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Persuasive Design for Sustainability
Jeremy Faludi, WorldChanging
… One green design strategy that’s powerful — but almost wholly unused — is persuasive design.
Persuasion is a science; newborn and inexact, but a science nonetheless. Advertisers and marketers know this; designers should, too. Persuasive design is not marketing or advertising; instead, it is crafting a product’s user experience so that the user’s actual interaction with the product changes their behavior. Stanford lecturer and researcher BJ Fogg invented the field of study, and has published two books on the subject (the first simply called Persuasive Technology, and the other focusing on Mobile Persuasion). So far, those are the only must-read resources on the subject, but the field is growing rapidly, and the fourth annual Conference on Persuasive Technology is happening at the end of this month in Claremont, California. Proceedings from the previous conferences can be bought, though they are expensive.
Fogg has isolated more than a dozen principles of persuasion, and grouped them into three main avenues: tools, media, and social actors. Each applies more to some kinds of products than others would, and since he is primarily a computer scientist, they are weighted heavily towards software and electronics. We need more physical-product designers in this field. Here are most of the strategies, in a nutshell (at least as I interpret them):
(17 April 2009)
Virtually Virtuous
Clark Williams-Derry, Sightline
The key to sustainability: live your entire life online!
Apparently, Second Life — an “online universe” that’s attracted hundreds of thousands of virtual denizens over the past few years — is on the ropes, as cash-strapped financial backers have started to pull out. And it’s a real shame — not only for the people who’ve invested time and energy in their online lives, but also for the real, non-virtual planet.
Two recent studies have shown that obsessive Second Life players have the second-lowest environmental impact of any demographic group in the US and Canada, trailing only the Amish. Apparently, online avatars consume fairly modest amounts of electricity; and their most dedicated human counterparts forego travel, consumption, and even showers, to pursue their online lives. As a result, the carbon footprint of a typical Second Life addict is just over one-third of the US average.
(1 April 2009)
Spam’s Noxious Carbon Footprint
Marisa Taylor, Digits (blog), Wall Street Journal
Email users may already hate spam, but perhaps they’ll be gratified to know that it’s also bad for the environment.
Calculating one’s carbon footprint may be all the rage, but in the case of spam, it’s serious, according to a study released Wednesday by computer security company McAfee Avert Labs. The report found that an estimated 62 trillion spam messages are sent each year. Each email is associated 0.3 grams of carbon dioxide released as greenhouse gas, the equivalent of driving three feet — but given the total volume of spam each year, it’s like driving around the earth 1.6 million times.
The study, which was conducted by consulting firm ICF International, concluded that spam-related emissions for all email users world-wide creates a total of 17 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, 0.2% of total greenhouse gas emissions.
Legitimate emails release four grams of CO2 compared with spam’s 0.3 grams, but since spam accounts for one-third of all business and personal messages, it adds up, says Dave Marcus, director of security research and communications for McAfee Avert Labs. “At this point in time, everyone has an email address,” he says. “I think it should resonate with a lot of people. The more we can keep [spam] away from users, the better the planet ends up.”
The process of creating and dealing with spam involves a number of different energy-using steps, the report explains, from harvesting addresses to managing spam messages in one’s inbox. But almost 80% of the greenhouse gases created by spam actually comes from the process of deleting it, or by searching around for legitimate emails trapped in spam filters.
(15 April 2009)
Related from PC World: Spam E-mails Killing the Environment, McAfee Report Says which points out some shortcomings of the report.
The Ecologist magazine drops print
John Plunkett, Guardian
Zac Goldsmith’s magazine The Ecologist is to shut its paper edition, expand its website, and shrink its carbon footprint
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Zac Goldsmith’s The Ecologist magazine is to close its print edition after 39 years and relaunch online.
The magazine, which sells about 20,000 copies a month, will publish its last print edition on 19 June. Staff were told about the changes today.
Goldsmith, the magazine’s director and former editor, said the expanded website, theecologist.org, would enable it to “react faster to what is now a global and daily debate on how best to preserve the world in which we all live”.
He added: “Relaunching The Ecologist online is in keeping with both the magazine’s own credentials and with the zeitgeist of the digital age.
“It is an exciting development which will also enable our readers to have a constant place at the ecological forum.”
(8 April 2009)
Related: Why the Ecologist has gone online by Zac Goldsmith.
Reflections on a Largely Forgotten Book: Herbert Schiller’s The Mind Managers (1973)
Paul Street, ZNet
… Prerequisites for Democracy
Together these authors and books show how and why domestic U.S. democracy is undermined by concentrated corporate control of the means of communication and culture. As McChesney explained more than a decade ago, meaningful participatory democracy requires three interrelated things to be in place: (1) rough equality in wealth, income, and property ownership, since large class and socioeconomic disparities undercut the ability of citizens to act as equals and confer disproportionate political, policy, and cultural influence on those with superior resources; (2) a sense of community between individuals – a sense that each individual’s well-being is positively connected to the common good, since a democratic political culture cannot take root in a society whose members are simply out to serve their own selfish interests; (3) an effective system of communications that accurately informs and engages the citizenry, encouraging their intelligent participation in political life. The need for accurate, un-biased information is especially urgent for viable democracy in a large and complex modern society like the United States, where the scope and scale of political and societal affairs is so vast and multifaceted as to be beyond immediate observation (McChesney 1997, 5-6)
These three critical prerequisites for meaningful participatory democracy are intimately interrelated with each other, McChesney noted. A society in which wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small elite will see its economic masters work to sustain and eternalize inequality through control of the communications system (media). The masters will own a disproportionate share of that media. They will insist upon a media that filters, shapes, “spins,” and otherwise distorts information and shapes popular perceptions and values in ways consistent with continued ruling-class domination. That media system (whose ownership and control becomes ever more concentrated under capitalism) will privilege selfish and authoritarian values over positive notions of the common good and social justice.
(5 April 2009)
