological evolution to technological innovation.

The main principles of evolution could be used to explain how design ideas mutate, are selected, migrate, and drift, finding their natural way from the observation of people’s cognitive, behavioral, and emotional patterns to the design of concepts and prototypes, to their production cycle and back to people, in a sort of continuum.

It could even provide guidance and vision for the construction of practitioner toolkits of the future, which would create a much greater responsibility for the designer.

How to develop a new model for immersive learning? It is currently being explored all over the world. The Finnish government will soon merge the three top institutions—the business, design and engineering universities, each with their 100-plus years of history—into a new innovation university with an English-language program, which is all about human-centered, project-based, multidisciplinary learning.

But personally, I expect most innovation to come from unusual places: the slums of Lagos, the villages of India, the fisher-men in Vietnam. We just have to understand it as learning.

The Evolution Theory of
Interaction Design

The dominant model of technological innovation lies on a simple core tenet—it must be market-proof. Investments and research are always directed to where the hopes for profit lie. Most designers are at the complete service of this dominant innovation model.

People-centered design is not based on an economic model. Instead, it emphasizes our human limitations (such as perceptual-motor constraints and the bounded rationality of our cognitive system), our behaviors (our cultural constraints and living contexts), and our aspirations to change (our desire to be emotionally involved in what we do and be main actors in our future).

But people-centered design is rarely a driving factor of innova-

And Something More… There surely is going to be “something more.” As our world is changing, and time goes by, other topics will rise up. But for now I have my hands full trying to delve into what I just introduced. If you feel you can lend me a hand in this quest, please do let me know.

A World of Pervasive Learning

With pervasive technology, learning itself is becoming pervasive. Pervasive learning also means learning by children, the illiterate, the elderly, migrants—in short, by about every category and in every context currently not affected by institutional learning.

Learning therefore needs to become hands-on, experience-based, multi-disciplinary, physical, and enabled by immersive technologies.

This intuitive, direct learning is radically different from institutional learning. We all have some good examples of this, but the educational, pedagogical approach is lacking.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mark Vanderbeeken is one of four partners of Experientia, an international experience design consultancy based in Italy,

with particular responsibilities for strategic communications. He has worked in Belgium (his home country), the U.S., Denmark, and Italy for both profit and nonprofit organizations, and studied visual and cognitive psychology at Columbia University. Vanderbeeken is the author of Experientia’s successful experience design blog Putting People First; he also writes for other publications such as Core77.