Bill McKibben on Rebranding “Sustainability”

Environment > Andrew Price on March 19, 2010 at 2:05 pm PDT

In a Q&A at Scientific American, Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, suggests we need a new word to define human progress:

Q: If “growth” should no longer be our mantra, then what should it be?

A: We need stability. We need systems that don’t rip apart. Durability needs to be our mantra. The term “sustainability” means essentially nothing to most people. “Maintenance” is not very flashy. “Maturity” would be the word we really want, but it’s been stolen by the AARP. So durability is good; durability is a virtue.

I totally agree with him that “growth”—as a word and a phenomenon—is not what we want. But I’m not sure there’s a problem with “sustainability” as a mantra. When I think of something as being sustainable—whether it’s a business, a product, or an ecosystem—I think that it exists in harmony with its surroundings and has a net energy cost, and a net resource cost, that’s getting closer to zero.

read more by following the link

Amidst a tough economy and a competitive business environment, we all face trying periods. Sometimes we are liable to get tired and let our minds wander. Rather than stay active, we might slip into a passive state. Unfortunately, small and growing businesses can’t afford to lose energy. Great decisions and thoughtful solutions require focus and full participation.

Editor’s Note: This is a republication of a very popular article Whitney Hess (@whitneyhess) originally wrote on her blog, Pleasure & Pain, back in November. We usually avoid duplicating popular content, but this is such valuable information that we wanted to make sure as many people saw it as possible.

Five months ago I wrote a post titled, “So you wanna be a user experience designer,” in which I gathered all of the resources in my UX arsenal: publications and blogs, books, local events, organizations, mailing lists, webinars, workshops, conferences, and schooling. My intent was to give aspiring user experience designers, or even those on the hunt for additional inspiration, a launching pad for getting started.

The response has been pretty remarkable—the link continues to be sent around the Twitterverse and referenced in the blogosphere. I’m really pleased that so many people have found it to be a useful aid in their exploration of User Experience.

In the post I promised that it would be the beginning of a series, and I’m happy to report that Step 2 is finally here: Guiding Principles.

“Guiding principles” are the broad philosophy or fundamental beliefs that steer an organization, team or individual’s decision making, irrespective of the project goals, constraints, or resources.

I have collected a set of guiding principles for user experience designers, to encourage behaviors that I believe are necessary to being a successful practitioner, as well as a set of guiding principles for experience design—which I think anyone who touches a product used by humans should strive to follow. Read more

In 1983 Rudy VanderLans, Zuzana Licko, Marc Susan, and Menno Meyjes began Emigre, a magazine about “…the global artist who juggles cultures, travels between them, and who is fluent in the cultural symbols of the world. An émigré.”[1] Early issues meandered through essays, interviews, fiction and poetry. VanderLans directed wild layouts that ignored the so-called rules instilled by modernist design pedagogues. After four issues Susan and Meyjes had left the magazine, allowing VanderLans and Licko to steer Emigre toward being a design magazine that explored experimental and usually computer-driven work like their own.