Working in an oil company has certainly opened my eyes to the complexity of the energy infrastructure in the US and the world. I\u2019m sure that the majority of the people I come into contact with who have an opinion on energy consumption are unaware of just how complex it is to actually get oil out of the ground and into our cars.<\/p>\n
Last year I learned and started thinking about \u201cwicked\u201d problems and \u201cdesignerly\u201d thinking. My understanding is that there are some problems in the design world, in which the variables and interactions between problems are extremely complex and are called \u201cwicked\u201d problems. Sustainable energy consumption is most definitely a \u201cwicked\u201d problem.<\/p>\n
Lately, it seems I\u2019ve heard the term \u201csustainability\u201d being used quite a bit, with what I suspect is a regards to energy conservation and design of manufactured goods. Technically, these are two different things and, to be honest, the word \u201csustainable\u201d is used too often without any particular type of qualifier. Sustainability is like spirituality. There are all kinds of spiritual practices. We need to be clear about what we\u2019re talking about with regards to sustainability \u2013 e.g., sustainable agriculture, a sustainable approach to business development, and sustainable technology development.
\nChange to the way the world uses energy is not something that can happen within even 5 years. It\u2019s something that will require a deep commitment from several generations of political leaders and will require us all to put aside our motivations for power and economic wealth in favor of the future of the planet. I\u2019m not saying it\u2019s impossible, but I do believe that it\u2019s somewhat unrealistic to think that one industry or even one country will be able to make lasting changes to the energy infrastructure of the world alone.<\/p>\n
More info: Stirring Design Into Business<\/a> \u2013 article on design thinking in Business Week, 2007<\/p>\n \u201cOn addressing wicked problems\u2026\u201d<\/a> \u2013 from Interactions, 2008<\/p>\n \u201cResearch through design as a method for interaction design research in HCI<\/a>\u201d – requires ACM subscription for full-text<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Working in an oil company has certainly opened my eyes to the complexity of the energy infrastructure in the US and the world. I\u2019m sure that the majority of the people I come into contact with who have an opinion on energy consumption are unaware of just how complex it is to actually get oil … Continue reading “Wicked problems and the price of oil”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,3],"tags":[20,19,17,18],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alliwalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alliwalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alliwalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alliwalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alliwalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/alliwalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76,"href":"https:\/\/alliwalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions\/76"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alliwalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alliwalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alliwalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nCheck out this download for Firefox, \u201cOil Standard<\/a>\u201d \u2013 See the world in barrels of oil<\/p>\n