What’s going on here? For one, humans are good at using our big brains to know a lot. But it doesn’t always translate into doing a lot. Second, we are on sustainability overwhelm. Staying current is like drinking from a fire hose – everyday.  And that’s hard to swallow.  Third, amid this explosive growth in knowledge and information the very meaning of sustainability has been diluted to the point of meaning just about anything, and thus meaning nothing.

We all support motherhood, apple pie and sustainability. We know what the first two mean and we know how to create them. Not so for sustainability. Even the Brundtland Commission’s definition – development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs  – is difficult to apply to the here-and-now of one’s daily life. Paper or plastic?

Without an explicit shared agreement about the meaning of sustainability even the well-informed and well meaning among us cannot make much progress. Indeed, this lack of clarity enables avoiding the most neglected problem in sustainable design today: time. There are many projections about when catastrophic environmental events will take place (GHG, ice shelf melting, sea-level rise, water wars). It’s hard to know how accurate they are and it doesn’t matter. The plain fact is that we don’t have time to wait and find out if the projections are correct. What matters is taking smart bold steps now because here’s what we do know: the longer it takes to start meaningful healing of the earth, the less likely we are to have a viable future. In short, we don’t have time to waste.

Is there any hope? Yes, and its not false hope. Design – and design thinking – as a set of solution-seeking tools is spreading to every corner of the world. Indeed, we are all designers now and optimism is an onboard skill of every designer everywhere (sustainable or otherwise).  More importantly, healing the earth is igniting the largest movement of human energy in the history of the planet. It is a movement without precedent; amorphous, unorganized, instinctive, and blessedly uncontrollable. Literally billions of people are on the job. It is already the single largest public works project ever.

In the end, if we can get as good at creating sustainability as we are at creating motherhood and apple pie we could find ourselves being happy, well fed and living long, balanced lives. Cloth or disposable?

Two things about this quote stand out. First, it recognizes design as a useful process beyond object-making, and second, it was published in 1999 – ten years ago. It was also ten years ago that I started teaching a course at UC Berkeley’s architecture school called, “Beyond Buildings; New Sites for Designers.” The purpose was to help students understand what habits of mind they come to know (often tacitly) through the design studio sequence of classes. Then, we looked at how those skills can be used to make things other than buildings. Over time, that work has boiled down to a list of qualities – or habits of mind – that one could arguably title “How to Think Like a Designer.”

It would be foolhardy to claim this list is absolute or even complete. It has started many conversations and some debates. We are reproducing it here in that spirit. In the following weeks there will be a post about each of these ideas. But for now, here is the whole list. Your comments and insights are welcome and will, no doubt, find their way into future posts.

Design Thinking: Ten Habits of Mind

1. Focused Creativity
2. Generous Collaboration
3. Drawing and Thinking in Pictures
4. Comfort with Ambiguity
5. Non-linear Information Processing
6. Multiple Solutions
7. Learning by Doing
8. Communicate for Understanding
9. Charrette Culture: Shaped by constraints and bounded by time
10. Curiosity is better than Judgment

Clark Kellogg is a designer and partner at Collective Invention.

I teach art in a kindergarten class every other Friday. I am an “enrichment teacher.” What that means is that I am enriched by my time with these 20 young artists. In my case, the enrichment is even greater: the classroom teacher, Ms. Wood, is my daughter, a second-year public school teacher.

These young artists are four and five years old. They are filled with spirit, wonder and unbounded enthusiasm. Our art projects are “pedagogically sound” and track with the California State Standards for kindergarten art. The state standards aren’t magic, but the children are. By smashing those two ideas together Ms. Wood and I create lesson plans. On the Friday after the presidential election my goal was to have the students discover that colors and shapes have meaning and – as artists – they create that meaning.

I’ve always flown the American flag on holidays. It bugs me that the colors and shapes of the flag seem to stand for something political instead of something patriotic. But after the election there were dozens of American flags flying in my neighborhood. That’s when I decided our Friday art class would be about the colors, shapes and meaning of flags.

The young artists in my class come in many stripes. So, I brought stripes of all colors. I made star fields with 20 stars – because there are 20 star artists in the class. On Friday we talked about the flag, about Barack Obama, about colors and shapes and about glue. Then, they each choose some stars and some stripes and made their own version of an American flag. We called them the Obama Flags and, indeed, they are filled with meaning.

After we made our flags we talked about them. Alejandro said he wanted to grow up and be the president. So does Vanessa. Then Richie said he wants to grow up and be an artist. Ms. Wood and I realized that our job is to make sure all of them keep believing it.

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The Art Center Summit 2008

Systems, Cities, and Sustainable Mobility

The day after the first Sustainable Mobility conference in 2007, held by Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA, half a dozen people – mostly conference organizers – met and asked, “What did we see? What happened here? How did it go?” Conversations like this are usually called a debrief session, but this was different. It became about designing the future. One of the striking realizations from the first Summit was how many different disciplines were present. In many ways this was exciting; lots of concerned, committed people eager to change things up. But everyone didn’t speak the same language and certainly didn’t use the same work processes. Lot’s of shared inspiration, few shared tools.

The people in the “debrief” meeting were from different disciplines too. But we had one thing in common. We all knew how to create “never before seen” futures. Out of that meeting came an idea that went on to become the Mobility Vision Integration Process or mVIP. From that point on Lloyd Walker, Andy Ogden, Geoff Wardle and Dave Muyres developed the mVIP. It was introduced at this year’s Summit and was used during the break-out sessions in February, 2008 by small teams working to envision future mobility and transportation solutions.

The mVIP tool is a sophisticated deck of cards that lead groups through a scenario-based problem solving sequence using real world conditions and variables. It organizes groups, gathers knowledge and insight, frames in discussion, stimulates new ideas, and drives groups toward new solutions. Compared to most card games, this one is a sure bet.

Lloyd Walker introduced the mVIP tool to the Summit on Wednesday morning. Then people broke into small groups and tried it out. Based on feedback from that session, the development team made adjustments before the Thursday break-out session when the mVIP tool was again put to the test. They’d been working like that for a year; think/do, create and adjust, rapid prototyping. It was the same idea all the Summit speakers have been saying about sustainable mobility and the mVIP team was doing it.

At the end of the Summit, everyone left with an mVIP deck. It’s built to work with any group. It builds a common platform of language, process and outcomes. It allows people from wildly different disciplines to work together productively. During the Summit – with just two short sessions – it had already generated over a hundred new solution concepts for sustainable mobility dilemmas. And, it’s also beautifully designed. But then, aren’t all good tools?

The mVIP tool deck is available from the Art Center website.

Clark Kellogg is an architect and partner at Collective Invention where he focuses his work around design + communication.