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Saving the earth one byte at a time
Process implications of a vision to transform
We have long argued that computing needs to contribute more than reductions in its own footprint – computing is key to facilitating a wider change. Several papers at CHI this year showed products to reduce impacts or change behaviour. A few completed this circle and looked back to computing (or in this case interaction […]
Posted in: Computing for Sustainability, design
Computing for habitual sustainability (and a cool bendy speedometer)
May 12, 2009
Minjung Sohn aims to produce products that are “used unconsciously by users with reduced environmental impacts”. With her colleagues from KAIST, she argues that existing approaches to eco-friendly design mainly focus on educating users, or making them recognise the need for sustainability. In Designing with unconscious human behaviors for eco-friendly interaction, Minjung and her colleagues instead […]
Tools for navigating landscape of community action
May 12, 2009
In the early 90s I worked on the Otago Regional Council’s land and vegetation monitoring programme. One of the strategies we used was to closely involve the land managers in monitoring and analysis. We hoped (and found) this would give greater credibility to the process and ownership of the results. The involvement stemmed beyond labour […]
Posted in: community, Computing for Sustainability
Sustainable Computing meets Ecologically Engaged Art
May 6, 2009
As I am reminded several times a day via gmail’s pop-up, my friend Lloyd Godman describes himself as an “Ecological Artist”. At CHI this year, Carl DiSalvo (along with Kirsten Boehner, Nicholas Knouf and Phoebe Sengers) explored what sustainable HCI can learn from such ecologically engaged art. They argue that radical shifts in design are needed for […]
Posted in: Computing for Sustainability, design
Persuasive guidelines for behaviour change
May 6, 2009
A theme of CHI for me this year was behaviour change. This reflects the growing recognition that technology is at best only part of a solution. Sunny Consolvo and her colleagues presented an interesting set of design strategies that support behaviour changes in everyday life (paper). They propose that persuasive technology developed following their guidelines will […]
Computing for Sustainability 
May 12, 2009
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