Relaunch

Better x Design has been relaunched and rebranded as a Brown+RISD initiative! Look forward to lots of events this fall under our name, especially the highly anticipated Better World by Design conference from November 7-9!

Check out our new site with our new blog.

Better x Design

Speaking of bioplastics...

Check out these new biodegradable Samsung phones! Only in South Korea for now, but we could certainly use more biodegradable consumables over here.

Bioplastics!

With petroleum prices accelerating at unimaginable rates and plastics the topic of green protests everywhere, bioplastics may be the answer! And the business world is listening.

This interesting BusinessWeek article showcases a manufacturer of the new material called Metabolix and includes a video interview with founder Oliver Peoples.

"His [Peoples'] Cambridge (Mass.) company, Metabolix (MBLX), has harnessed the complex genetics of plant-cell metabolism and collected hundreds of patents on a process for manufacturing "bioplastics" in large vats of microbes. A $200million factory is under construction and could start producing Metabolix's bioplastic, called Mirel, early next year."

12 Big Ideas from Biology

Watch Janine Benyus, founder of the Biomimicry Institute and Biomimicry Guild, discuss her design revolution at TED.

1. Self Assembly
2. CO2 as a Feedstock
3. Solar Transformation
4. The Power of Shape
5. Quenching Thirst
6. Metals without Mining
   
7. Green Chemistry
8. Timed Degradation
9. Resilience and Healing
   
10. Sensing and Responding
11. Growing Fertility
    
12. Life Creates Conditions Conducive to Life
    

Is small beautiful yet?

“I have no doubt that it is possible to give a new direction to technological development, a direction that shall lead it back to the real needs of man, and that also means: to the actual size of man. Man is small, and, therefore, small is beautiful.”

-E.F. Schumacher

Schumacher wrote his manifesto in 1973. Have we since found beauty in the labor-intensive, locally-produced, and sustainable? Is it possible to scale back while moving forward? Is it essential?

User Centric vs. Buyer Centric

OLPC's and fuseproject's XO is a unique product in that it was praised and awarded for it's concept and design, but somewhere something was lost in the implementation. Niti Bhan of the Emerging Futures Lab argues that good design must extend all the way through the value chain. The OLPC XO has not been widely accepted or used by its target audience. So much for user-centric design, right?

Well, let's look at the alternative, buyer-centric design. What if OLPC had designed its product with governments in mind. Or let's just pretend that OLPC were Microsoft since we all know how that would have went down. Microsoft has the business acumen to make things happen and get its product past governments by crippling it with security and closed technology and then marketing it as the most advanced operating system ever. Sure, if this product were forced on the consumer, they would have something, but is something always better than the alternative?

What they would have is a crippled and complicated product that is of no use to those who need simple educational software (forget those who are illiterate).

Indeed, OLPC has switched from its innovative interface on an open-source platform to Microsoft XP. And better yet, Microsoft has already placed restrictions on how good such low-cost computers running its software can be. For Microsoft, is this smart BoP penetration through "restricted give-aways" or simply forced corporate colonialism?

Mobile Phones: Platform for Education?

David Tait and Niti Bhan of the Emerging Futures Lab argue that mobile phones present new opportunities for education that will not be served by certain low-cost laptops. It is an interesting prospect, given that mobile phones already have such a high penetration and the OLPC is hitting more and more governmental and internal roadblocks. But something about reading textbooks on a sluggish 2 inch screen doesn't sit right with me. And accessing the internet for Wikipedia would hardly be effective on such a device or economical in terms of minutes.

Well, designers to the rescue! Check out these nifty new Pico projectors that could be making their way into mobile phones as soon as next year. No material I have read focuses on the BoP market, so expect this to stay in the hands of wealthy on-the-go movie watchers and former laser-point-wielding pranksters for the time being. But this could be the breakthrough that makes the mobile phone a platform for eduction. Textbooks, presentations, lessons... you name it.



Another innovation has come out of Carnegie Mellon that uses a simple Wiimote hack to create a low-cost multi-touch whiteboard. Nintendo, are you listening?