How many Arduinos do you own?

And here’s what the data looks like when visualized with the Circos Table Viewer:

Arduino Ownership

Unfortunately, I’m not able to label everything with complete titles using their online uploader, but looking at the data in this format makes so much sense to me. I can see at a glance that most respondents own the Diecimila or Duemilanove, with the NG and LilyPad coming in 3rd and 4th. Most respondents own one of a given type of Arduino, but if they own 5 or more of a given type, that type is most likely a Diecimila.

Update: SurveyMonkey closes surveys once they collect 100 responses, so I’ve created a second version. Please take the current version of the Arduino Lifespan survey if you haven’t chimed in regarding your Arduino usage habits yet.

Arduino Duemilanove

After some serious thought about my final project for If Products… I’ve decided to drop the modern heirlooms project. It’s just not well-defined enough to be successful during the short time span between now and the end of the semester. Instead, I’ll be performing a Life Cycle Assessment of the Arduino Duemilanove. From there, I’ll either compare it’s impact to other Arduino hardware or examine other materials from the basic kit we use for Introduction to Physical Computing. My hope is that by doing this research I’ll be able to identify where we have the greatest environmental impact while learning to prototype and, hopefully, where we might make some improvements. I’m using the Alpha version of Sustainable Minds, and so far it’s going really well. I’m looking forward to seeing what I learn. Right now I’m struggling with figuring out the hours of use for the Arduino; rather than applying the actual lifespan of the board I’m trying to gauge hours of use by an average ITP student.

Quilt by Harriet Powers, circa 1895

In If Products Could Speak… we’re starting to develop concepts for sustainable product designs. Right now we’re working out the goals of our projects. I’m developing a proposal for a for-profit social venture that has two main goals: it aims to decrease waste by providing affordable access to heirloom-quality items, and it aims to provide means for economic independence to women living in poverty in the United States. The financial goal of the project is to support its social and environmental mission through the sale and repair of durable goods.

Inspiration for this project comes from a variety of sources including, Christien Meindertsma’s FLOCKS, NetGranny, Ray & Charles Eames’ wonderful slide presentation and movie, “Goods,” and Saul Griffith’s recent discussions of heirloom electronics.

These influences  have led me to investigate what exactly we mean when we call something an heirloom–  Does it have to be something that has been passed down through generations, accruing sentimental value along the way? How can we create objects that have the durability and emotional resonance of heirlooms in the face of a very fickle consumer culture? While people value the durability of heirlooms, they often feel burdened by the thought of keeping that same object for a long time. Some of the most valued heirlooms are those that allow their owners to alter or contribute to them in some way. Treasured heirlooms are often transparent in the display of their production stories (i.e. a bench may be clearly hand carved, a teapot may have a stamp or signature on the bottom, a quilt may have stitches in different types of thread because of multiple repairs).

My hope is that by building the story of production and/or repair into affordable and durable objects, I can augment their value enough to make them desirable to people who might normally be tempted to buy something more disposable.

Sources

Hall, C. An heirloom menagerie of memories. The Christian Science Monitor. Boston, Mass.:Oct 21, 2008. p. 18.

Quintanilla, M. The Fabric of Their Lives. Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.:Aug 18, 2000. p. 1.

Wadler, J. The Tyranny of the Heirloom. New York Times. New York, N.Y.:Jun 26, 2008. p. F.1.

My friend, Sam, gets most of the things she needs out of the trash. She came over the other day to talk with me about her thoughts on green consumption.

As I threw together a batch of biscuits, Sam unpacked the enormous bag of groceries she had brought with her– all food she’d pulled from the dumpster behind a grocery store. She methodically brought out a package of eggs (thrown out a month in advance of their expiration date because one egg out of the dozen had cracked), pomegranate juice (a couple days past expiration), coffee (damaged package), and other items; I asked her how she would describe her role as a consumer.

Sam does not think of herself as “green” she tries to consume as few resources as possible. She is motivated instead by a frustration with what she sees as a general disrespect for the energy and labor that goes into creating food, clothing, and other stuff. She gets most of her clothes secondhand from thrift stores, free boxes, clothing swaps, and friends. Her furniture is mostly free from craigslist.

I asked Sam what kinds of conflicts she faces in trying to remove herself from the role of consumer; she had several to list. For instance, she shares a van with several friends who use it to complete their dumpster runs, pick up items from craigslist, and generally facilitate their access to free or used items. The van is diesel, and they are slowly pooling their money to convert it to biodiesel. She acknowledged the irony that they actually need to own a car and buy gas in order to facilitate their goal of minimal consumption. She also noted that there are some things that are very hard to find or impractical (read: gross) to get secondhand– notably socks, underwear, and most drugstore items like toothbrushes.

Sam talked about the way dumpster diving has affected her diet– she eats more processed and packaged foods, eggs, and dairy, less meat and fewer fresh vegetables. When she does decide to buy food, it is often a last minute decision to grab something from taco bell because she hasn’t had time to dumpster or cook, and taco bell meets her budget requirements. She says in cases like this she doesn’t thing too much about the environmental impacts of her actions, partially because she feels her options are limited in that moment, and partially because she feels like she is generally conscientious so her participation in consumption is minimal anyway.

Reading this article and discussing other LCAs in class (LCAs for hamburgers, jeans, salmon, cell phones…) spurred my interest in how this kind of research is actually compiled and how doable it is for small businesses that want to be mindful of their products’ impacts. My interest in the subject was strong enough that it wound up leaking over into an assignment for Design Expo.

For our assignment this week in Design Expo, Nancy asked our teams to develop three products for three populations. Madeline, Bruno, Bryan, and I spent several hours brainstorming and researching to come up with three products we could actually articulate within a 12-minute presentation. In the process, we had to leave a few ideas behind, some of which were very interesting to me.

One concept that we just didn’t have time to flesh out was an attempt to enable businesses to collaborate with other businesses in order to reduce waste. Right now there are several companies that are designing their products to be easily recycled into new products (e.g. Patagonia’s Common Threads garment recycling program). But what about companies whose products’ parts could be broken down into materials to be shared by other companies? Is there a reciprocal way to design products so that they can transform for use by other businesses at the end of their first life? Is there a way to get businesses to collaborate on second or third uses for their products? The other day in If Products Could Speak… we started talking about the small ways that consumers reduce waste by reusing objects (e.g. a toothbrush becomes a grout cleaner, a tshirt becomes a dust rag, egg cartons become seed trays)– Is there a way to help businesses do this on a larger scale?