Week of March 30 – evaluating human health impacts from environmental warming, resources depletion, and toxicity. Also – starting our reading of Cradle to Cradle. If Products Could Speak Mar 30 2009 from Jen van der Meer
We tend to tell the story of developing world crisis in numbers: Almost 1 billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water. That’s one in eight of us. Every day more than 4,000 children around the world die from diseases caused by poor water sanitation In Africa alone, people spend
At Open Forum: For years scientists have been arguing that the rest of us do not see what they see when we look at data about climate change. While the documentary An Inconvenient Truth provided a compelling narrative, few feel that awareness of these issues has led to wide scale behavior change. It seems that it is natural human behavior
At Open Forum for Inhabitat: The recent weak news on the unemployment front leaves some of us wondering: Where are all of the green jobs? The U.S. Department of Commerce made an attempt to answer this very question and set a benchmark to measure the size of the emerging green economy by the number of
At Open Forum for Inhabitat: Think that mobile social apps are a waste of time and energy? What if you could use them to make the world a better place? Inhabitat took a look at mobile-based applications and systems designed to promote positive social good. Here are five rising social impact apps to watch. The
Stakeholder management is an alternative to shareholder-based management, but shareholders are still at the table. In this class we look at the impact of shareholders on how things are made. Review of sources of competitive advantage, limits to growth theories, and emerging alternatives to the current organizational structures available. Social entrepreneurship, Coops, Conscious Capitalism discussed
What role does government and regulation play in determining how stuff is made? Short answer – it depends on local, regional, state, federal, foreign governments, and international organizational administrations. In a stakeholder view of how things are made, regulation is one of the fastest changing, hardest-to-predict forces and as makers, we need to work in
NYU ITP class on life cycle assessment, systems thinking, and stakeholder management. Week 3: In a stakeholder management model, what role to local community groups, activist organizations, workers’ advocacy groups, and other NGOs play in determine how stuff is made? If Products Could Tell Their Stories Feb 8 2010 from Jen van der Meer
Year 2 for the class that investigates how things are made, and how things can use their newfound technological innards to tell us how they got here. If Products Could Jan 25 2010 from Jen van der Meer Provocation: As creators, know what’s in the stuff you make. As interaction designers, create tools
At Open Forum for Inhabitat: With all of the climate talks, protests, and stunts during the Copenhagen UN summit on climate change, you may have missed an announcement about funds for clean energy in the developing world. Secretary Steven Chu of the US Department of Energy announced a $350MM from the Major Economies Forum to