Recently in Ethics Category

d



For me, one of the interesting things about design has always been how changing seemingly small items can have amazingly large results.

And I'm not talking about a 24% rise in sales because someone decided to make the logo bigger.

More about huge cost savings (and environmental savings) when there's a Designer clever enough to rethink a product's packaging.

Over at the GreenerComputing blog, Claudia Girrbach visited with several members of Cisco's supply chain team, who are working on an environmentally sound packaging program. In the pilot program alone, which only focuses on a few of their high volume products, promises to yield $24 million in annual savings.

She goes on to say, "...by focusing on packaging material content, volume and transport container efficiency, the company will save on materials and transportation costs as well."

When you're talking numbers like that, you can pretty much guarantee that your senior management might listen up, even if you're "just" a Designer working down in Creative.

In the article, Claudia outlines her three best practices for a product's packaging diet: Eliminate, Right Size, and Sustain.

Cisco was kind enough to provide a PDF outlining their process.

It makes me proud to own a Cisco phone, I tell you!


(Photo by Steve Keys)

  

When it comes to Texting for Relief, the incredible figures the Red Cross is posting for its Haiti relief effort show that a lot of people are on board with this simple, easy-to-do donation process.

But at the same time, many of those same folks don't necessarily trust that their money is going where it should.

Forrester Research asked people if they thought the money donated through texting actually went where it was supposed to and only "16% of 134 respondents said 'yes'. Thirty-two percent said 'no,' and 51% just weren't sure."

Yikes!

Details over at MoBlog.


As a side note, the Charity Navigator site is a great place to make sure your dollar is going where it does the most good.


(Photo by eron_gpsfs)

Would you change your shopping habits to make the world a better place?

According to new findings from Edelman Worldwide's "goodpurpose Consumer Study" (as reported in Mediapost.com), of the 6,000 people surveyed in 10 countries, "61% say they have purchased a brand that supports a good cause even when it wasn't the cheapest option, and 67% said they would switch brands if another brand of similar quality supported a cause they were interested in."

Is this officially called buy and save?

Full story at Mediapost.com.


(photo by MadelineFox)

You know, it seems like we're seeing more and more design-related conferences like the "A Better World by Design" one being held in Providence, Rhode Island this weekend.

Here's the pitch from their site: "The conference will focus heavily on design, integrative thinking, and social and environmental change, to excite professionals and students alike on the potential of ideas and collaboration across disciplines."

I have to say, I love these - and the fact that a group of students from RISD and Brown are putting this together makes it all the more lovable.

And the speaker list is fairly impressive:
* Jan Chipchase, principal engineer at the Nokia Research Center
* Michael Braungart, founder and partner of McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry and the Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency
* William Drenttel, founder of Winterhouse Studio and Editor of Design Observer
* Stuart Harshbarger, program manager and system integrator for Johns Hopkins University's Revolutionizing Prosthetics Program
* Kigge Hvid, founder and CEO of INDEX
* Emeka Okafor, creator of TED Africa and founder of Maker Faire Africa

Plus panels on Appropriate Technology, Affordable Housing,
The Integration of Design and Business, and Emerging Markets.

If you're in the area, I encourage you to check it out and give us feedback on the event.

All the details are here.


(photo by Robert S. Donovan. Trophy design by Aran Mun.)

Adam Lowry, co-founder of Method, has been posting over at the eco blog Treehugger about design and its implications of where the world is heading.

In his latest entry he posits, "Design has never been just the domain of the creative. And with this perspective, design -- or, rather, 'design redefined' -- becomes the responsibility of all who want to create positive change."

His post is an interesting read for all Designers.

And since Adam says everyone's a Designer, I guess we could infer that it's a good read for everyone.


(photo by glenn.batuyong)

A random Google search brought me to this Wired article, "The See-Through CEO," from March 2007 (remember 2007?). Though it seems kind of old-hat now, the thrust of the article (is it strange to use "thrust" metaphorically in a corporate blog?) is summed up thusly, "Secrecy is dying. It's probably already dead." That is, trying to be stealthy about the real workings of your business is pointless because, the truth will out (on the interwebs).

The author suggests that the most adequate response to inescapable visibility is transparency:

All of which explains why the cult of transparency has so many high tech converts these days. Transparency is a judo move. Your customers are going to poke around in your business anyway, and your workers are going to blab about internal info - so why not make it work for you by turning everyone into a partner in the process and inviting them to do so?

This kind of got me thinking about transparency at Aquent and in our business more generally. For example, the way our business works is that we pay the talent less than the client pays us (if you didn't know that already, I'm sorry to just spring it on you). We generate the bill rate (what we charge our client) by adding a percentage of the pay rate (what the talent gets) to the pay rate. Now, depending on a number of factors, that percentage can range from 45% to 100%. The money we make comes from that split times the number of hours worked.

I'm assuming that, if you have worked through us or other staffing/temp agencies, you are aware of this set-up. My question is: How frequently have you been told specifically what we (or anyone) is charging the client?

My belief is that we should share this info for the same reason that companies should be transparent: People will find out anyway. (I know I did when I temped through MacTemps.)

What do you think?

It's always dangerous to advertise something as "humorous" when it's quite possible that no one finds it funny. Here goes anyway.

Two years ago, there was a modicum of hub-bub about the "no A-hole rule" and a lot of discussion around hiring people that you'll actually enjoy working with as well as working productively with people who are "jerks."

Two years later I'm browsing the Mind Hacks blog and come across a post entitled, "Making Sense of Bastards." Intrigued, I follow a link to this paper, "You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations."

I haven't read the paper yet but I love the euphemism-laden abstract: "Our patience with forming interpretations and reinterpretations of others' behavior is not unlimited. The time comes when we lose interest in trying to understand, and conclude that another person is behaving in a way that is simply unacceptable [read: "decide someone is a bastard" - Matt]. This paper explores the narratives that go with immoderate indignation [i.e., "concluding someone is a bastard"], even for those best versed in the idea that they should attempt to understand the perspective of the other...."

I couldn't have said it better, or nicer, myself. Anyway, check it out. Who knows, maybe it will help you avoid "immoderate indignation" when "concluding" that certain relatives "behave unacceptably" this weekend?

Have a happy holiday!

Cory Doctorow recently published an essay, "Why I Copyfight." His basic point is that sharing knowledge, stories, music, etc. is an essential part of human culture (in this, his arguments echo those of Jonathan Lethem), but that internet technology has made such sharing and copying virtually indistinguishable, and therewith criminalized an ubiquitous and, to a certain degree, essential human behavior. The danger now is, if you enforce the laws, and eliminate copying, then you effectively abolish human culture. (I may be exaggerating the point a little here.)

Reasonable copyright law, he goes on to say, must make a distinction between "good" copying, which is just human, and "bad" copying, which is stealing. Doctorow demonstrates that the former is actually penalized more harshly than the latter by pointing out that the penalties for bootlegging DVDs and hawking them on the street are actually lower than the penalties for making a movie viewable for free on the web.That just doesn't seem right, right?

As writers and designers and otherwise creators of content, do you make this same distinction between copying as just a part of healthy, human cultural exchange and copying as unmitigated rip-off? What about that old truism: Poor artists borrow, great artists steal?

T'other day Amber over at Altitude wrote a post called, "5 Things Good Agencies Do (And one they don't)." She is talking here about any kind of agency - PR, Web, Marketing, etc. - but it struck me that the behaviors/attitudes she describes would also distinguish good consulting firms from bad and even represent standards to which any company could hold their vendors (or to which customers could hold a company). For example, the "good" care about you and your business, can readily point to the results of their work, and, interestingly enough, will tell you when they can't help you.

How would your organization, or you personally, fare if held to these standards?

In other words, how "good" are you?

Image Courtesy of TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³.

About twenty years ago, after I had stopped out of grad school, quit my job at SuperShuttle, and was so broke that I made all my family members collages as Christmas presents, my father sat me down for a fireside chat. The gist was: Dude, you got to get it together, figure out what you want to do with your life, and just do it. The problem was, as he put it, "You don't seem to do anything."

Was I a lost soul at that point? I suppose I was. My band (Spanking Machine) wasn't going anywhere, I was unemployed, and, frankly, very depressed. When I returned to San Francisco from my demoralizing holiday in Los Angeles, I got a temp job (thus launching my current career, oddly enough) and wrote my father a letter.

Aside from the fact that the main point of the letter was to ask him for money so I could fix my car (yes, I did that), I also took issue with his criticism of my do-nothing lifestyle. On the one hand, as I pointed out, I did actually do stuff like write poetry and surrealized beatnik musings, play music, and hang out with my friends. I also reminded him that there were quite a few cultural and spiritual traditions that emphasized doing nothing over doing something as the true goal of life and enlightenment and that I was not unsympathetic to their views. Moreover, the idea that our lives and the world at large were there as a resource for us to do something with was symptomatic of our metaphysical age, as Martin Heidegger explained in his essay concerning the question of technology.

Here's where it gets deep (so watch out). To this very day I bristle at the existential imperative, whether in secular or religious garb, that says you have to do something with your life. There are so many things that are wrong-headed about this notion that I don't know where to start (or finish), so I'll just highlight two logical inconsistencies that dog this everyday ethical commonplace.