David Roedl | Human-Computer Interaction Design » books http://www.davidroedl.com Sun, 28 Jun 2009 21:23:36 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.2 en hourly 1 Food and the design of an industrial system http://www.davidroedl.com/2007/11/11/food-and-the-design-of-an-industrial-system/ http://www.davidroedl.com/2007/11/11/food-and-the-design-of-an-industrial-system/#comments Sun, 11 Nov 2007 17:09:42 +0000 Dave http://www.davidroedl.com/2007/11/11/food-and-the-design-of-an-industrial-system/ I am currently reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan’s illuminating account of the industrial food system. The book provides an excellent explanation of where food comes from and the journey it travels before we eat it. What makes the book so powerful is that Pollan really connects all the dots; he manages to examine every piece of a long and complex chain connecting the farmer’s field to our dinner plates. This kind of analysis + synthesis is rare in our modern era as we tend to want to separate issues and deal with them in isolation. Pollan’s writing reveals the contradictory nature of such compartmentalized thinking:

While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river of cheap corn flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories in the supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest.

Reading the book from a design perspective, I’ve been thinking about all the individual decisions that have led us to the current system and the intentions behind them. My conclusion is that many creations of the food industry can be see as brilliant designs when viewed in context of an isolated problem. When you view those designs in the context of the wider system however, the appear in a different light.

For example, the invention of synthetic fertilizer would seem to be a brilliant solution to produce more food for humanity–until you consider the nitrogen flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, creating a dead zone the size of New Jersey. Or on the other end, the invention of the supersize soda would seem to be a brilliant way to give consumers want they want and increase profits both–until you consider that one in three children today will develop diabetes. The design of fast food drive-thrus and cup-holders in cars may seem like a user-centered approach to accommodate our contemporary lifestyle. But when you reflect on the fact that 19% of American meals are now eaten in cars, I think its good cause to question the broader cultural values and practices that result from our individual design decisions.

In a complex world, designing responsibly means thinking systemically, and taking time to reflect on the wide-reaching unintended consequences that might result from action. As I’ve been discussing with my classmates, HCI discourse tends to focus on only the impact technology has to an individual user or organization, giving little attention to the broader societal impact. (Eli Blevis’ paper on sustainable interaction design may be the first well-recognized work to deal with this.) I wonder, how can we encourage systemic, long-term reflection in the design process? Can their be methods, tools, and exercises to help us anticipate unintended consequences?

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