Remake App Ideas

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Call for Interaction Concept

Having different sources to a place where creatives channel their creative blockage and funnel their frustration through a playful way of tentative sustainable ideas has come to: three types of interactions and a pre-screen that sets the turning-point towards fun. 

The first screen is a feed of memes about creative block. A good way of setting perspective is through tragic comedy

Ideation Elements to Remix

Images are separated in three categories. The first is an unclaimed or abandoned object, the second is a highly sustainable material and the third a remake design. Whenever shuffling a new remix, the idea is to also create phrases. This phrase should include terms like as upcycle, reconfigure, renewable, inclusive, composting, durable and modular.

 

Interaction 1: Spinning

Interaction 2: Flipping

Interaction 3: Tapping

Unclaimed, Lost and Abandoned meet "Chaceros"

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Last class as we explored the False Mythification methodology, the idea of an anthropomorphic figure who wanders through remixed ideas emerged as a tentative pathway for exploration beyond coding. A juggler of platonic solids embodying possible ideas from remixed unclaimed/abandoned/lost objects, blending them into reconfiguration. Through the informal streets of Bogota he mingles with the "amigos" AKA "chaceros". 

From Portraits by Robby Cavanaugh

From Portraits by Robby Cavanaugh

The idea behind unclaimed items in transit spaces such as airports have a curious reclaiming history. These are either resold by state-run surplus centers or at online auction sites.Places like www.govdeals.com www.unclaimedbaggage.com or www.greasbys.co.uk auction these. 

The other component of this exercise (chacero), are a local/colombian figure that after a bit of online research replicates across other countries, whose economy hasn't entirely formalized. "Chacero" is the slang for street vendors in Colombia. These are wonderful examples of remixed and repurposed stuff through history.



C2C Basic Certifiation

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After a first approach to the Design Guidelines and considerations behind the Cradle to Cradle ethos, broader possibilities come to mind when seeking to align the Ideation Tool with Sustainable assets. Currently, the Ideation Tool is one way to exercise creativity by remixing objects from the Cooper Hewitt API. This tool shuffles 3 objects from their database and in the background mixes their description to compose phrases that suggest tentative product scenarios. These phrases are composed through a template phrase where a noun, a verb and an adjective are chosen every time there's a tap. The template phrase is coded in the background like: "This could be a ADJECTIVE NOUN that VERB"

Incorporating VERBS that encourage REUSE, RENEWABLE, COMPOSTING and INCLUSION.

Encouraging a re-make approach through the images and materials included in the database.

Address one of the 4 chapters of the C2C Basic certification, for example

Creating an ideation tool that shuffles terms that reveal unhealthy materials

An ideation tool that encourages solar or wind driven objects.

  1. Material Health

  2. Material Reuse

  3. Renewable Energy

  4. Social Fairness

Material Health Overview

  • Potential Risks: Manufacture, Use and End of Use

  • What’s the complete assessment of ingredients in a product (C2C Material Health Assessment Methodology)
  • No risks for humans and environment
  • C2C banned list of materials or Pharos Green Screen for Safer Chemicals
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  • Good list of materials from data of C2C Innovation Institute resources 
    • Amount of energy and chemicals to create a material
    • If its easily destroyed
    • Green chemistry
    • Characteristics: abundant, non-toxic, minimal resources, good physical properties, meets regulations, good end of life options and affordable —trade-off (cycles of use)
    • Introduction to Green Material Selection
      • Thanks to advances in material science, today’s engineers and designers have more options for choosing greener materials. Choosing more sustainable materials is all about making informed tradeoffs. While there is no such thing as an entirely "green material," you can improve your materials choices by knowing the variables to consider.

    • Physical Properties of Materials

      • Learn how to select materials with the right performance characteristics, which is critical for designing for energy efficiency.

        To select greener materials you need to consider the material’s environmental, cost, and performance impacts on your design. A material’s performance depends on its physical properties, and optimizing this is the most important way to reduce your product’s environmental impact.

    • Environmental Properties of Materials

      • When looking for sustainable materials, the first step is to understand where their ecological impacts come from. Learn about material scarcity and abundance, rapidly renewable materials, embodied energy, recycled materials, and toxicity.

 

Material Reutilization

  • %Recyclable or rapidly renewable content + % of product considered recyclable or composted
  • Separate tech nutrients from bio nutrients 
  • Design for lifetime use (longevity, repair & upgrade, 
  • Prioritize next life
  • Design for reuse
    • Disassembly: modular and standard
  • Separation by grinding
  • Less material
  • Avoid coatings
  • UPCYCLING: turn waste materials into new materials or products of higher quality or better environmental impacts 
  • “Clean materials perpetually cycled”


  • Introduction to Design for a Lifetim

    • An important factor in designing for sustainability is getting the most use out of the materials and energy that your product uses throughout its lifecycle. A product’s lifecycle includes extraction of raw materials, manufacture, use and eventual disposal. If you are designing for sustainability, the ideal lifecycle is entirely closed-loop. This would mean that your product does not create any waste at the end of its life that can’t be easily used by other natural or industrial processes. 

  • Design for Durability

    • If your product meets stable, long-term needs, it is important to make it robust. However, ensuring your users want to continue using your product is often tricky. In order for a product to last, it needs to be both physically and stylistically durable. Not only does it need to resist damage and wear, but it needs to stay relevant and desirable for users. 

  • Design for Dissassembly and Recycling

    • Designing for disassembly has several benefits. It can make it easier for your product to be repaired or upgraded, thereby prolonging its useful life. It can also help ensure your product is recycled and enable whole components to be reused. In fact, the degree to which your product can be disassembled easily often determines how the product will end its life.  

  • Repair and Upgrade

    • Products like electronics have components that can fail, or need to be upgraded, well before the rest of the product needs to be replaced. Millions of pounds of electronics are scrapped every year. Repair and upgrade can address this e-waste problem by extending your product’s useful life and slowing down the rate of disposal. 

  • The Maker's Bill Of Rights

 

Renewable Energy

  • Beyond fossil fuel towards clean-renewable energy
  • Solar, wind, biomass, 

  • Introduction to Energy Use in Design

    • Humans use energy to enhance life in important ways. Yet commonly used energy sources like coal, oil and gas are finite in supply and release greenhouse gases. To continue to improve quality of life while maintaining the planet’s ability to support us, we need to both move towards renewable energy and design for energy efficiency.

  • Optimizing Heat Transfer 

    • Heat Transfer refers to how heat energy moves through the world around us. Refrigerators, ovens, laundry machines, cars, and buildings all manage the flow of heat. Engineers and designers who understand heat transfer can use energy more effectively by optimizing the form and materials of their designs.

  • Friction: Reducing Energy Losses in Design 

    • Friction will occur at any place where two surfaces come into contact with each other. Friction can cause energy losses that create unwanted heat, deformation, and wear. This can reduce the lifetime and increase the cost of the products you design.

 

Social Fairness Overview

  • Social Hotspot is "a unique resource for supply chain social impact investigation."
  • UN Global Compact is an initiative "aiming to create a sustainable and inclusive global economy that delivers lasting benefits to all people, communities and markets."
  • B-Corp is a certification available to "for-profit companies certified by the nonprofit B Lab to meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency." 

Sustainable Ideation

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Concept

With the initial ideation tool concept and prototype, the idea is to explore ways of aligning it to sustainability. This is the reason its gonna be submitted to Cradle to Cradle Product Design Challenge. Even though it might be slightly off track, since its a digital product, the tool can be assessed to the challenge's description and requirements:

Central to Cradle to Cradle® as a design framework is to eliminate the concept of waste — recognizing that all materials are valuable and finite and when designed appropriately can be used in infinite cycles.  Effectively implementing this design principle can have a significant impact on the environment and the economy.  

The goal of this design challenge is to eliminate the concept of "waste" by designing products with materials that may be perpetually cycled to retain their value as nutrients to fuel growing global economies.

Submission Requirements

Download a pdf of the submission requirements or follow the instructions on this page. All submissions must be in English. All written material should be packaged as a single PDF document not to exceed five pages.

Submission Format

Submissions should be formatted following the outline below using the identical numbers and headings.  Please read the Official Rules prior to submission.

References:

Cradle2Cradle by William McDonough and Michael Braungart

 

Disruptive Consumerism

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Concept

Framing the current Peace Process between the Colombian Government and the main guerrilla group FARC, this initiative conceives the strategic need of planning ahead towards coexisting opportunities in the post-conflict scenario. How can we create post-conflict opportunities of sustainable forgiveness? The hypothesis is by allowing people to conceive reasons and ways to reinsert, live and endure through on-site specific production alternatives that span the socially-entrepreneurial panorama.

Hypothesis

By remixing local resources, with communities’ needs and unrelated concepts new opportunities may emerge and set the stage towards a coexisting mindset. Multiple socially-entrepreneurial stages that bridge the conflict’s verge and the post-conflict. 

This hypothesis is highly inspired and guided by the HCD Toolkit, ethnographic documentary "Chocolate de Paz",  Culture House “Casa del Pueblo” in El Salado and the Cacao initiative of San José de Apartadó’s Peace Community.

At the same time there's various conceptual frameworks this initiative aims to involve: Ethical Consumerism (human rights, animal rights, environmental pollution), the Open Source and DIY and Social Entrepreneurship. 

References

Similar to brands like Patagonia or MUJI, whose corporate practices disrupt traditional practices, this initiative is in search to subvert consumerism and pos-conflict. 

—"What would you think about these glasses, made by people who opt-out the conflict and nowadays create peace? What would you think when realizing it was product of the experience transmitted from a community victim of the conflict?" — Disruptive Consumerism