In emerging and developing markets, products and services that we consider conveniences often become vital tools for survival. Increasingly, companies are investigating ways of facilitating daily lifestyles for people in these regions, by creating relevant services that matter to those beyond the industrialised world.

Emerging markets are developing economies with strong potential opportunities for the creation of new value and growth. These are those nations that are not yet wholly developed, but whose rapid economic growth is having a global impact, including large parts of Asia, Africa, South America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Rising incomes, economic growth and an emerging class of aspiring consumers are rapidly making these areas a target for design and innovation for multinational companies, and influencing marketing and product strategies around the world.

Experientia in emerging markets

Experientia’s research in emerging markets has highlighted many specific cultural, social and design issues that are vital to consider when entering these markets. The most fundamental of these is the connection between local research and contextually relevant design. Simply adapting techniques and tools that are successful in developed countries is not enough – innovation for emerging markets must be based on the relevant values of the area; all assumptions must be rethought, and local needs, cultures, social and economic preferences and conditions must be thoroughly understood. Rather than expecting prospective consumers to adapt to existing processes and systems, products and services must be adapted or developed from scratch to fit existing social networks and behaviours. Technology relevance and response to local cultures is of remarkable importance. Sometimes, small infrastructure investments are able to create the conditions for sustainable economic growth. An ecosystem of small businesses and services can have a huge impact on improving living conditions in these regions.

Designing for the Bottom of the Pyramid

An additional challenge in emerging markets is the presence of large numbers of the population who live below the poverty line, at the so-called economic Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP). These are potential consumers, who nevertheless make up a market with vastly different needs, constraints and income limitations. Here, the traditional paradigm of low volume/high margins must be reversed, to allow for a high volume of transactions with people who often live below US$2 a day. However, simply offering low-cost, basic models of products developed for mainstream consumers is not the way to reach this market. Although people at the bottom of the pyramid don’t have much money to spend outside of basic daily needs, function, features and durability are as important as cost in the decision-making process.

Aiding sustainable development

Services and products must go beyond simple commercial transactions, and offer solutions that aid sustainable development, by addressing local issues such as healthcare, affordable shelter, clean water, income generation and education. In emerging markets, ethical consumption, minimal footprint, social benefit and thorough local knowledge are the notable features of successful business strategies. However, people in emerging markets aren’t simply passive consumers looking to the outside world to provide solutions to their problems. They are, by necessity, innovators, entrepreneurs and designers, who, in the daily struggle to meet basic needs, develop ingenious usages, practices and systems to find a competitive edge.

Co-creation for contextually relevant designs

One way to make sure the products are contextually relevant is to involve local designers and the target market themselves in the design process. Co-creative processes are increasingly popular – by working with the people in the local community, a shared understanding of needs and context of living can be created, which offers benefits to both parties.

People in emerging countries know their environment, and are much more likely to come up with ad-hoc solutions to the problems they encounter every day. Indeed, some of the more exciting and innovative technology-based services actually stem from bottom-up innovation within emerging markets and ingenious indigenous use of technology. Some major companies are now working with the non-profit sector to support grassroots innovation and initiatives through more adequate technologies. As easy-to-use, more powerful technology becomes more widely diffused, the value of co-creation and grassroots innovation will become increasingly evident.

The future therefore lies in the creation of service ecosystems or contexts in which grassroots service development can take place. With business providing the tools, people in emerging markets will be able to create and design services and products that are uniquely suited to their needs and conditions.

For most of us, the word “yacht” conjures up images of floating bases of luxury and glamour. However, there’s a huge variety in yacht types, from size and specifications to purpose and price. And with new markets starting to eye these traditional icons of wealth, there’s room to think about what kind of experience yachts need to communicate, and how this experience might differ across cultures and age brackets.
The yachting market, on the whole, is still product rather than customer-oriented. As the double digit growth of the past decades diminishes in the wake of the economic crisis, the industry now needs to look inwards, to renew and refresh its own design approach and methodology, and outwards, to explore new markets and concentrate on entering them successfully. This requires a people-centred approach, which considers yachts not as mere physical products, but as facilitators of an experience. There are also adaptation and localisation challenges. In this article, we look particularly at the opportunities presented by the Asia-Pacific region based on preliminary research into the Korean, Chinese and Indian markets.

In a two part interview, originally published on Canvas8 and now able to be published here, Experientia partner Mark Vanderbeeken and senior industrial designer Luca Troisi discuss how the yachting industry might best adopt a people-centred approach. Luca’s long experience in the transportation industry includes work for luxury yacht-builders (Azimut-Benetti; Ferretti Group) as manufacturing manager in charge of industrialization, new product development and manufacturing.
You can also download our slideshow presentation on luxury and experience in yachting culture, focused on the Asia-pacific market.

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Could you give me a clearer definition of what you mean by ‘yacht’ – are we talking superyachts or the marginally more affordable kind? Perhaps this could have an impact in terms of the emotional connection between consumer and product, because often people who buy them aren’t the ones captaining or getting their hands dirty.
We consider a yacht to be any luxury boat that is larger than 36 feet, including motorcruisers, motor yachts, superyachts, etc. The smaller ones are usually bought by middle class people for leisure purposes. This size is very popular in the USA and Scandinavian countries.

Of course, when we talk about the larger yachts, we’re talking about a high-end market, with a very specific kind of user experience. Rather than thinking that people are less likely to engage with a superyacht emotionally because they won’t be doing the actual sailing, we need to think about what the emotional connection becomes in this case. This may well be a group of people who are used to having staff serving them. In some cultures, it is far more common to have serving staff, such as drivers and cooks, in everyday life – it’s not necessarily a defining part of the yachting experience.

Interestingly enough, your point about who gets their hands dirty is highly relevant for marinas. Often it might be the captain of the boat, rather than the owner, who makes the decision about which marina to berth in. This means the marina experience needs to operate on two different levels – the first considers which services and facilities would appeal to the yacht owner, such as restaurants, entertainment, security. The second seeks to understand what the captain and staff are going to be looking for, such as services to assist in docking and proximity to food suppliers.

Is it possible for a global luxury brand to adapt to very different demographics and cultures without fragmenting? How?
When we talk about a global brand, we have to think about the overall brand value proposition and not the individual products. The products need to be designed for local contexts, but fit into the values of the company. So the company has to have a very clear idea of what their brand values are, and then use research to find out how these values are manifested within local cultures.

According to our paradigm of user experience, we feel that in the luxury market – yachting and elsewhere – it’s hard to define a global proposition. A luxury bag has less of an experience behind that, you can sell it everywhere. But a yacht is almost like a house, and of course the experience with a house is so personal and culturally biased you can’t sell the same one everywhere even if you maintain the brand proposition. And this is the mistake that, in our opinion, some of the largest boat builders are making.

It’s true that countries like China, Korea and India desire Western style and products, but they also have a very strong history and culture. So maybe [brands] should try to understand the cultural aspects of owning a boat in these countries – that don’t have a long yachting history – and then conceive a product from scratch, perhaps keeping the style, but changing the concept.

Which new markets should the yachting industry be exploring and why?
Western countries are not saturated yet, but it’s getting harder and harder to sell brand new yachts. On the other hand, while Eastern countries could represent a huge market, wealthier people there do not yet have a strong yacht culture, so it’s very hard to tackle this market.

Take the Asia-Pacific region. It accounts for about 10-15 per cent of worldwide boat sales. And for some motoryacht builders the figure has possibly been as high as 25 per cent. In 2009, while the European and North American markets were shrinking, India and notably China, were still delivering double-digit growth, albeit from a relatively low base. China saw an increase in sales of over 40 per cent in 2009, particularly in the 12-18m (40-60ft) range. And India saw a similar growth, principally in the under 12m (40ft) range. So these seem like immensely promising markets.

However, there are major hurdles to overcome in both these potentially huge territories – principally the lack of berths and maintenance facilities. Infrastructure matters. But an innovative company shouldn’t wait for marina development – when the marinas are built, everyone will be there and the early mover advantage will have disappeared!

We’re currently looking into helping South Korea set up a more advanced and innovative yacht and design industry because they don’t have the historical bias; everything at the moment is based on technology, gadgets and styling, but opportunities exist beyond these three elements. The Korean government, for instance, is investing a lot in marina design. There’s not a lot of innovation in the industry, however. Korea has a very high GDP but they have the lowest level among advanced countries in yachting penetration – despite the fact that they have huge car and container ship industries.

What is different about the consumers in these markets, compared with the West?
Any answer to this question needs to be based on strong field research, and not just the assumptions of a marketer or designer, and that’s one of the most important things in creating a truly user-centred experience. In designing any product for any culture (or group within a culture), a thorough understanding of that group’s context and real life behaviours is essential. There’s no product that simply has universal values and appeal.

To put that into perspective, in China, the concept of luxury relates to the Confucian concept of ‘face’ or personal reputation. There are two aspects to face: mien-tzu and lien. Mien-tzu refers to material prestige and displays of wealth, but lien is about moral standing. So right there, you have a different way of thinking about what values luxury might express for the Chinese market. The Mandarin term for luxury can be translated as ‘show-off goods’, indicating that luxury consumption is currently driven by mien-tzu. But it’s important to know about the idea of lien, and how it impacts the view of luxury products in China.

Having said that, let’s look at some of the differences we do know about, for Arab, Indian and Chinese customers. Let’s start with what they have in common. All three societies are very hierarchical and require clear boundaries between areas designated for the owners and for the crew. All three cultures place great value on business entertainment in order to build relationships. All three cultures prefer to stay out of the sun, traditionally valuing pale skin (India and China in particular do big business in skin whitening creams). There’s also not much of a leisure culture related to the sea; there’s no real leisure boat heritage, despite the fact that all three cultures have a strong naval history.

So, with their current design, open yachts are not going to suit the behaviours and needs of these cultures. Typical Western yacht designs leave little space or opportunity for business entertainment. They don’t usually provide much shade from the sun, because in Western cultures we tend to favour sunbathing and tanned skin. Hull shapes deliver speed, but at the expense of comfort. And the open nature of the layout makes it difficult to keep owners and guests away from crew when it comes to dining and entertainment. So the design needs to be completely rethought if it’s going to appeal to an Eastern market.

What experience should yachting brands be trying to create or communicate?
There is no standard answer to this question, because the value of experiences is that they aren’t ‘standard’. Every industry and every brand should create its own experience. But right now, most yacht brands are concentrating on creating a product, and haven’t yet moved to the idea that they need to create an experience. This mental shift has to occur first.

Increasingly when we talk about luxury products we’re talking about products which set people apart simply by the fact that they can afford to buy them. In the past, brand exclusivity was a strong part of the product’s appeal and the values it represented. But now many luxury brands are starting to broaden their range by producing more affordable products for customers with comparatively lower incomes. This may water down the brand appeal for their high-end customers, who will no longer see it as exclusive. Focusing on the experience is one way to combat this, because experience is always unique to the consumer. It’s one more way to differentiate the product, and to express certain values or aspirations. But a strong part of the value of an experience lies in it being unique.

Why has the yachting industry in particular remained stagnant in its approach? Are any other industries in the same position?
The yacht industry is traditionally pretty conservative and it’s only in the last decade that it’s started to move towards modern techniques in new product development. Actually, even the automotive industry hasn’t made big leaps towards experience design. They are either technology or style-driven industries, highly focused on the technical specifications of the product and on cost reduction. The yachting industry seems to be stuck in a product-oriented paradigm, strongly focused on benchmarking technology and competitors’ products, where research is mostly done at the marketing stage, instead of at concept development stage. Because technological advances in the field are not particularly rapid, progress is very slow and differentiation amongst competitors is pretty low.

When new needs come up, the product doesn’t evolve into new goods, but is enhanced with add-ons. This means that the yacht turns into an over-accessorised villa, where the only differentiation is how many toys and gadgets you add.

What could the yachting industry – and others in a similar position – learn from user experience design?
The objective of experience design is to transform a boat into an ‘experience’, in which the marine environment is obviously key, but far from the whole story. It’s not about whether the yacht has this gadget or that gadget, but about whether it enables and enhances a particular kind of lifestyle and its behaviours, and fulfils particular aspirations and needs. This might just as well be achieved through rarity of the product, or its styling, layout, space allocation, or services. Creating a good experience is about finding the right mix for the individual.

Although it is based around a product or service, the idea of an experience is almost post-materialistic – the focus is not on consumption, but on how products and services can facilitate the creation of something memorable. The encounter is unique, and can be different every time the product or service is used. An experience is something subjective. It’s enabled by the product, but also separate from it. In this sense, an experience is something very durable, that can even outlive a product, and lead to a much stronger emotional connection with the brand.

The commercial advantage of experience is that it is invisible, permeating and memorable. Unlike natural rarity, or limited editions, experience-driven rarity doesn’t contrast with the production volume. Its very uniqueness and individuality means that it can be offered to many people, without reducing its value.

How will creating a more user-centred experience enhance the total experience of the brand?
Putting people first is key. To quote Don Norman, in his book Emotional Design, “Successful products are those which fit gracefully into the requirements of the underlying activity, supporting them in a manner that is understandable to people.” A good example is the mobile phone. The mobile phone industry has learned that customers don’t want to learn to use the technology; they want it to serve their needs. You see people today who have a real emotional connection to particular brands of phone, which goes beyond the function of the phone itself, and taps into the kind of lifestyle they want, and how they identify themselves.

If it seems hard to see the difference, then compare the function of a yacht with the way that it’s actually used. A boat is basically a mobility tool, to go from point A to point B. However, when you look at how people use their yacht, including those that might never even leave the marina, then you can understand that the experience of a yacht is tied to many elements beyond travel, from status to entertainment. If the yachting industry took that idea as their starting point for design, I think we’d see very different concepts emerging.

Let me pose some questions that we could try to answer using experience design:
How can you boost the perceived rarity of your brand?
How can you maintain the highest level of sales?
How can you make customers’ lives easier?
How can you simplify the interaction between customers and your products?
Which yacht features appeal to new market customers and how can you design for them?
How can you extend brand identification after purchase?
How can you transform a product into an experience?
How can you develop a sustainable image without compromising product performance and exclusivity?
How can you expand your sales network?

It’s hard to imagine that we could answer these questions using a traditional technology-driven approach.

You mention several considerations essential in forging new design disciplines (differentiation through service, desire for bespoke, etc.). Could you talk us through these, and their overarching significance?
The considerations that I mentioned are trends that we’ve observed across the entire luxury market, which have strong relevance for yachts.

The first is the democratisation of luxury: it’s no longer just the super-rich who are interested in high-end luxury brands. In response, traditional luxury brands are bringing out more accessible lines, for middle-class customers. This increases sales, but it also reduces the exclusivity. As a consequence, the richest customers are shifting their interest towards artisanal entrepreneurship, and highly customised, bespoke goods. It may sound strange but even in the yacht industry there’s a kind of democratisation. Companies like Princess Line and Sunseeker produce 300 yachts a year – even if that seems a small amount, when you see three identical yachts in a marina you get the sense it’s not exclusive anymore. The boutique yacht builder San Lorenzo builds only 40 or 50 yachts a year but it’s almost impossible to see the same yacht twice.

In this pursuit of something unique, people are looking beyond products and demanding experiences. As products become more affordable or more easily imitated and start to lose their rarity, people are recognising that an experience is unique, and something that can’t be easily imitated. In particular, the services that accompany products can help to enhance this experience and its unique feeling.

Often bespoke, tailor-made products go together with bespoke services, so high-end companies – not just yachts but high-end car makers, are producing ateliers. So instead of selling the product at a traditional dealer they provide services in which the client can help decide how to make the product. So it’s the experience of an end product but also the experience of spending days or months with a designer to achieve the desired result.

Related to this, we’re seeing a move to human-centred design, with an increased focus on the user. Successful products are designed starting from what the users need to do, rather than from what the product can do.
Another consideration is that there are currently new customers who can afford luxury goods, both from developing countries, and from a younger demographic who have the financial resources to purchase things like yachts. These markets have new demands, which need a new approach. We can’t just expect to sell new markets the same old yachts.

A very modern consideration is the increased focus on green and sustainable values. This also impacts the yacht market, as people start to seek products that incorporate sustainable benefits, so that brands can free consumers from their feelings of guilt, ignorance and powerlessness. The new green sensibility raises several problems for the yachting market, where there are no sustainable materials, and the process is highly polluting.

Finally, new and changing communications channels extend traditional interactions with current and future customers – new interfaces, rapid content updates and user-generated content. ‘Boating 2.0’, you might say, will need to take advantage of the new communications channels to get the message out to consumers, particularly dealers and boat shows, which are important first points of contact.

Have you seen any other industries which have successfully managed to shift from a product to consumer-led model, and which might provide a guide for the yachting industry (and others like it) to follow?
I mentioned mobile phones before, which is a good example of a very product-oriented industry suddenly discovering the benefits of people-centred design. Another example I like is Nestle’s Nespresso products. I measure its success in two ways: they sell normal coffee at 60 euro per kilo (this is the price in Italy and I suppose it’s similar in other countries). This is roughly four times more than very good coffee that is sold in Italy for use in the home. Secondly, they are selling flavoured coffee to Italians (and keep in mind that this is a country where the local coffee culture is so strong that chains like Starbucks have little or no presence).

The only explanation for this phenomenon is that they are selling a very appealing experience, rather than a product. The food industry is one of the most advanced implementers of the experience approach. It’s a sphere where we are willing to pay high above the value of the assembled foodstuffs in order to consume it in highly specific ways and contexts.

Image credit: Yaroslov Yakovlev, Luca Troisi

The roadmap detailed steps to take over a ten-year time-frame, and included a benchmark of sustainable expo centres from around the world, a calculation of the carbon footprint resulting from expo activities, tailored reduction targets, a behavioural change framework, and over 100 carbon reduction concepts.

These focused on reducing travel and providing alternative transport means, harnessing the potential of social networking and building conference communities, and motivating and encouraging all stakeholders, including conference attendees, to participate in the change to more sustainable practices.

As Europe approaches the 2020 deadline for the EU’s European Energy Policy, the roadmap will help position Kortrijk Xpo as a far-sighted leader in sustainable practices for temporary events.

A trade fair is typically a bustling centre of high energy-consuming action: large, well-lit, temperature-controlled spaces, information shown on electricity-eating multi-media displays and companies handing out samples and paper leaflets.

Temporary events like this generate tons of waste, and require people to travel long distances to reach them, with major events attracting fly-ins from all over the world. By their very nature, trade fairs and expositions, it seems, run counter to sustainability principles.

While infrastructural interventions could definitely improve the environmental impact of expositions and trade fairs, it’s the deeper problem of influencing the behaviour of attendees that seems insurmountable. Moreover, the expo centres themselves are often resistant to deep change, as they are concerned that achieving sustainability would require them to lower the number of attendees or could affect the quality of their events.

Some far-sighted event centres however are addressing the sustainability issue head-on, thereby anticipating future legislative requirements and using their sustainability achievements as a competitive marketing advantage.

One such organisation is Kortrijk Xpo, a Belgium exposition centre that has set out the ambitious goal to become the most environmentally sustainable trade fair and congress complex in the country by 2020, and a top five player in Europe.

Driven by a strong ethical desire to adopt more sustainable behaviours, Kortrijk Xpo’s managers wanted to make sure that their approach was more than just lip service to environmentally friendly principles, with the focus on genuine change instead of symbolic gestures. Which is why they — with the support of Flanders InShape, a public design support agency — invited experience design company Experientia and carbon footprint specialists Futureproofed to help them to develop a 10-year strategy.

The process, discussed in this article, involved benchmarking, carbon footprint calculation, creation of a framework for behavioural change, opportunity mapping and idea generation, and resulted in a roadmap containing actions for all expo stakeholders, including attendees, to implement on the road to more sustainable events.

Planning for genuine change

Kortrijk Xpo began its journey to sustainability in 2009, when the organisation’s managers changed its energy supply to green electricity sources, an act which reduced its carbon footprint by 26%*, although at this stage they had no way to measure the impact of their actions. Despite this promising beginning, the Xpo management didn’t know what steps to take next to reach their ambitious sustainability goals. They secured funding from the design support agency Flanders InShape, and began to look for a consultant to develop a sustainability strategy.

Enter Italy-based user experience design company Experientia and Futureproofed, a Belgian consultancy specialised in sophisticated carbon footprint analysis and solution development. The two companies with very different specialities teamed up to create an environmental roadmap for Kortrijk Xpo.

Taking a people-centred approach, Experientia and Futureproofed detailed the steps necessary for the expo centre to become more sustainable, addressing both infrastructural systems and people’s behaviours. The roadmap looks not just at the next few months, but also at the next decade, showing what needs to start happening now, and how it can evolve and progress over the coming years.

Taking the long-term view – the road from here to there

Sustainability is an increasingly growing concern, and will only grow more important in the next decade as we approach the 2020 deadline for the EU’s European energy policy (requiring a 20-30% cut of all greenhouse gas emissions compared to 1990 levels, and for public buildings to produce a considerable amount of their energy on-site). Companies that start to put progressive policies in place now will have a strong competitive advantage as legislation becomes more stringent for building codes and practice standards. All industries will be affected, but it’s important to realise that any business can reduce its impact.

A roadmap like the one created for Kortrijk Xpo provides businesses with the information they need in their journey of change towards sustainability. It takes businesses from “point A” — not understanding their real carbon footprint, where emissions come from and how to reduce them — to “point B”, where they can recognise and track sources of emissions, involve stakeholders in reducing them, and become advocates and “lead users” of more sustainable practices. But just what does such a map from A to B include? And how is it created?

Understanding the footprint

In creating the roadmap for Kortrijk Xpo, Futureproofed provided the starting point, by calculating the carbon footprint resulting from Kortrijk Xpo’s activities. CO2 emissions are generally categorised into three scopes.

Scope 1 refers to those emissions that come from sources that are owned or controlled by the institution. In the case of Kortrijk Xpo, these were mostly refrigerants and gas for temperature control, and company cars. Scope 2 refers to indirect emissions generated by electricity purchased and used by the organisation. Scope 3 refers to all other indirect emissions that are caused by the institution’s activities, but not under their control or ownership: for Kortrijk Xpo these included travel of attendees and expo presenters and transport of waste.

When calculating a carbon footprint for an organisation, often only scopes 1 and 2 are considered. This is a rather limited way of looking at CO2 – which is why Futureproofed also uses scope 3 to calculate carbon footprints. This more complete picture of both direct and indirect emissions will give an organisation much more confidence in how to manage costs, limit risks, create new markets and develop brand value.

As expected, Futureproofed found that once scope 3 was added to scopes 1 and 2, the expo centre’s carbon footprint was 36 times larger – 51,442 tons of CO2 emissions, compared to a much smaller 1,402 tons if only scope 1 and 2 were considered. They also found that scope 3 emissions were clearly dominated by transport, with transport of event visitors accounting for a huge 84.9% of the carbon footprint. From an analysis of the carbon footprint, Futureproofed then identified the biggest carbon emission problem areas, and elaborated reduction targets for the expo centre.

Using the report’s 10 most significant sources of carbon emissions as a guide, Experientia began to benchmark best practices in sustainability in expo centres, temporary events, and large transit buildings (e.g. airports, train stations) all over the world. They investigated the most innovative and effective practices in action today, ranging from technical solutions for temperature control and overall building impact, to innovative ways to reduce travel and the impact of transportation, and fresh and contemporary ways to involve visitors and participants in the solution space. The benchmarking process revealed solutions as varied as on-site power production, native plant rooftop gardens, and remote trade fair attendance using robot avatars.

At the same time, Experientia designed a behavioural change framework, based on the latest theories in the area, as well as Experientia’s own previous work on behavioural change that it developed in other sustainability-focused projects. The existing behavioural change frameworks were carefully adapted to refer more specifically to sustainability at temporary settings and events, outlining the process of behavioural change in an expo centre, as well as the roles and motivations of the various stakeholders.

Once these three ingredients – carbon footprint, international benchmark and behavioural change framework – were outlined, the map was starting to become clearer, and the concept development phase of the project began.

Trade fairs in the not-too-distant future

So what does the sustainable trade fair of the future look like?
Concepts focused on four solutions around the themes of travel and transportation, materials and waste, citywide ecosystem, and global connections. They envisioned a trade fair where both exhibitors and attendees could take responsibility for their carbon footprint, and implement simple actions to reduce it, while sharing these actions and values within the wider urban context, and with a global network of ecological event venues.

The travel-focused concept, Virtual Xpo, allows people to attend Kortrijk fairs remotely – possibly at a reduced rate – without compromising the richness of the direct experience of the events, even offering platforms to participate in Q&A sessions with exhibitors and presenters. Social media solutions extended on-site experiences and networking, into trend spotting from afar. This was a direct answer to the overwhelming issue of the high footprint of travel.

Focusing on materials and on raising people’s awareness of their carbon impact, the Booth dashboard idea aims at engaging exhibitors in CO2 and energy reduction by making their consumption information transparent, publicly available and comparable with their peers’ consumption. This includes the process of booth design, production and transport, as well as emphasising how much each exhibitor has saved through more sustainable sourcing techniques. It also visualises the energy consumption of the booths during the event. The concept focuses on local carbon production, and aims to catalyse behavioural change through making companies more responsible for their own impact.

The Living in Kortrijk scenario takes a citywide perspective, highlighting how changes at the expo centre could impact the future of the local ecosystem. It sets out how sustainable tools, facilities, information and services available to people at the trade fair can be made available to the entire city, thereby allowing good practices to spread from their original context, and become embedded in people’s daily lives. This concept looks beyond the fair, imagining the full experience of a person visiting the city for the fair. In order to be fully sustainable, the expo should involve a set of local stakeholders and create a co-ordinated infrastructure, which extends sustainable principles across the whole range of activities a visitor might participate in.

Finally, looking at the global scale, the EcoFair network envisions an international network of expo sites that agree on shared eco practices and actively promote their vision and initiatives and deliver their services to the users. Travel is also addressed here, as the community of attendees can explore alternative, lower-impact ways to reach the event venue. The concept is based on the idea that behavioural change can be triggered, facilitated and reinforced through gradual adoption of new behaviours and collective action, leading to new values and norms at community levels. In this case, a community of EcoFairs creates a forum within which best practice can be shared, comparisons can be more easily made, and reinforcement can be mutual.

Putting Kortrijk Xpo on the map

Although these four ideas were showcased as the strongest arising from the process, they were far from the only solutions generated. In a strongly participatory approach, Experientia and Futureproofed hosted an opportunity-mapping workshop with stakeholders in which over 100 solutions were devised to address specific sustainability problems that conferences and trade fairs face. These were then mapped onto opportunity maps, where the solutions and gaps could be seen more easily, and thematic clusters were identified. These all became part of the final roadmap.

The environmental roadmap for Kortrijk Xpo provides detailed information on implementing the reduction targets within the staged time frames. It acts as a guide to catalysing organisational change, and to triggering change in event attendees. It takes the organisation through all the milestones of the process, from carbon reduction targets, to strategies for achieving them, supporting Kortrijk Xpo on its way to becoming the most environmentally sustainable trade fair and congress complex in Belgium by 2020, and a top five player in Europe.

This will be a considerable achievement for the expo centre, but it is our conviction that in spreading these values to other exposition centres and eventually becoming a standard for what event venues can achieve in terms of sustainability, Kortrijk Xpo will really put itself on the map as a far-sighted leader.

Project partners
Experientia – experientia.com | Flanders InShape – flandersinshape.be | Futureproofed – futureproofed.be | Kortrijk Xpo – kortrijkxpo.com

View of the courtyard and facade, in glass and timber. On the first floor are private and communal gardens, and solar panels installed on the greenhouse underneath.

Vista del cortile e delle facciate realizzate in vetro e legno, con in primo piano il giardino, gli orti comuni e i pannelli solari installati sulla serra sottostante.

The Home-Assistant is a system installed in residential units to monitor and manage energy consumption and interaction with the services in the zone.

L’Home-Assistant, il sistema installato nelle unità abitative per il monitoraggio, la gestione dei consumi energetici e l’interazione con i servizi di quartiere.

The interaction with a smart meter prototype during a contextual interview in Helsinki.

L’interazione con un prototipo di contatore digitale durante un’intervista contestuale ad Helsinki.

Participatory design activity to gather user needs, opinions and data on the spatial configuration of the residential units.

Attività di co-progettazione per la raccolta di bisogni, opinioni e dati degli utenti sulla configurazione spaziale delle unità abitative.

The design of domestic space with involvement of future residents and visitors of the zone.

La progettazione degli spazi domestici attraverso il coinvolgimento di futuri residenti e visitatori del quartiere.

Participatory design activity with future residents and service users of the Low2No zone.

Attività di co-progettazione con futuri residenti del quartiere e utenti dei servizi Low2No.

• Printable press kit (English version)
• Web press kit (English version)
• Cartella stampa (lingua Italiana- stampabile)
• Cartella stampa (lingua Italiana – web)

Despite the barriers to changing to more sustainable behaviours, there are strategies that can be implemented to promote and support change, in particular, by the construction of new social values and norms that value sustainability over a consumption-driven economy.

Experientia’s behavioural change framework has been developed over the course of our work in Helsinki’s Jätkäsaari area, as part of a team constructing a low-to-no carbon emissions building block called Low2No (www.low2no.org). Low2No is led by Experientia partner Jan-Christoph Zoels, who is responsible for the energy demand management tools (smart meters, services, urban infomatics), and oversees the behavioural change strategy for enabling sustainable lifestyles, including stakeholder engagement and participatory design processes. Experientia project manager Irene Cassarino is responsible for mixed use development.

This article was originally written for Canvas8 (www.canvas8.com) by Mark Vanderbeeken and Erin O’Loughlin, and can now be reproduced here.

Sustainable change: discovering motivations and building a community of values

Business has been told for years that the perfect product or service should fit people’s contexts, behaviours and attitudes. The designer’s own feelings about what might make a product or service attractive should always be informed by a solid understanding of the target market, and their contextual wants and needs.

Although too many businesses still aren’t catching on to this idea, current design thinking is moving people-centred design even further: the concept of design for behavioural change, particularly with regards to health and sustainability, sees the understanding of people as a first step in changing them. Can we use design to change people rather than adapt to existing desires and behaviours? Is it ethical? Is it desirable? Is it possible?

In the midst of a worsening climate crisis, design for behavioural change is a vital issue. We know that individually and collectively, we urgently need to start consuming less. In fact, we know that individual behavioural change could reduce personal carbon impact by as much as 15% by 2020 (1). Yet not only is it difficult to know which actions are the most effective, it’s also often difficult to carry them out – whether due to lack of time, lack of commitment, lack of tools, infrastructure and services, or even the feeling of being one person toiling against the mainstream, which neutralises our good behaviour. This is where design can play a huge role in helping people and communities to comply with the existing desire to be more sustainable.

Not forcing change – tapping into motivations

If changing people’s behaviour through design sounds somewhat sinister, don’t worry. We’re not talking about 1984-style attempts to make people act against their natural instinct. The aim is not to constrain people’s autonomy and freedom of choice, but rather to tap into those motivations that might make changing behaviour worth it to them as individuals. Of course, we are all motivated by different things. Just look at the 2007 study on ‘nudging’ people to change their behaviour through comparative electricity bills.

The study was carried out in 80,000 Californian households, half of which received feedback on whether they were using more or less electricity than their neighbours. The results showed that people who got the feedback cut electricity usage by a modest average of two per cent. But looking closer, the researchers found something interesting – homeowners who identified themselves as politically republican only cut usage by an average of around 0.4 per cent. Those republican households who showed no practical interest in the environment actually increased their consumption by 0.75 per cent (www.newscientist.com/article/dn18860-republicans-wont-be-nudged-into-cutting-home-energy.html).

This doesn’t mean that those people can’t be convinced to cut back on their energy use – but it won’t be comparative billing that convinces them. Feedback has to be tailored, and changing our behaviours has to bring us a result that we want – and while people may not always want to ‘be green’, non-green motivations, such as saving money, could also lead to more sustainable behaviours. It also highlights another important aspect of behavioural change: the groups and communities that we identify with can have a big impact on our likelihood of responding to certain triggers and stimulus. So, designing tools and services for behavioural change needs to start from a triple bottom line approach, which considers the environmental, economic and social dimensions of sustainable decisions.

Conflicting desires

What people really want can be complicated and is of course defined by much more than our personal values. As we will discuss, physical, cultural and social factors also come into play. Often, what we want as a long-term goal, and what we want to do right now can be in conflict. Take the desire to stay trim and fit – a longer term personal value – which wavers as we walk past our favourite restaurant; or the desire to live a more sustainable life, compared to the inconvenience of walking three blocks to recycle rubbish into the right bins. Solutions need to understand the entire context of our behaviour, use the right tools to gently remind us of the benefits whilst overcoming the barriers, and then trigger the right behaviour. An elegant example of a behavioural change solution comes from Paris, where a new fountain offers locals sparkling water on tap – after discovering that aversion to still tap water was one of the main reasons many French people were buying bottled water despite concerns about the waste (www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/21/paris-park-fizzy-water-tap). A municipality in Italy is doing the same thing along its coastal walkways, in an attempt to cut down on discarded bottles (www.theage.com.au/travel/travel-news/italys-bottle-ban-to-brighten-beaches-20100922-15mxu.html). This, in turn, steps into the realm of creating products, services and public infrastructure that support sustainability – the more we build a world that supports sustainable behaviours, the easier it will be for people to change, irrespective of their values.

“I want to behave sustainably, but not right now”

Of course, offering us free, fizzy tap water might be a quick fix for plastic bottle consumption, but getting people to change their behaviours, and making that change last over time, is not always so simple – even when they know they should. First there is the issue of self-perception. Dirk Dobbs, in his article ‘The climate is changing, why aren’t we?’ (www.fastthinking.com.au/bloggers/dirk-dobbs/the-climate-is-changing,-why-aren%E2%80%99t-we.aspx) says people often overestimate their own abilities and therefore don’t think they need to change, and have a general tendency to discount the seriousness of risks, especially if they occur far in the future.

At Experientia we’ve encountered both mentalities as barriers to more sustainable behaviour in different research projects. In one, we asked people to comment on their energy consumption use. The majority of our participants stated that they believed they used less energy than average. Obviously, statistically speaking, this can’t be true. In another project, we identified a kind of ‘on hold’ mentality, in which people are aware of the issues, want to change, and even know some basic information on what actions they could take – but put off making the changes to a “more convenient time”, perhaps waiting until they own a house to install new insulation, or get married to buy more sustainable appliances, or a new job to think about alternative ways to travel to work.

There is a whole world beyond the personal

As mentioned above, however, individual motivations don’t spring from nothing – they are formed by our physical environment, our culture, our social groups, our political leanings, our government’s stance and policies, and the practical tools we have at our disposal, among other things. Any attempt at behavioural change has to take action across these different areas. In Experientia’s work in Helsinki’s Jätkäsaari area, as part of a team constructing a low-to-no carbon emissions building block called Low2No (www.low2no.org), we have been working on a behavioural change framework that identifies the interplay of forces that impact our likelihood of complying with behavioural change efforts.

• Physical considerations and constraints Such as the spaces in which we live, heating needs, transport infrastructure, light conditions, water and food supplies, and available technology, including the tools and interfaces which give us the information we need to make informed decisions.

• Personal factors These include our individual green values, current consumption behaviours, transport behaviours and our levels of self-awareness regarding our own impact on climate and the available options to modify it.

• Social environment Such as community identity, values, beliefs, memories, needs, and habits. How widely are green values shared in the community? Are people aware of pollution conditions and the associated risks? Is there a collective knowledge base about the behavioural impact on climate and the options to modify it?

• Cultural context Finally, consider issues such as the level of commitment of public administrations and businesses to green values, the number and quality of public/private incentives for sustainable behaviours and continuous improvement and maintenance programmes, affects the likelihood of us taking personal action.

A framework for bottom-up change

Of course, the government has a major role to play in creating the conditions for these frameworks to thrive. Legislation will need to play a strong role in behavioural change towards sustainability. We have already seen the limits of self-governing regulatory bodies and voluntary standards in the past – Norwegian businesses only started allowing women into their boardrooms once this became mandatory, despite ten years of promises from the companies involved.

Governments will mandate change because they need to meet targets set by various international bodies and agreements. However, for change to be sustained in the long-term, it also needs to be bottom-up, and not just top-down, rising from a grassroots commitment to change, which in turn brings pressure to bear on political bodies to change at national level.

Design can support and nurture the development of this grassroots movement, through concepts that work in the four contexts described above. Our Low2No framework also defines four different kinds of actions that need to take place: Engagement and Awareness, Community Actions, Self Assessment and Leading by Example.

Engagement and Awareness. As people’s awareness of climate issues are raised, they need meaningful and contextual information to help them respond. What is the difference in real terms between an A and an A++ appliance? How could this information be presented to people so that the benefits are clear? This also involves providing people with tools for evaluation, so that they are empowered to make better choices. Engagement with a new behaviour is more likely to be sustained long-term if it is easier and more convenient than previous patterns – for example, making it easier to recycle technological waste products or systems that automatically reuse grey water in gardens without any extra effort.

Community Actions. We are social animals and our neighbours’ or peers’ behaviour will impact us strongly. We are already starting to see social reputation being used to enforce or “proof” behaviour. Comparative billing is just one example of this. How else might people’s behaviours start to change if they knew exactly what keeping up with the Joneses meant in terms of consumption?

However, we need to go beyond the passive concept of social proofing, to help communities to build a sense of shared values, of people who have the same goals and work together. One person working alone may find it hard to sustain their commitment to a new activity – but once it becomes a social activity, family, neighbours and peers become a force of encouragement and support, with common interests. This means creating a pool of shared knowledge, accessible to all members of the community, and putting support mechanisms and networks in place to encourage compliance. This opportunity to focus sustainability efforts through the lens of community involvement also has lifestyle implications – it reframes the paradigm of urban living from one in which we live in our own households and don’t know the neighbours, to a social network in which we know exactly what our joint energy consumption is, and metaphorically (or even actually) stop on the stairs to exchange tips.

Self Assessment. In order to translate understanding into action, people need to be able to see the real impact of their individual or group actions. Targets can help make information measurable and actionable, and simulating the impact of different alternatives can help people decide on the best course to take. Monitoring and immediate feedback can help people to see patterns in their own behaviour, showing when they are more or less compliant with their goals, and perhaps helping them to identify why. Success should be tied to rewards, from emotional satisfaction, such as having achieved the goal of using less than the average, to more tangible benefits such as financial savings or a bonus. At a community level, the ability to evaluate joint consumption and carbon emissions is an important tool for highlighting the need for further action, and the opportunity to reward sustained change.

Leading by Example. Encouraging individuals to change is vital, but the impact has to occur at community, regional and national level. Governments and local authorities need to show their commitment to sustainable causes by facilitating open dialogue between public and private sectors, and offering public incentives to sustain change, for individuals, communities and small and big businesses alike. Positive feedback loops are needed to constantly refine processes and policies. More importantly, governments need to model the behaviours they are hoping to encourage in their populations. Change at this level can only occur once governments start to feel the pressure from their voters, and to believe that sustainability is a challenge we can no longer afford to procrastinate around.

A virtuous circle

The ultimate aim of behavioural change for sustainability has to be to make our lives better. If designers and policy makers can find a way to link more sustainable behaviours with a higher quality of life, then we have the problem cracked. If we can provide a context in which we can link personal satisfaction and self-actualisation with a lower rate of consumption, and a more sustainable lifestyle, then we can create a society in which wealth means not having more, but living better. To do this, people must be offered the right tools and information to effect change, as well as the conditions to create new tools and new values, and to communicate these to others. In the end, change becomes a self-reinforcing loop, in which design influences people to behave more sustainably, and people’s desire to act ‘green’ drives design and public policy.

Sources

1. Smart 2020: Enabling the low-carbon economy in the information age. Global eSustainability Initiative/The Climate Group, 2008

For more information on the Low2No project or related services, please contact Jan-Christoph Zoels at info at experientia dot com.

Video reflections by Bruce Sterling, Massimo Banzi (of the Arduino), Mario Bellini and others are already online.

When Italian company Olivetti unveiled the Programma 101, it was more than just a technological revolution – it was a new way of thinking about people and computers. The compact, portable device revolutionised the idea of the computer, as well as how and where people really used them.

Instead of booking time on a monolithic machine guarded by experts, needing a whole room to house it, Programma 101 considered convenience, lifestyle and even aesthetics. Use it by the pool, or in the bath, convey the advertising images. It was perhaps the earliest example we have of user experience design in the computing field.

The 52 minute documentary recounting the story of this extraordinary machine and its makers will screen on Fox History Channel, Ur Sweden, SBS Australia, YLE Finland.

It describes the passage from a machine surrounded by men in “white coats”, where using it was as intimidating as being in a hospital, to a device that could be carried around wherever you were. The idea was so unbelievable at the time, that when it was first unveiled, skeptical viewers looked for the underground cable that must connect it to a larger computer.

“The Programma 101 is a real break in the history of computers,” comments American science-fiction author Bruce Sterling in a clip from the documentary. “You went from the mainframe to a thing on the desktop.”

A project that still resonates

For Experientia, the story has extra resonance, because not only is it an early example of thinking about the human side of human-computer interaction (putting people first, in other words!), but Experientia CEO Pierpaolo Perotto, is also the son of the Programma 101′s creator Pier Giorgio Perotto.

Recalling his father, Pierpaolo spoke about the three core elements – vision, planning and design – which helped his father and the small team of experts at Olivetti realise the Programma 101.

“They believed in a vision centred around people, and not around technology. My father was convinced that an electronic calculator could become a personal object. It was an act of courage. It was definitely completely counter-trend in terms of the culture surrounding technology in that moment in history. That vision characterised all the choices that followed.”

This vision was implemented by a grand level of planning, which involved both new and existing technologies. These technologies were aimed not just at creating an experimental prototype, but one that could above all be mass-produced, for an affordable price. In all, about 44,000 units were sold, for about $3,200 each.

The final element of success for the project was the integration between vision, design and technology.

“Having had the courage and the will to insist on a product design that was integrated with the vision and the technological choices made, they refused proposals that, although aesthetically interesting, would have constrained the innovative nature of the machine,” says Pierpaolo. “In that sense, it was my father who gave the job, against the wishes of his superiors, to a young designer at the start of a luminous career: Mario Bellini.”

The integration of these three elements – vision, planning and design – are also part of the way of thinking that eventually came to underpin Pierpaolo’s own work, particularly at Experientia, with its people-centred vision, and multi-disciplinary approach.

“I see these three elements as an instruction for anyone who wants to create a better future.”

A lifestyle machine

The Programma 101′s innovative approach is easily seen in its advertising: a businessman uses the calculating machine by the pool, while a woman in a bathing suit smiles at him after her swim; a woman taps away at the keypad from the comfort of a bubble-filled bath.

In a clip from the documentary, Bruce Sterling laughingly comments:

“In that advertisement you see a businessman sitting at the side of a pool, with a woman in a bathing suit, doing a little calculation. It’s a prophecy of the death of computers as something hidden away behind glass walls.”

While these images were no doubt slightly tongue-in-cheek, and seem charmingly quaint compared to the advertising images that surround us today, they are nevertheless the precursor of today’s computer as a personal assistant, and even a life partner. Pier Giorgio Perotto was able to envision a world where technology could exist in harmony with our lifestyles, which for the time was revolutionary.

Perhaps this vision comes through most clearly in the words of the father of personal computing himself. Commenting on the project later in life, Pier Giorgio Perotto said:

“I dreamed of a friendly machine, to which one could delegate all those operations that cause mental fatigue and errors; a machine that could learn, and calmly perform; that could store simple and intuitive data and instructions; that everyone could use; that cost little and fit with the dimensions of other office products that people were used to. I had to create a new language, which didn’t need interpreters in white coats.”

Perhaps this idea of a new language between people and computers, one that is simple and intuitive, and accessible to everyone, is the real inheritance of Programma 101. Pier Giorgio Perotto created a world in which you didn’t need to be an expert to operate a computer, and nearly fifty years on, his vision has been realised in ways that no one expected. In a world where technology is developing so rapidly, the challenge is to stay true to that vision, and make sure that new devices are designed with the vision of putting people first, and remembering that human-computer interaction should be designed above all for the humans.

As the virtual and the physical converge more and more, and eventually become indistinguishable, our basic human experience is changing. The internet is on the brink of making the transition from virtual space to the physical world; indeed, it’s a transition that is already underway, as we increasingly have the ability to be online wherever we are, all the time, in real time, and in many different types of contexts, and these will all be known and processed by online and mobile services.

This ability to be online is not limited to computers and mobile phones. The digitisation of our physical space also includes RFID systems, sensors, alert systems, cameras, GPS, etc. While many people are still coming to understand the ways in which personal technologies can revolutionise our lives, designers are already exploring the possibilities of a “web of things”. The challenge for designers in a new phase in digital/physical confluence is to create a range of trusted tools that use paradigms that are relevant for people and not computers.

So what does a world in which all objects are connected to the internet actually mean? The benefits for industry are perhaps the most evident ones – the modern just-in-time philosophy could be powerfully enabled by our greater ability to track stock, market flows, buying habits. But beyond more automated, efficient systems, where is the value for our basic everyday human experience? And how can we make sure that this experience is enhanced through a framework that uses human-centred data to facilitate our existence, while ensuring privacy and trust?

At Experientia, we’ve been exploring the themes of trust, value and identity that lie at the heart of such technological advances. While the issues of privacy, security, usability, human/computer interaction and ways to store large amounts of data are all important design considerations, there are also more emotional, less tangible issues to investigate. One example is storage and retrieval: we can capture, warehouse and retrieve almost endless amounts of information generated through movements and tasks throughout our day, but it is perhaps more relevant to ask ourselves, do we really want to? Instead of exploring ways to enhance our computer storage space, the human side of the issue might involve asking ourselves how we can create relevance in the visualisation of information, facilitating human qualities and values, such as memory, precious information, or the convenient forgetting of unwanted or unpleasant reminders.

Keeping control and power in the hands of people; the human qualities of valuing and treasuring important information, and forgetting those things that are irrelevant; the tactile expression that bridges the distance of remote communication; the intuitive nature of interacting with gestures; the emotional aspects of moods, surprises, attraction, serendipity: the conversation around human identity, control, balance and behaviours is only just starting.

By designing with people instead of for people we create products and services that are compelling because they are relevant: putting people first, and letting them take us on the journey of design and innovation.

Traditional models of communication, as exemplified in the term “broadcast media”, usually rested the power of communication with the person sending the message, regarding the audience as passive and receptive. Similarly, in design, power traditionally rested with those doing the creating – asking people what they wanted was part of the process, but in the end designers made the decisions. This paradigm is now radically changing. Innovation is no longer confined to a select group of people who have been hired to create new products and services – it is open, participatory, democratic – and it involves above all the people, who have now become active participants, rather than just “users”.

People are at the heart of human-centred design – their needs, behaviours and drives shape the product or service under creation. Participatory design methods allow this to happen even more directly, giving people the chance to brainstorm, ideate, create and prototype alongside designers, offering a level of insight into real customer needs that often can’t be reached by more traditional survey and focus group methods. While a good design team is able to generate many ideas, often the most difficult part is deciding which of those ideas are the most meaningful and relevant. The obvious solution is to go straight to the person most likely to know – the one who will end up using the product or service.

Participatory design works especially well in extracting latent needs and desires that people are unaware of, or unable to express. Instead of simply answering questions, the people involved are welcome to try, propose, discuss, fail, and try again. Because these people aren’t usually designers, with a detailed understanding of design processes and methodologies, participatory methods use games, activities and visual aids to help them to shape their ideas in a way that designers can understand. Above all, it is a cooperative process – designers aren’t being replaced, they’re working with people, guiding activities, allowing human beliefs and needs to emerge, and bringing the ideas and desires together into visualisations, suggestions, prototypes, stories and patterns.

This kind of “outsourcing to the community” also allows people to develop an emotional connection with their creation – having invested in the design, developed something that they feel satisfies their needs, they are more likely to find the resultant product or service relevant, useful and fulfilling. This is where the real value of co-creation lies – by allowing multiple voices to be heard and involved in the process, the final outcome is likely to satisfy a wider group of people.

And participation and collaboration don’t need to be confined to any one phase of the product lifecycle – they are relevant in pre-design phases (What are your general needs, desires, ambitions, aspirations?), design phases (What is it you want from this product or service, what should it look, feel, act like?) evaluation (Does it do what you want?), and even in the implementation and use phases (What should it do now? How should it evolve? What innovative and surprising usages are emerging?) As people-generated content and applications are showing, people do not simply buy and use a product, but have rather more complicated relationships that involve emotion, attachment and innovation.

People are getting involved at all levels, as individuals or as groups – adding content to citizen news services, designing their own bespoke books, shoes, jeans, even managing football teams and making their own electronic devices. By identifying what they see as the defining moments, features, facts and ideas, people are sharing their perspective, and shaping the world around them into one that they have had a role in creating.

Experientia’s vision of Slow Life is as a way to improve our quality of life by using design to create diversity and sustainability that focuses on human-centred elements.

Experience design is a human-centred activity. It starts with a deep understanding of people’s needs and contexts of living or working, and the end-result is a product or service that provides people with a quality experience or a culturally relevant solution.

With the focus clearly and deliberately on people, other issues, such as technology, economics, belief systems, or the broader topics of ethics and sustainability, sometimes seem to take on a secondary role. But these issues go to the very core of what it means to be human. The way that we organise our lives and societies in social, economic, spiritual and environmental terms is very much part of our human experience.

Increasingly, the slow movement is encouraging people to consider ways to reduce the busy pace of life, and focus more deeply on these elements. Instead of simply employing time-saving devices to reduce our workload, slow life focuses on making daily tasks and encounters more meaningful, dedicating the necessary amount of time to each element to achieve a quality experience.

Finding the time to make connections
While the concept of Slow Life may seem to imply a relationship just with time, it is also about connections – connections to people, food, culture, place, community and so on – that allow us to experience life more deeply and with more pleasure. While many see the shift to a slow life as eschewing modern-day trappings, this connection to life can and should be facilitated by the technologies that allow us to mediate our daily relationships and interactions.

As we begin to understand the new paradigms of communication and time management in an internet age, we must devise and use technology to help us to connect, whether this connection is with other people, the place we live, our community or the food on our plate. If our mobile phone makes us available 24 hours a day, designers must explore ways to use this feature to improve quality communication with loved ones, and reduce the stress of being always “on”. If the internet allows us to interact with more people, technology must support ways to make these interactions as meaningful and worthwhile as more traditional, face-to-face methods.

Slow life ecosystem
Technology can help people not only in interacting with each other, but also in accessing products/services/information. This is especially true in this transition period when the focus of design is no longer a single product/service but an ecosystem. A well-designed, meaningful and fulfilling ecosystem will be naturally more satisfying and sustainable than one which requires people to continually seek new products and services to fulfil their needs. This does not limit diversity however – in terms of functions, culture and biology, diversity plays a strategic role in making an ecosystem and its elements flexible and self-renewable.

Diversity does not mean separation and fragmentation but, on the contrary, requires a constant dialogue between all the parts of the system and an active contribution of people through mutual cooperation. A good example of such a sustainable, diverse ecosystem is community-supported agriculture, where individuals support a local farm and in return receive local, high-quality foods. In this way, the risks and benefits of organic food production are shared, with people offering mutual cooperation, particularly in the delivery process. While this requires time and commitment from people, it offers back benefits of quality and lifestyle that are not achievable with “fast” methods.

Interfaces that offer more human, intuitive and natural elements; products that are sustainable and local; services that support and improve daily life for people in emerging markets; communication platforms that allow people to connect more intimately and slowly: “Slowing down” is not just about reducing the frenetic pace of life, it is about creating deeper, more meaningful relationships with the things that surround us, and taking the right amount of time to do things to a high quality level. In this context, there is a very real role for design to make the world a better, “slower” place. We can let our technology live in the fast lane, while we take it slow.