Keywords

1 Introduction

Design, in the context of Sustainable Interaction Design (SID) is defined as “an act of choosing among or informing choices of future ways of being” (Blevis 2007). Blevis (2007) has proposed five principles for SID that includes:

  • Linking invention and disposal;

  • Promoting renewal and reuse;

  • Promoting quality and equality;

  • De-coupling ownership and identity; and

  • Using natural models and reflections.

These principles, even though inspired from Human Computer Interaction (HCI) domain, share commonalities with the sustainable design principles of any physical object.

The ultimate goal of a sustainable design (whether a physical object, a landscape, and a piece of jewellery or a digital interactive interface) is to assure that a meaningful and continuous relationship between user and the object is maintained and in doing so, the product (physical or virtual) is reusable, transformative and adaptive.

The present paper introduces the philosophy of SYSTEMATEKS with its methodology of Scalable Interactive Modular Simulation (SIMS) as an evolutionary design thinking paradigm that has been developed and practiced by the lead author on numerous successful and sustainable design projects for more than two decades. These physical products have a wide range of applications ranging from furniture, exhibitions and architectural structures that incorporate ethical, sustainable and universal values and design principles. The overarching aim of the present paper is to document the process followed by SIMS in a way that it can also be adapted by Sustainable Interaction Designers.

This paper introduces SIMS and reviews examples of physical objects that were developed in-line with SIMS. This review has led to development of sustainable design processing framework. Parallels with physical and digital design realms have been considered and their synthesis has led to development of a framework that can be adopted by both physical/industrial designers as well as digital/HCI designers.

The findings of this paper can be used as a guide to designers to ensure that the design process will lead to a sustainable and transfigured designs that could meet the wider range of user requirements and that also can shift application depending on the context of use. Furthermore, this process framework can be utilized as a method of evaluation to assess the sustainability of a user interface.

2 Background

Sharing is the predominant way of communicating and design is the way users, designers and developers share. It’s the interface between the inner and outer, turning sentiments into the embodiments in the world around us. Design as a method of making things allows us to share the world and understand the world in a harmonious and integrated way.

Communicating design objectives are driven from epochs of three economies (Es**-Andersen 1999), the economy of representation, the economy of abstraction and this new economy, which we refer to as the economy of transfiguration where the world is dematerialized and then rematerialized again through digital technologies. A significant challenge persists as often these digital transfigurations are approached and embodied through traditional design practices: a sequential method where designer envisions and materializes solutions, often without considering the sociological impact of their design and expects users (who are living in this new epoch) to welcome the design.

Current technological advancements have allowed designers to imagine a whole host of different worlds, but they are often more unsuccessful than not, because they don’t recognize all of the fundamental problems in the world. There is an urgent need for a systems shift. A new more equitable model based on sharing is required, where users have equal access to resources, means of production and can develop for themselves designs that help them realize their full potential. This new model encourages new understanding of the sense of ownership.

Traditional Human factors approaches define user engagement as the predominant way of enhancing user ownership and to consequently increase the system usability (O’Brien and Toms 2008). Co-design (Sanders and Stappers 2008), human centred design (Huang and Chiu 2016), usability testing and many similar disciplines are at their peak to support better end user engagement and potentially more efficient user interaction. Ideally this will lead into high revenues, more satisfied users and change in consumer culture. However, none provide thorough universality, as it appears that these approaches offer piecemeal solutions and lacks a holistic philosophy for design. Ownership implies property and goods, exchange and markets, accumulation and profits; sharing implies commons and a format for sharing the commons, it implies access and data pools, and an economy of usage and experience versus an economy of goods. The notion of economy of experience suggests the shift from physical products (which previously could be measured through numeracy and literacy) to sensory aspects of design. True sustainability supports this aspect of experience over possession and in doing so promises a new type of ownership, equity, and universality while providing at the same time individualism.

To achieve these goals there is a need for an ecology of innovation. Social innovation (e.g. impact of mobile devices in our daily lives) and technical innovation (e.g. Internet of Things, wearable products) are to be utilized and understood in order to develop an understanding of business innovation (e.g. apple, android) and perhaps political innovation (e.g. Uber). The essential question is how do we make the right kind of changes. Instead of looking at what is possible with the available technology, we need to understand what is desired and how technology can be utilized to allow us to achieve these desires.

The evolution of design is moving away from the designer who designs for everyone on everyone’s behalf. There is a need to design with people, where the design is no longer monopolized under the designer, but through the creation of systems allows the designer to empower people to create designs for themselves. This philosophy is called SYSTEMATEKS and to do that we need to create scalable, modular, simulations for interactions, called SIMS.

Within SIMS the process of design (although inspired from a top-down approach), explores the bottom-top components of knowing, sharing and believing and thus forms a balanced creation (i.e. a system of systems).

SIMS is inspired by systems thinking where design should be scalable, interactive, modular (or “modulable”) and optimal. The idea is generally rooted in the fact that in order to develop sustainable design, it is possible to reverse-engineer the design acceptability process by users. This mainly points to the concept of design and sharing, where users not only contribute to design (i.e. co-design), but also design has the capability to be accessed and used by different users (i.e. customizable) and hence allow for a wider range of users to share a particular design proposition. This is also applicable where user needs change over time. The resilience of a sustainable design makes it a very attractive characteristic for digital interface designers.

More specifically there is a paradigm shift, from ownership to sharing, towards the perception, utilization and application of new interactive interfaces (physical or digital) and to support this neo industrial perspective it is important to emphasize commonalities, access requirements and usage (applicability). Ultimately the future of design lies in creating systems that allow people to personalize and co-create designs for themselves (Ferrara 2015).

3 Case Studies

The current paper explores two successful exemplars of sustainable product designs that have stood the test of time. The lead author responsible for leading these design projects reported on the evolutionary and iterative process associated with the design and development of the selected interfaces and searched for patterns and characteristics that formed these designs. These case studies are briefly introduced in this section.

3.1 The Benchmark

The project was started with a single dot, then turned it into a line, moved it into the second plane, until it became a substantiated, three dimensional object. The objects were further joined with one another, replicated again and again until an archetype element or conceptual building block was arrived at. The archetype (Fig. 1) is like a piece of code, it’s something that can be interpreted and used in various ways.

Fig. 1.
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Archetype: everything begins somewhere and ends here

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The archetype was developed as a bench; this bench could be stacked to form a shelf. Turned laterally it becomes a wall. Rotate it and suddenly you have a chair. Array them you have a stairway. Arrange them and you have a bedframe. With other combinations, you can have a couch and table, a kitchen, even a desk.

Benchworld can be altered, re-used, re-purposed without waste. Different users create different meanings and contexts from the archetype. Put the archetype in a system, and then users can generate their own worlds. Users can re-interpret these benches in any shape and form imaginable (Fig. 2). A sustainable design that meets all of the criteria that Blevis (2007) envisioned.

Fig. 2.
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Populate

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The design was utilized in many ways and forms and for completely different applications than it was originally created for. The transfiguration of the design allowed for no waste and since it was interpretable in many forms, it was adaptable in different contexts and environments. It satisfied users and promoted individualism through its universality of adaptation.

The design process can be summarized in (Fig. 3) below. It is a truly iterative and holistic approach, where there is no sequence and all elements inform one another. The process can start from either of the components, but the important aspect is that all dimensions/factors (context, archetype, organization and integration) should be considered and explored.

Fig. 3.
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SIMS process

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Context refers to understanding the work domain; list the range of high level user requirements, breakdown of potential activities, system functions, system and product purposes and priorities. Archety** lets one search for fundamental building blocks and invites the designer to think about shape, format, material, modes and forms of interaction and in doing so develops an understanding of interaction constraints.

Archetypes are derived from understanding the origin, extending the elements and gathering momentum, expanding the features until they become tangible and substantial, until they become recognizable using the processes of conjunction, replication and then finally fixation until the archetype is finally developed.

The next two dimensions apply archetype and context. The first explores various forms of structuring and organization of the archetypes to achieve a transfigured design. Examples of such activities include: interpretation, rotation, offset, arrays, reset, reflection, agitation, administration, materialization, dimensioning and population.

Benchmark was designed at the time with a clear brief: there was a need to furnish a space, and hence the design albeit very flexible was also very structured and this structured format limited successful materialization and range of materialization. Users could transfigure the shape by changing the content of design. The next project aimed to manipulate the structure in a way that enhanced the flexibility and transfiguration of the design process itself.

3.2 The Open Lattice

The open lattice (Fig. 4) was the second project that was designed based on the idea of SIMS and lessons learned were incorporated. Open Lattice is made of two elements, a small cross and a frame. The lattice was inspired by the identity or lack of one implicit in the Canadian psyche, a place that would accept all and allow others to flow through it, to be changed and transformed over time.

Fig. 4.
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Open lattice

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This addressed one of the key challenges that was faced during the Benchmark project, where the content was somewhat fixed in Benchmark by the re-contextualization, in the Open Lattice (due to its empty frame) the archetype itself allowed for infinite content interpretation. The increased flexibility enabled a greater degree of possibilities and transfiguration without loosing any of the capabilities that Benchmark offered. Example of versatility of open lattice is shown in Fig. 5 below.

Fig. 5.
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Open lattice in architecture (The transportation EXPO 2012)

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The only concern that resulted from the increase in flexibility was a loss of structural simplicity and consequently some of the practicality of the design. Benchmark, due to being very structured was also very predictable and therefore more practical. The Open Lattice due to its openness (an empty frame), is structurally more fragile and seems to be weaker and therefore the manufacturing and assembly process needs to compensate for this limitation. However, once it’s used, it is more resilient even though it’s not as practical to re-arrange, it is more flexible and allows content to be introduced and swapped out over time. The risk is that it be used in so many different ways and not all of them can be perfectly predicted since the manufacturing requires some expert skills.

In comparison to Benchmark, Open Lattice has a user learning curve associated with it. The question becomes whether the values offered by this form are sufficient to encourage users to invest in learning (acquiring some level of manufacturing skills) and to further own the design.

4 SIMS Characteristics and Link to Digital Design

Looking at the two examples stated above, SIMS characteristics are identified as generative, transformable, supports multiple materials and forms and supports alternative designs. These characteristics should be explored and assessed during the design of digital interfaces to ensure that the elements have the potential to be transfigured so that a sustainable design is supported. It must be noted that these characteristics are mutually exclusive and depending on the context of design various aspects of these characteristics can be limited. However, the awareness of the extent of status of these characteristics within the digital interface allows designers to be cogniscient of the sustainability and ideally universality of their end digital products.

  1. 1.

    Generative. It can generate complex objects, environments, communications and organizationsby capturing sentiments that can be transfigured into embodiments.

  2. 2.

    Transformable. The holonic elements are able to transform across multi-dimensions interacting tomake larger compositions and can be manipulated by a co-creator.

  3. 3.

    Multiple materials. The elements can be made of multiple materials singularly on in combination withthe material governing the scale of the element.

  4. 4.

    Alternative design. The elements can be stretched dimensionally and selectively altered to response tovaries locals and the personal preferences of the co-creator.

  5. 5.

    Multiple forms. The combination of base elements generate multiple forms, serves various functions,combine types of matter to create multiple effects for an array of purposes and in doingso can continue to evolve both sentiment and embodiment.

Looking at these characteristics as well as the process framework suggested in Fig. 3, it is evident that there are many commonalities that can be adopted from SIMS into designing digital interfaces to ensure that they are flexible, universal, resilient and consequently sustainable.

Digital interfaces are fundamentally limited to their platforms of design; designers follow the context of use (often a very specified one) and derive detailed user requirements based on available guidelines (e.g. W3C) or as a result of specific user analysis (e.g. usability testing, Human Factors evaluation). They ensure that the forms and shapes are noted and feasible within the digital environment and are in-line with the system functions, purposes and priorities.

The two aspects missing in designing digital interfaces are those that contribute to its transfiguration. What we have called (organization and integration) in Fig. 3 are dimensions that mainly contribute to this transfiguration. Having these dimensions digital designers can explore potential transformation and possible generative aspects of their designs and finally pursue a true sustainable digital interface.

5 Discussion

SIMS refer to a process for a generative design comprised of holonic recombinant elements, guided by formal, dimensional, and material systems to create evolutionary products, scenarios, and communications that allow for collaborative creation in production and consumption.

SIMS can generate complex objects, environments, communications and organizations by digitally capturing sentiments that can be transfigured into embodiments. These processes consist of develo** archetypal elements or holons that have been generated by an originating concept, which can be materialized in the physical world. These holonic elements are able to transform across multiple dimensions, interacting to make larger compositions and can be manipulated by a co-creator.

The elements can be made of multiple materials, singularly or in combination with material governing the scale of the element. The elements can be stretched dimensionally and selectively altered to response to varied locales and the personal preferences of the co-creator. The combination of base elements generates multiple forms, serves varied functions, combines types of matter to create multiple effects for an array of purposes and in doing so can continue to evolve both sentiment and embodiment.

Historically, our literate means of communication started from symbols that were first pictographs and then alphabetic and most recently binary. The work of Alan Turing and his Turing Machine showed that how with less (0 and 1) we could produce the most (almost everything in the universe). This insight has inspired SYSTEMATEKS, where you arrive at the fundamental building block and allow it to develop the most diverse range of design possibilities. With Benchmark it was the dot and the line (which later formed a bench) and with Open Lattice it is the frame and the cross, like a 1 and 0, allowing you to build an infinite world from the way these interact with each other.

In order to develop true sustainability, it is important to promote resilient and flexible design, however this flexibility calls for user learning and the values of a design might not be very clear to the users in order to justify their investment in the learning required to have an impact on their lives.

6 Conclusion and Future Work

In the next phase of research and as a result of the fundamental goals of Systemateks it will be critical to merge the physical expression of SIMS with the digital tool set and interface that manages and controls it. The potential is for a digital interface that can manipulate physical reality and help turn that physical reality into an endlessly generative and responsive one to the evolutionary needs of people and at the same time to allow physical reality to inform and alter the digital tool set by collecting the intelligence of interactions in the living physical world. The result would be two generative universes in constant relation with the other, influencing and changing each other over time.