Sustainable Design for Beginners: 5 inspirational tips from Elisha Tal
Starting out in design - and want to make a positive impact? We spoke with Elisha Tal, designer, educator, and iF Design juror on why optimism, behavior change - and perhaps even a little help from AI - are important.
Elisha Tal
Elisha Tal is a product designer and educator at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. In the 1990s he worked in Silicon Valley, and founded the design studio I2D in 2001. He has designed innovative products such as Soda Stream and the Notal Home OCT, the first-ever AI-enabled eye diagnostic device. He was an iF juror as well.
Be optimistic!
Our brains are wired so that we focus on negative aspects rather than positive ones. If you look around the world, it's easy to think we're doomed. But there are some incredible examples of how we can make a difference when we come together. During the Covid-19 crisis, governments across the world cooperated, scientists and drug companies developed a vaccine in record time. All of us changed our behaviors. Who would have thought so many people would be willing to wear masks and shelter in place for months?
If we bring the same energy to the transition to sustainability, it seems that we have the solutions to solve it in time. Of course, basic frameworks need to change: food supply chains, the way we heat and cool our homes, transportation. And all of these things are about design.
Design for behavioral change!
I teach sustainable design at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. Years ago, I focused on Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Today we take a broader approach to looking at large systems and how we can change the "operating system" to encourage different behaviors. Take single-use plastic on flights: A student of mine, Keren Attas, looked into the issue and the numbers were staggering. On US flights alone, six million plastic cups are used and discarded every six hours. These cups are only part of the problem - the entire system is lousy. You board a plane, and the airline decides what you are going to eat, there's very little choice. You have to stay in your seat - which at least for Isrealis is not easy, we like to walk around. When you do get your food, it's wrapped in single-use packaging. Afterwards, you sit with the trash in front of you for an hour.
So Keren decided to redesign the entire system. It starts with a reusable bento box for each passenger. Instead of having flight attendants bring the food carts to the seats, people are encouraged to take their bento box to a food market and choose whatever food they want. With this kind of system, everybody wins: the airlines save money, passengers get a better meal experience, and it's better for the environment.
Find the impact!
When working on solving sustainability problems, it is crucial that the work has real impact and avoids greenwashing. The problem does not have to be a large one, and small changes that are adopted by millions of people can have a huge impact. Designers take a holistic approach which is unique and different from scientists.
A study at Carnegie Mellon University investigated different ways of communicating the urgency of saving energy, and found that a small design change made the greatest impact. By adding the element of comparison - a graph showing how people's energy consumption stacked up with that of their neighbors - the designer got people to change their behavior.
Create a narrative around your design!
Designers can communicate a new narrative and in doing so, help change behaviors. The smart phone revolution is a key example. What Steve Jobs did with the iPhone was to create a different narrative, shifting the design and how people use it by telling a different story around mobile phones.
I designed a predecessor of the iPhone - the Palm V - which was released in 1999. But the story being told around the iPhone seven years later was very different, and done in a very smart way. This story changed how billions of people do things every day.
Look at the bigger picture!
If we look at graphs of how we're using materials, population growth, and CO2 emissions, it's all exponential. We humans are not good at picturing exponential growth.
Imagine for a moment we take a sheet of paper and fold it — 64 times. Each time we fold it, of course, the thickness doubles. This is a question I ask my students: After 64 folds, how thick will the paper be? Some guess a couple of centimeters, others think it has to be thicker, maybe a meter. The answer is thousands of kilometers. More than the distance between the earth and the sun.
Maybe AI can help us here, because analyzing complexity and large systems is something neural systems can do better than we can. Our brains are just not equipped for it.