Using Dick Cheney to Save The World

by Nathaniel Whittemore · 2009-02-26 13:27:00 UTC
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The Greener Gadget conference is set to kick off tomorrow in New York City, and one of the most exciting elements is the Design Competition. Except according to frog design Executive Creative Director Robert Fabricant, the close to 40% of the entries that are some form of personal energy meter are, frankly, unlikely to make a difference. Maybe the answer is Dick Cheney?

The idea behind "personal informatics" is that if people's consumption was more visible in real-time, people would consume less (or less harmfully). Fabricant shares an interest in this idea, but is skeptical of the approaches thus far developed:

As a designer, I can't help but be disappointed by the lack of imagination that is driving this emphasis on data displays and graphing tools.  Is a blinking meter really the best that we can come up with as a means of influence? For the sake of our future I hope not.

His alternative? Get creative! Think about how to display data with more impact. Hence, the mockup of the Dick Cheney energy meter:

From his post:

As you use more energy Cheney smiles, as you use less he frowns and fades away. Just imagine coming home to a house full of twinkling Cheneys if you leave the lights on or your laptop plugged in. This concept may seem purely  provocative - but that is precisely the point! Faces are powerful emotional triggers. We have a special area of our brains devoted specifically to the task of facial recognition. We can easily recognize changes in facial expression from across a room - a level of immediacy we will never achieve with a bar graph like this one:

This is just another example for me of the power (and importance) of design thinking when it comes to shifting behaviors. It's going to be a long, slow, and painful process to reshape and rethink the way we use resources, but there are levers that will make it more easy, more fun, or more compelling.

Smiling Dick Cheney is definitely more compelling, and that's worth thinking about.

For another great idea see The Onion: "Cheney Dunk Tank Raises $800 Billion for Nation."

Nathaniel Whittemore is the founder of Assetmap. Previously he was the founding director of the Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement.
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