Sustainable Product Design

The demand for ‘green’ products is here, but the ability to deliver has not caught up. There’s going to be a lot of brand loyalty up for grabs.

Our consciousness has shifted in leaps and bounds – government, businesses and consumers. And now a growing demand for accountability and transparency is driving sustainability business practices, changing the way companies design products.

Sustainable product design is becoming mainstream. Just like all products must now be designed to be safe, we’re hurtling toward a world where it will be given, they must also be designed sustainably. Many companies are beginning to understand what they need to do, but they just don’t know what’s most important and where or how to begin.

This talk will present a perspective on sustainable product design and life cycle thinking, and then look at what some companies are doing and saying about ‘going green’.

Presenter(s)

Terry Swack, Founder & CEO of Clean Culture, is a 25-year veteran of the design and technology industries, a leading experience design strategist and environmental entrepreneur. Founded early in 2007, Clean Culture is a customer experience research and strategy consultancy focused on making clean tech and sustainable products more understandable and desirable. In 2005, Terry founded GreenBuildingBlocks.com and The Beam (now BlueEgg.com), a venture-backed Web 2.0 media company and marketplace for consumers, manufacturers, and service providers to power the demand for clean and green products and services.

In 2002, she became a founding team member of StillSecure, a network security software company. As VP Customer Experience, in a unique partnership with the VP Engineering, they managed the product teams to bring three successful products to market in less than two years. Terry's first company, TSDesign, was founded in 1985 as a graphic design firm and became an Internet strategy and product design firm in 1994. The development of the User Experience AuditSM in 1996, was the first offering of its kind and positioned the company as the industry leader in design analysis and user experience strategy. TSDesign was acquired in 1999 by Razorfish, a global digital services provider.

Terry is a popular speaker to business, technology and design audiences on designing effective digital business systems and the brand experience; and now on sustainabililty, business and culture.