Yves Behar: Sustainability will change design

Designer Yves Behar said that sustainability will change product design, but the challenge for companies is pursuing green in a way that changes the customer experience.

Speaking at the GigaOm Mobilize conference in San Francisco, Behar---best known for working with the likes of Herman Miller, Mini, Nike, Johnson and Johnson, One Laptop Per Child and Target---said sustainability has to be more than just telling consumers about being green.

"Sustainability is not about telling people that you're using 20 percent less water and 50 percent less electricity," said Behar, creative director of fuseproject. "As a consumer it doesn't matter to me."

The trick is to use sustainability to change processes "to deliver a truly 21st century experience," he said. The key is to allow consumers to participate in the sustainability effort. In other words, cut down the packaging and waste but give consumers some benefit.

Behar's comments were similar to the ones he made in February.

Other odds and ends:

• Focus groups are good for qualitative reactions from consumers. How do they react at first? Focus groups good for starting a dialogue, but Behar is against using them as a quantitative measure.
• Feature creep kills good design. Primary features and simplicity can be better than trying to cram everything into a tight package.
• Mass individualization is the future of design.
• To compete with Apple, competitors have to do more than just copy the company. "Competitors can't copy Apple's design process. Every business has a different personality and challenge. As long as follow deep, long, relationships companies can find right way to keep creatives deeply involved," he said.

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com