Compostmodern
An annual 2 day conference presented by AIGA San Francisco, Compostmodern is an interdisciplinary design conference dedicated to transforming products, industries and lives through sustainable design choices. Day 1 is your traditional line up of speakers, and Day 2 is structured as an un-conference as a chance to brainstorm in self directed groups. Highlights included Debera Johnson, Founder of the Pratt Design Incubator; Kate Daughdril, Founder of SOUP; Dan Phillips, Founder of The Phoenix Commotion; and Lisa Gansky, Author of the Mesh. Check out some of the videos here.

New Bohemian Signs
I realized that I’ve been subconsciously noticing various signs and sidewalk sandwich boards around town that have a great hand painted aesthetic, yet didn’t quite put the pieced together until I saw the postcard for an art opening featuring New Bohemian Signs. Turns out that all these lovely merchant signs were hand painted by this crew. The opening show was jam packed.

San Francisco City Planning Commission Meeting
I attended my first City Hall public planning hearing. SFUAA is heading up a proposal for San Francisco to re-zone the city so residents can sell the produce they grow in their yards. Pretty huge for the local food movement, urban homesteaders, and the future of food security. We had a huge turn out of support and no opposition. The Planning Commission was pretty excited about this effort, and expressed how great it was to have an authentic green initiative come across their desk. They voted unanimously to support the urban agriculture zoning proposal as it was introduced without any additional restrictions.

SF EcoTuesday
Sort of a shameless self promo plug here, but a lot of my time lately is dedicated to organizing a monthly networking and lecture series. EcoTuesday was founded 4 years ago by Nikki Pava and has grown to multiple cities. The focus is on bringing business leaders from the very broad field of sustainability to connect with each other. What’s unique about this event is that it includes some casual happy hour networking time, plus a talk presented by an industry thought leader, plus some structured introductions of all the attendees to facilitate making connects with like minded people. I’m pretty proud to be part of this great community.

Business Model Gameference
This one day work shop was pretty fantastic. Based on the book, Business Model Generation, with the author present to guide us through. Met some interesting people, exercised my brain in new ways, and felt both exhausted and energized by the end.

SonicLiving
Last but not least, SonicLiving is one of my current fabulous clients. I’m providing art direction and design for some behind the scenes developments they’ve got up their sleeve. It’s all a top secret startup stuff so I can’t really go into any detail. The nature of the work that I do is typically hush-hush, until it launches. I’ve got 1 other client in the same situation, and a couple more in the queue.

Events Coming Up
Farm Together Now, book reading at Mission Pie
Permaculture Guild, design class
SXSW
SF EcoTuesday March
EG: Fifth Anniversay
Tales of the City, at ACT

A great example of this is our upcoming speaker, Dr. Larry Weiss from San Francisco company CleanWell. Dr. Weiss and business parter Sam DeAth teamed up with IDEO to create CleanWell, a line of healthy hand cleaners to promote healthy habits. Weiss and DeAth had a compelling mission inspired by a personal story and an all-natural product based in science. Using design thinking to build a business, IDEO brought their expertise to craft CleanWell into a meaningful experience and brand. The combination of CleanWell and IDEO has succeeded in connecting people to a brand that goes beyond a product by resonating with our daily choices in a tangible and thoughtful way. Good hand washing habits with a healthy, enjoyable cleaner negate the need for us to expose ourselves and environment to toxic chemicals.

Their collaboration resulted is a line of non-toxic, alchohol-free alternative to hand sanitizers and cleaners, produced cruelty-free and made from sustainably grown ingredients. The packaging is considerate in it’s sharp and simple visual design, including low-tac adhesive for easy removal for minimal branding in the home. IDEO designed the packaging and graphics for CleanWell’s line of spray and toweletts, as well as helped build operational and manufacturing capabilities. IDEO’s expertise comes from an interdisciplinary team including industrial designers, engineers, business specialists, and communications and graphic designers who create “multifaceted experiences that connect people to brands in harmonious, meaningful, and emotional ways.” Four years later, CleanWell can be found in Whole Foods, Rainbow Grocery, Walgreens, Target and many other retail locations. Both Seventh Generation and Method sell products powered by CleanWell technology. Through these partnerships the CleanWell logo itself has become a mark of excellence, representing the highest standard in all-natural cleaning quality. You can read more about the IDEO CleanWell case study here.

In preparation for our event next week, I’ll be visiting Dr. Weiss at the CleanWell office to talk about his keynote and see first hand how much a small, focus team can accomplish. Starting off with a clear mission and fantastic branding has clearly helped keep CleanWell true to it’s passion, “A Better Way to Clean”.

EcoTuesday is a networking event for sustainable business. Every event features a 20 minute keynote by an industry thought-leader, followed by the hallmark “Introduction Circle” where all participants have an opportunity to share about their about passion and find like-minded collaborators. Events take place nationwide on the fourth Tuesday of the month. Please join us at The San Francisco W Hotel at 6:30 pm. $5 with online registration ($10 at the door).

RSVP online for SF EcoTuesday, January 25 at 6:30pm, W Hotel San Francsico

The Power of Us
What to do when your scheduled speaker falls ill and can’t join us? Turn the ‘virtual mic’ on ourselves!

We hope Jurriann feels better soon and we do look forward to rescheduling him for an upcoming talk because we love what Ode Magazine is doing. This spontaneous turn of events actually gave us an opportunity to hear more from each other. And what do you know…we have an amazing community so varied and full of creativity. I was struck with the potential we had in the room that night – we are making it possible to green our homes and businesses through renewable energy, zero waste, supporting the local community, serving sustainable food, having a healthy sense of ourselves, healthy indoor and outdoor environments, and are able to create and sell our own sustainable products. Pretty fantastic! Let’s help spread the word about these folks. Here is a recap of most everyone we heard from:

Albert Hartman / High Tide
High Tide’s products provide on-demand reliable power required for remote geographies, emergency situations, and mass adoption of mobile electronic devices. Check out their bicycle mounted USB charger, RollerGen.

Michael “Merc” Martinelli / Verdafero
Verdafero helps organizations understand, develop, and execute successful sustainability initiatives by  offering consulting and software as a service (SaaS) tools for sustainable business development. Their focus is small and medium enterprises (SME) who want to effectively manage their “Triple Bottom Line” – People / Planet / Profit.

Ingrid Ramsay / Closets Van Go
Closets Van Go and Kitchens Van Go is dedicated to helping you make your home a masterpiece — artistically, affordably and sustainably. They have a mobile showroom and a large variety of green woods and finishes.

Susan Wright / Connect the Dots
Connect the Dots consults exclusively for the nonprofit community to reduce their environmental footprint as they continue to focus on their social missions.

Nicola “Nikki” Ferenz / Gamechanger
GameChanger helps both big and small companies build powerful, breakthrough brands with fast, flexible new approaches to growth and innovation.

Bodhi Vela Cole / Style Consultant
Bodhi believes that everyone’s unique beauty should be celebrated and embraced. Image coaching is a process where your internal world is transcribed into a wardrobe that has you feel your best.

Chris Sofis / Sofistry
Sofisty’s primary service offering is centered on Modern Cabana, an eco-fabulous spare room (think art studio, guest room, kids’ play room, yoga/exercise studio, massage studio, or brand new office space . . . you get the idea) which will fit in the smallest of San Francisco gardens.

David Nuss / Runka
Runka was born from a concern that all of us share in preserving the planet. The site provides options for purchasing both practical and exotic products that promote recycling and the use of sustainable materials.

Linda Delair / EarthSource
EarthSource’s mission is to proliferate the use of FSC-certified, sustainable and environmentally healthy wood products by educating architects, designers, woodworkers and contractors about the cost-efficiency and long-term benefits of specifying such materials for their building plans.

David Callicott / GoodLight
All GoodLight Natural Candles are paraffin-free, non-toxic, clean burning, 100% palm wax that contains no additives or blends, and use cotton wicks containing no lead or zinc or other metals. GoodLight works with the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and GreenPalm organizations pioneering sustainability in palm farming.

Matt Carreira / I Love Blue Sea
I Love Blue Sea sells the largest selection of only sustainable seafood that is sushi-quality fresh at the best prices. The fish is filleted right before it ships to you. The next day it’s delivered to your doorstep in all eco-friendly packaging.

Evan Wynns / The San Francisco Energy Cooperative
The San Francisco Energy Cooperative is a consumer owned cooperative corporation dedicated to providing ownership of renewable energy production to anyone who is interested in investing in our energy future and wishes to have a hand in its growth.

» Please join us for the next event! We meet on the fourth Tuesday of every month, 6:30pm at The Box in San Francisco.

» Are you interested in being a sponsor? Demonstrate your organization’s commitment to sustainability and share about your company to a roomful of engaged, interested sustainable business leaders. You can learn more about becoming a sponsor here. Please contact me to let me know if you are interested.

His point is if your intention is to travel North and you’re driving 100 miles per hour South, you will not solve your problem by reducing your speed to only 20 miles per hour. You are still going in the wrong direction. We are still going in the wrong direction. We need a new design plan, and we need to define our intentions. His rallying cry is to instead design our buildings and our products to be like trees (nutrient producing, energy renewing, diversifying, evolving). If we don’t create a world that includes and loves all 9 billion of us, then those that grow up hating the world will destroy it. We’ve already managed to go down that path.

It’s all in the book, you should read it if you haven’t. Or read this Vanity Fair article about it. It’s fascinating, and it is all good common sense. He’s launched the Green Products Innovation Institute to create a database of good materials, a team of assessors, and a product certification. The challenge was very well underscored to me last night. It was written 8 years ago. We designers, clients, entrepreneurs, teachers and consumers need to make the shift and commit to creating more good.

While I was living in Vancouver last year The Vancouver Institue of the Arts hired me to help them define their brand, update their identity, and improve their website. It was a fantastic project from beginning to end – lasting into early 2010. I love talking brand, messaging, audience, strategy, and all that stuff. I feel so great about the collaborative process we went through and the final outcome we arrived at. The logo and new website structure gives them a new direction to run with, and is a solid set of communication tools they see themselves reflected in. I’ve since handed the design-baton off to local Vancouver designer Christina Lauer who is now doing a great job with business cards and more marketing materials.

Now that I’m back in San Francisco I’ve been focusing on local business and organizations that are making tomorrow better. I was so excited to get the chance to design a poster for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition’s annual Family Bike Day in Golden Gate Park. It was a dream project as my sole directive was “make it sophisticated and cute”. Awesome! And if that wasn’t enough, my first round of feedback included the words “ohmigosh *WE LOVE IT* Seriously…it is so awesome and perfect!”.

I <3 nice clients.

It’s all too common for many designers to be brought into a project late into the schedule to make the product, website, presentation, widget, logo or whatever “look nice”. That can certainly be valuable but what’s missing is that while “form follows function”, you shouldn’t separate the two into distinct efforts (or ignore one side altogether). You’re more likely to position your brand and/or product for success if you allow for the necessary rigor of the design process to fully flesh out and craft the user experience aimed at achieving your goals… before development begins.

Based on my experience, the most successful product launches have followed the same basic recipe of: define, design, build, test, repeat. If not already established, enlist your team leads to define the process that will work for both the designers and the engineers working on the project. Take advantage of existing processes, but be careful not to impose a canned process on the team. For further reading on thoughtful advice on integrating Design Process with Agile software development please see, Clash of the Titans: Agile and UCD. Personally, I lean more towards Activity and Behavior Centered Design processes, rather than User Centered Design. A quick search online will reveal some controversy about blending the design and engineering processes. Ultimately, it’s up to your team to arrive at an agreed plan forward. You can’t avoid today’s reality of shorter release cycles and smaller teams. It will only help to meet this challenge head on.

There is nothing better than being part of a multidisciplinary team that is operating in a zone that transcends pesky task lists and status reports. It’s the feeling of momentum, synergy, creation and the age old saying ‘the sum of the whole is greater than the parts’. Once you’ve gotten a taste of it, you’ll never want to go back!

Another great resource for small and limited teams is The Five Sketches by Jerome Ryckborst. I saw his presentation on ‘ideation, design, and usability for development teams’ at the Vancouver User Experience group.

On the topic of “form follows function”, I recently read an article by Stephen P. Anderson: In Defense of Eye Candy. In a nutshell, he describes that our perception of why we like how something looks actually influences whether we think it functions well. He says a lot of other great stuff too, it’s really worth a read.

And finally, more reading on Redefining User-Centered Design.

What do you think? I’d love to hear your feedback and ideas on the role of design and how to empower design to solve the right problem.

Do you have a project that could use the help of design? Contact me to discuss how at jenny[at]missjenny[dot]com.

I was given an early copy of the book, The Think Big Manifesto, by Michael Port. I’m about half way through and it reminds me of two other books that I find myself referencing when I feel a little lost, overwhelmed or anxious about change: The Power of Now and The Four Agreements. All these books have something in common, which is basically… you are in charge of your happiness, satisfaction, career, life and you are your own worst critic.

I’ve arrived at the spot in the book that says to “Stand for something, and make that public”. So here goes:

I stand for a conscious effort to behave in a way that is kind to our planet, and my goal is to use my design expertise to educate people and design tools to achieve actual green living.

There, I said it. Now what?

My hope is to connect with people, organizations and companies that also stand for that. And through these connections I will bring the value of design to help solve the right problems.

Photo: Living Room by Miss Jenny on Flickr

O

Dieter Rams is most well known for his work as chief of design at Braun from  1961 – 1998. Many of his coffee makers, calculators, radios and consumer electronics have had a lasting impact on today’s product design including Jonathan Ive’s work at Apple. In the early 1980′s he published his design principles which then became known as the 10 Commandments of Design. These principles are themselves a wonderful example of good design – consise, thoughtful, clean. They have withstood the test of time and remain more relevant than ever. How are we designers doing, according to this list?

Good design is innovative

Good design makes a product useful

Good design is aesthetic

Good design makes a product understandable

Good design  is unobtrusive

Good design is honest

Good design has longevity

Good design is consistent down to the last detail

Good design is environmentally friendly

Good design is as little design as possible

I am sitting in my living room in Vancouver, BC right now and I see several products that fit most of what Rams defines as good design: Sig water bottle, eames chair, iphone, stainless steel dog bowl, bamboo coasters. Out my window I can see several ‘living roofs”. I think designers today can have the biggest positive impact when they aim to develop new products that acheive the 9th principle: Good design is environmentally friendly.

UPDATE 05/06/09: I just saw the Gary Hustwit film Objectified last night in Vancouver and was super stoked to see Dieter Rams and the commandments featured. The audience Q&A also seemed really focused on the eco responsibility of designers. I found a podcast of a Q&A session from another screening, listen here.