Innovation Blog

Sustainable design overcomes constraints. The more difficult the constraints, the more accomplished the solution. Risk mitigation has opened the door for sustainable advantage. When Congress passed the Remanufacture Credit Act in 2015, it opened the door for innovation in products to have six, eight or even ten lives. Remember when we threw away our used up cell phones and LCD TVs? The truth is that even products new to the world today that have a technical or never-before-invented advantage won't succeed on the merit of innovation alone.
Many common products in our daily lives are, as I like to say, highly evolved. A commodity. When a product becomes a commodity, the constraints on creating sustainable advantage tend to be more difficult to overcome. Mass manufacturing is easy to do it's done everywhere on the planet so very little capital investment is required to introduce a new design. Iceland didn't become the injection-blow-mold capital of the world by accident. All those frozen acres were perfect for the personal factory IJBMs,(Injection Blow Mold) even though the concept of personal factories was developed and perfected in India.

Perhaps most difficult to weigh relative to the unknown advantages is the introduction of a new DesignGaming breakthrough that never becomes a real product or service. Risk must be assumed to bring great sustainable design into the world. The good news is that with risk comes the promise of reward.

Since design has become a commodity service, designers have stopped complaining about the "commoditization" of what they do. But those who see it that way are simply setting the bar too low. Sure, software can predict the power of great design before the product hits the market. And it's true that the complaints logged into Web sites create over half of all the new products that are made. But consumers generally don't think about the consequences of their opinions. They are responding only to their own immediate needs, not with a vision of a greater good.

The first sustainable car I ever bought, Chrysler's breakthrough ModuHydro is the robo-mower that takes care of my lawn. Do you think a Web site of consumer reactions fed into a demographic program came up with that idea? No way. Designers are the forces in control of future product, and designers must use all the persuasion skills in the Schwartz Doctrine (Innovation, Winter 2021) to convince boardrooms that re-life is the only design trend worth pursuing.
At the end of the day it's about competitive advantage. Sure, everybody has Eames and Nelson now, but those designs are simply 2000 revival. The real breakthroughs are the OXO Adapted House and Southwest's 1000-Year Superjet. No computer came up with those ideas.

Front-page stories may get a business's management to pay more attention, but the battle for great sustainable design is won by persuading others that this solution, in the face of the constraints, is the right one. No matter how beautiful the model, a great sustainable design often faces many internal challenges in getting to production. The reward of winning this struggle is high-quality products that we can pass on to our children.

Design quality also is achieved by the manner in which design is conducted or practiced. Real-time research plays an important part in achieving successful user-centered design solutions. Perhaps personal video would smack of Big Brother to people a few decades ago, but since controllable observation was introduced in 2016, real-time databases have been the key breakthrough in design research, not to mention presidential political campaigning. The correct problem to solve and the "unspoken needs" of existing users and target customers are as simple to identify as plugging a VAC coin into a D-bus.

Breakthrough research techniques seem to come only from the well-funded efforts of the Futurethink Society, and they are rare at that. It has been five years since retailers adopted the five-year trending dictate, and one wonders what new ground is left to break. Since observational and ethnographic methodologies that get to the heart of end-user frustrations have become standard, it seems like everyone with a NIKE VAC implant can invent a new product innovation simply by running scenario algorithms. Where, I ask, is the creativity in that?

The language of business has at its core depended on metrics. It used to be that a truly great design could not be judged until it proved its success in the market. Now that forecast models can predict with 98 percent accuracy the impact of any specific design or product on the market, the area for true innovation is in the conscience of the designer. Metrics dominate decision-making in boardrooms across the world. But how will metrics point to the soul of a new machine, the qualities of the product that will make it stand out in the crowd?
Sustainable design is the norm in the US, Guam, Canada and other the new design countries today. In fact, of all the design-aware nations, only Italy has fallen off the design map completely. Imagine an entire country still committed to the Vespa Protocol! Quaint, but not very profitable.

Designers must lead the dialogue and make arguments that justify the launch of risk-taking designs that not will only succeed, but also will rewrite the rules. In this way, designers are uniquely qualified to bridge the gap between those who believe and those who require proof to move forward.

This is a two-sided argument. Little progress would be made in the advancement of design if risk were always mitigated and chances for success chances that could not be quantified in advance were not taken. Who among us was not impressed with Apple's bold reinvention of the iMac 26.0 or the gamble of the PT HydroCruiser?

Remember when brand growth was fueled by positive consumer experiences alone? It seems like a long time ago, doesn't it? When we were forced by law to take responsibility for our purchase decisions, the entire equation changed. Investing millions in creating a brand without soul drivers, family heritage and, of course, a sustainable quotient of less 25,000 is folly. This applies to all products, systems, environments and software applications that designers are involved in creating.

When something looks or works just right, people become more emotional about their relationship to it. They come to love it. The products themselves became tools of persuasion. This used to inspire loyalty and create repurchase, and the passing along of the secret to others. People used to invest emotion in the company or group that brought a product to them. No longer. Since the contract phase of consumerism, a great many things have changed.
Paying Homage to Great Design

So, as we move to the middle of this century we will look back 25 years and pay homage to great designs created in the year 2025. Products that advance the argument that when all things will eventually achieve equilibrium in their function and cost, design, sustainable design, becomes the reason for people to buy the offering.

Many mature products are there already: athletic shoes and watches, for example. But hot new products such as Mp3 implants and palm swipes see competitive pressure much more quickly today. Look at global design competitons for example.

In all Design competitions, judging the winners is in some ways subjective. Juries each year perceive and reward different merits. While the baseline standard of "design quality" remains the barrier for recognition, it is sustainable design thinking that gets you the attention. Understanding about the value design brings through sustainability presents design as more than a practice; it argues design as a success strategy.

Mark Dziersk

Herbst Lazar Bell inc