Sustainability is a hot topic, but is it accessible to everyone?
Cynthia Naughton connected with Green Garage of Detroit for her thesis about amplifying social innovation. Green Garage is a sustainable business incubator that abides by sustainable principles and makes those principles accessible to start ups. By building a website that showcases Green Garage’s practices and combining them with the best sustainability information, Cynthia was able to champion Green Garage’s message while informing others of their efforts. Cynthia built the site around three personas that ranged in sustainability experience. By building personas for each level of information, designers and individuals with different levels of experience are able to incorporate sustainability into their work.
Over three billion people in the world earn less than $2.50 a day. From this population, roughly 200 million are Indian farmers whom have inadequate transportation. Some of these farmers have access to a single bicycle to get around, while many others have only their feet. In order to make ends meet, farmers need additional, consistent income outside of farming which they can only achieve by getting improved transportation.
Spencer Chamberlin focused his thesis on this problem and after spending six weeks in India researching farmers’ needs first hand, he designed a revolutionary vehicle system.
Spencer observed how farmers spend hours each day hauling heavy loads of crops, tools, and water on underdeveloped roads. As a result he developed a self-constructed vehicle system designed to empower the farmer to move their products in a more efficient and timely manner. By doing so, the new vehicle has the ability to increase the income level of farmers above the international poverty line of $2.50 per day.
GPS and in-car navigation systems provide good directions, but costs are still high for manufacturers. Because the current system is too expensive for automakers, customers end up paying a higher price. One way to lower costs is to incorporate advertising into information searches.
Lei Zheng used his thesis to integrate advertising with in-vehicle infotainment systems. Lei partnered his IVI system with Google. As a brand, Google is the undisputed search engine king. Using Google as a brand partner, a new system emerges – Google Drive.
He also extensively studied the human-computer interaction aspect of GPS and navigation systems to understand how people’s searching behavior greatly informed the best use of advertising. Advertising offers automakers a way to keep manufacturing costs – and final costs – for customers at a reasonable price.
