Embodying Design for People, Culture and Earth
In order to create a new concept of technology that is versatile and useful, we decided to take a look at the blueprints for an eco-village. A valuable practice that addresses significant problems when it comes to poorly created technology is thoughtful design. In order to combine a design for bodies that emphasizes the physical and mental health of individuals, a design for a culture that embraces family, community, and social health, and a design for Earth that embodies economy, ecology, resilience, and regeneration, we created a large piece of technology (the eco-ville) that is inclusive to a wide range of needs.
Linked here is a Ted Talk that correctly creates an aesthetically realistic image of how our eco-village would similarly be designed.
What is an eco-village?
“An eco-village is an intentional community with the goal of becoming more socially, culturally, economically, and/or ecologically sustainable. An ecovillage strives to produce the least possible negative impact on the natural environment through intentional physical design and resident behavior choices”.
Why is incorporating physical health an issue in design today?
Companies all around the world are “forgetting” to incorporate users’ needs and health. Two large aspects of health that are left out of interactive design are physical and mental health. In our day and age, there is an ongoing argument that the rapid rate of technology will affect our minds. Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project correctly identified this issue when surveying “technology experts and stakeholders” The experts agree
“that technology may make us impatient, subject to frequent distraction, and desperate for constant entertainment”. An intelligent technology design would consider this ongoing issue and plan accordingly.
Another some 1,150 experts responded in a non-scientific canvassing. Some 32% of the respondents predict that individuals’ well-being will be more harmed than helped and 21% predict there will not be much change in people’s well-being from the way it is now.”
When taken into consideration, the current “now” isn’t designed to focus on user needs. Within our eco-village we hope to truly center our eco-villagers needs and mental/physical health that is affected through technology into the center of our design.
How can we address mental health in a newly generated design?
A mental-health condition manifests itself in workplace absenteeism, presenteeism, and loss of productivity. Many ecovillages are able to deal openly with mental illness problems that are not acknowledged in the larger society. Eco-villagers are successfully able to create personal and meaningful relationships within the workplace and tight nit community.
Practices to address significant issues
Social forum- Within an ecovillage, social forum exhist in the form of a sustainable society that acts as deeper connection and recognized well-being between community members.
Deep listening and having a non-judgmental attitude- encourage mindfulness and allow ecovillages to create a high level of wellbeing. This high level eases members of the community into preventing negative impact on members as a whole.
More Tools and Smart Design Practices
Providing a space for entertainment like our large town office that is open to hosting, live music, community events like games, holiday parties, meetings to cover what is and isn’t working in the community etc…
Providing a healthy work environment that encourages the eco-villagers to intently have a purpose increases the amount of positive mental health.
“Latest research finds up to eight hours of paid work a week significantly boosts mental health and life satisfaction”. By providing spaces like a greenhouses, daycares, kitchens etc.. a sense of work ethic and "job security" is created.
How can we address physical health in a newly generated design?
By providing a place for physical activity such as a power generating gym, a large agricultural presence to facilitate farming, a large barn with animals, a mailbox that is within walking distance as well as an overall spread out a setup that encourages people to walk rather than drive in order to complete everyday tasks correctly allows for a healthier lifestyle within this design.
Incorporating a place such as a health clinic to discuss healthy practices and discuss any physical injuries or issues correctly encourages a lively and active lifestyle.
Significant Problems With Incorparting Community, Family, Social Health into Design
One major design issue that seperates family and community rather than bringing it together is the lack of diversity that is included when designing new technology. For example-
“ a major social media platform's algorithm cropped photos to mainly display lighter-skinned people; a major tech company's contractors targeted homeless people of color to develop facial recognition technology; and another major tech company allowed landlords and real estate brokers advertising on their platform to exclude people based on their race, family status, or disabilities.”
In our eco-village design, we hope to provide a safe and healthy environment for a diverse group of people. That includes all ethnicities and races, as well as anyone with disabilities or special conditions.
Community living can help people in a variety of different ways. According to NAMI.org the 3 primary issues that communal living solves are, belonging, purpose, and support. They define belonging as “ A true sense of belonging includes the ability for you to feel you are a part of the community as your true self,” true purpose as “ helping others, helps give meaning to life” and proper support as “Knowing there are people who support you can help you feel cared for and safe and can benefit your outlook on life.” The goal of our community is to create a space where people can come together and really connect with each other and that is achieved through our vision.
Design For Culture
Family
Daycare- In our design, eco-villagers will have a designated space for infants and children of all ages to be taken care of. The space will encourage other eco-villages who work to learn important life skills while providing a solution to child-care within the community.
Large kitchen- Within our eco-village we plan to provide a large kitchen that accommodates communal baking. This encourages a family-like environment that not only saves energy and space by combining something like single kitchens in one large shared common area, but also provides
More Tools and Smart Design Practices
Community
Four healthy design practices to incorporate into communal conversations are setting clear limits to community growth, spreading and applying equal amounts of accountability among each eco-villager, allowing for diversity within the village as well as setting aside specific times for community feedback.
One of the main flaws I see among most technology is that again, it's focused on something other than the user. The user’s needs and health should come first. When designing technology, we want to connect with the community. We plan to ask the eco-villagers what they need and have them actively provide the feedback needed in order to reform the eco-village so it becomes the healthiest and most successful form it can be over time.
Healthy tools to ensure the community is intergraded into this design include.....
The idea of a weekly food market/food common that allows members of the community to trade or sell locally sourced food from the eco-village.
By enforcing surveillance within the common areas, community members feel safe and further allow trust between eco-villagers. This will create a healthy environment that eventually will provide for each individuals' overall well-being.
Community engagement is supposed to be fun and exciting. Our eco-village will utilize golf carts in order to get from one extended building to another. They can also be used to transport goods such as crops from the garden to the kitchen. Allowing a more eco-friendly solution to transportation as opposed to cars can further help create a sense of collaboratory community.
Social Health
Social health "Social health is more than just the prevention of mental illness and social problems. Being socially healthy means increased degree of happiness including sense of belonging and concern for others."
One tool we aimed to imply within our eco-village includes a skills evaluation "test". By test, we intend for there to be no pressure. This "test" is more of an organized tactic to place people in “jobs” where they are the best fit. For example, if one eco-villager really enjoys taking care of plants and seems to be good at it, it would be best for the villager to denote time inside the greenhouse or garden. As Confucius says “Choose a job you love and you'll never have to work a day in your life”. By implying this tool we hope to ensure the villagers are happier with their work which will increase their overall sense of belonging and well-being.
Design For Earth
Our ecovillage needs to accommodate not only us but the Earth. We need to keep in mind these four principles, Economy, Ecology, Resilience, and Regeneration.
First, we want our economy not to rule the community. Too many nations are profit-forward, and it leads to unhappy lifestyles and dissatisfied citizens, so we are creating our economy with the barter system in mind. By eliminating subjective value, we will no longer have a wage gap. Certain people deem valuable will be different from others, so there will be less hate for those perceived to have “more.”
Second, we must focus on renewable energy. We need our village to be 100% clean powered to live correctly with the Earth and reduce our carbon footprint.
Third, we will instill an ideology of “we’re all in this together,” this will bolster the sense of community and make people realize that it is up to us to make this work.
And fourth, our farms will use sustainable agriculture practices, such as integrating crops and livestock. These practices will allow better fertilization, reduce land use, and embrace plant diversity (for more info on sustainable agriculture, see UCSUSA.org); we will not segregate crops based on color or misshapenness. If it is healthy, it will be eaten.
Design For Earth
The biggest problems we want to solve are the wage gap and our environmental impact. The Federal Reserve put out data that states, “The wealthiest 1% of Americans controlled about $41.52 trillion in the first quarter. Yet the bottom 50% of Americans only controlled about $2.62 trillion collectively, which is roughly 16 times less than those in the top 1%. With the 1% controlling 16 times more money than most Americans, there is something deeply troubling about that. To try and eliminate this kind of gap from occurring, we opted to enact a barter system.
Barter systems are often thought of like goods for goods, but they can also be:
Goods for time
Time for time
Time for services
And a random combination of all
A great example of successful bartering comes from BBC.com about time bartering. “‘Time banking,’ which started in Japan in the 1970s and in the US in 1992, is seeing a jump in popularity. Members of a time bank spend one hour helping another member and receive one hour of help in return. People offer and receive things such as piano lessons, painting services, or language teaching.” Our hope in the barter system is that it helps remove the wage disparity and cultivate an environment where people have to get to know each other.
We need to live a sustainable life; that is the whole purpose of this venture. If we do not start taking care of the planet, it will no longer be around. Our situation will not prevent climate change, but we can do our part. Our power grid will be 100% renewable energy in solar panels and wind turbines. The bicycles we mentioned above will power more minor items to a smaller extent. We all must do our part for the village and the environment.
Media (images, charts, graphs, infographics, photos) video, podcasts, etc) to illustrate and support design problems and design suggestions
Why is solar energy so vital? It helps reduce greenhouse gasses and carbon emissions, but the best part about it is that it can reduce global warming if done on a large scale. According to projectsolaruk, "With widespread panels absorbing the solar radiation that would otherwise have been absorbed into the ground (which contributes to Earth's high temperatures), we'd experience global cooling." Solar panels provide renewable energy and a pathway to mitigate global warming. It's a win-win.
The barter system will help reduce unhappiness because it's simple and environmentally friendly. Byjus.com describes the advantages of barter as, "there are no complexities involved unlike monetary system, natural resources will not be overexploited, power will not be concentrated in some circles, there won't be problems of balance of payments crisis." Humans aren't meant to have wealth, we can get by through just surviving together, and the barter system allows us to focus on people more than profits.
Works Cited
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“Could Bartering Become the New Buying in a Changed World?” BBC Worklife, BBC, https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200821-the-rise-of-bartering-in-a-changed-world.
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“'The Goal Is to Automate Us': Welcome to the Age of Surveillance Capitalism.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 20 Jan. 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/20/shoshana-zuboff-age-of-surveillance-capitalism-google-facebook.
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Hall, Robert. “The Ecovillage Experience as an Evidence Base for National Wellbeing Strategies.” Intellectual Economics, No Longer Published by Elsevier, 16 Sept. 2015, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1822801115000028.
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