Climify

Episode 11 – Rachel Cifarelli Rachel Cifarelli joins Eric to share her story of finding sustainable design after leaving school, why she wished her teachers taught her the topic, and explains why she started the New Wave research project to help design students take the lead on climate action when educators didn't. Listen to this episode on: Spotify, Apple, Google and other places you get your podcastsAbout our guestRachel CifarelliRachel is a freelance graphic designer and researcher using her skills to support and uplift those who are making the world a more sustainable place.She received her B.A. in communication design from Elon University, where she realized she was actually good at designing content more extensive than birthday cards. Rachel also always knew she was an environmentalist, but it took her a long time to figure out how to blend these two passions of design and sustainability together. It wasn't until she discovered Climate Designers that she saw a whole new career path unfold in front of her, one where she could make a living doing something she loves. Today Rachel works with environmentally-minded organizations and businesses on projects like branding, fact sheets, promotional materials, and digital assets. Some of her clients include Sierra Club, Bedford 2030, and Brooklyn Organic Kitchen.Rachel is also a researcher working on New Wave, a joint project with Climate Designers. What originally started as a class project during undergrad has grown into a sponsored research project that has garnered lots of support and participation. The goal of this research is to inform design educators how student designers understand sustainability in the design field and how they might like to see sustainability incorporated into their design curriculum. She wants to be part of establishing the climate design education in undergraduate universities that she never got from her own.Outside of work, Rachel enjoys reading, taking walks around her neighborhood, and visiting the best local eateries and breweries in her town.On the webrachelcifarelli.comlinkedin.com/in/rachelcifarelliinstagram.com/rachelcifarelliTikTok: rachelcifarelliclimatedesigners.org/edu/newwaveinstagram.com/theprojectnewwaveTikTok: theprojectnewwaveMusic in this episodeTheme music by Casual Motive   Climate Design AssignmentsAt the end of each episode, we ask our guests what their ideal climate design project would be. They have four weeks with a class full of design students. We translated their response into a project brief that you can use for your class. Get Assignments   Follow Climify on IG   « Back to episodes

Episode 10 – Ruth McElroy Amundsen & Alden Cleanthes Ruth McElroy Amundsen and Alden Cleanthes from Norfolk Solar join Eric to go in-depth on how our way of life and how we design is truly broken. They argue that we need to rethink every system in our modern lives to stave off the worst of climate change and that harnessing the vast power of the sun is actually an easier-than-you-think way to power almost everything. Listen to this episode on: Spotify, Apple, Google and other places you get your podcastsAbout our guestAlden CleanthesAlden received a bachelor's degree in Biology from Old Dominion University. She served as a publicly appointed official in the city of Chesapeake for the last decade on multiple environmental committees. She was a member of the Virginia Environmental Justice Collaborative, which worked hard to have the Governor create the Virginia Environmental Justice Advisory Council. She has worked as an independent consultant for environmental policy and renewable energy at the state and federal level- directly advocating with multiple agencies, dozens of Senators, Congressmen, and the White House Council on Environmental Quality. She also runs an award-winning design and animation studio with her husband. She is the Co-Founder of Norfolk Solar, LLC.Ruth McElroy Amundsen Ruth is a NASA Thermal Engineer who led a group of parents in installing 700 kW of solar on Norfolk Academy, $1M in solar panels (largest school solar array in Hampton Roads). She has given many presentations on financing solar, has made several zero-interest loans for installing solar, including some through Virginia Community Capital, and has presented to many other non-profits to show them the way they can install solar at no cost to the institution.She recently started a Qualified Opportunity Zone Fund, Norfolk Solar QOZ Fund for installing solar on businesses and non-profits in low-income neighborhoods at no cost. This fund used her family money to install solar at no cost in low-income neighborhoods, and will also train and employ residents of those neighborhoods on the installation jobs.She started a small woman-owned business with Alden Cleanthes, Norfolk Solar LLC, to help other investors deploy solar in Hampton Roads.On the webnorfolksolar.orgMusic in this episodeMusic in this episode is by The Ocean in Films performing "Nothing To Repeat" from their album "Cruel Vestige".Theme music by Casual Motive   Climate Design AssignmentsAt the end of each episode, we ask our guests what their ideal climate design project would be. They have four weeks with a class full of design students. We translated their response into a project brief that you can use for your class. Get Assignments   Follow Climify on IG   « Back to episodes

Episode 9 – Raz Godelnik Raz Godelnik joins Eric to share his years of research and teaching sustainable design and ethical business models. He discusses what went into writing his new book “Rethinking Corporate Sustainability in the Era of Climate Crisis - A Strategic Design Approach” and why it’s so important now that design and business alike work together to write a new story about sustainability. Listen to this episode on: Spotify, Apple, Google and other places you get your podcastsAbout our guestRaz is an Assistant Professor of Strategic Design and Management at Parsons School of Design - The New School in New York, where he explores sustainable business models and how companies can respond effectively to the climate crisis. Currently, he serves as an Associate Director of the BBA Strategic Design & Management program. His new book “Rethinking Corporate Sustainability in the Era of Climate Crisis - A Strategic Design Approach” has just been published by Palgrave Macmillan. Raz teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on business models, leadership, sustainability, sustainable systems, and strategic design, and his research explores connections between innovation, sustainability, business, and design. He explores how to make sustainable business models more effective in an entrepreneurial environment and works on developing a new approach to addressing the critical sustainability challenges we face (awakened sustainability). Raz also writes regularly about issues related to sustainable business, climate change, and strategic design. Last but not least, Raz is the co-founder of two green startups (Hemper Jeans and Eco-Libris).On the webLinkedIn Twitter Sandbox Zero University webpageMusic in this episodeThe musical Guest is Tim Lillis performing his new song "Bells".Theme music by Casual Motive   Climate Design AssignmentsAt the end of each episode, we ask our guests what their ideal climate design project would be. They have four weeks with a class full of design students. We translated their response into a project brief that you can use for your class. Get Assignments   Follow Climify on IG   « Back to episodes

Episode 8 – AIGA DEC Shifted Panel Former Climify guests Katie Patrick and Lisa Zimmermann rejoin Eric for a panel discussion on this special episode recorded at the 2021 AIGA Design Educators Community ShiftED Conference. Each tackles tough questions about how and why all designers must address climate change in their work teaching in the classroom and creating in the workplace. Listen to this episode on: Spotify, Apple, Google and other places you get your podcastsAbout our guestKatie Patrick is an Australian American environmental engineer, designer, and author of How to Save the World, How to Make Changing the World the Greatest Game We've Ever Played. And host to the podcast, How to Save the World, where she investigates academic research in environmental psychology.She specializes in what she calls Fitbit for the Planet Design, which means applying data-driven gamification and behavior change techniques to environmental problems. Katie has worked on environmental gamification projects with NASA, JPL, Stanford University, UNEP, Google, the University of California, Magic Leap, and the Institute for the Future.Katie is the founder of urbancanopy.io, a map-based application that uses satellite imaging of urban heat islands and vegetation cover to encourage urban greening and cooling initiatives. She's also the co-founder of Energy Lollipop, a Chrome extension - an outdoor screen project that shows the electric grid's CO2 emissions in real-time.Lisa Zimmermann is a German-Irish design researcher and educator specializing in "climifying" the profession of Communication Design.While her passion for advertising, copywriting and design persists until today, she realized early on that she couldn't work for traditional ad agencies for moral reservations towards working for clients she doesn't consider ethically sound.Her initial research into Sustainable Graphic Design Practice in Ireland, undergone during an M.A. in Design Practice led her to specialize in this niche area of Graphic/Communication Design. According to her findings, Sustainable Graphic Design can only be achieved through close collaboration of the design, print, paper technology, and IT sectors, and she made an effort to work in all four of them, to gain a deeper understanding of their point of view and pain points. An M.Sc. in Environmental Sciences at Trinity College Dublin led her to undergo research in environmentally friendly paper sizing options – paper sizing is the process of coating paper with starch and chemical ingredients to make it possible to print on it.Lisa currently lectures a broad range of students in the Design faculty of Griffith College in Dublin, Ireland in the areas of web design, typography, communication design, and digital tools/software skills. But rather than just integrating sustainability principles in the existing modules she teaches, she is also developing a "Certificate in Sustainable Communication Design" program aimed at professionals.Lisa is passionate about her dog Milo, gardening, learning, cold-water-swimming, and her new podcast "Conscious Communication Design" (available on iTunes, Spotify, etc). She also hosts workshops on Digital Environmentalism and wants to expand her network, so please get in touch!On the webWatch the entire AIGA DEC Panel hereeducators.aiga.orgMusic in this episodeTheme music by Casual Motive   Climate Design AssignmentsAt the end of each episode, we ask our guests what their ideal climate design project would be. They have four weeks with a class full of design students. We translated their response into a project brief that you can use for your class. Get Assignments   Follow Climify on IG   « Back to episodes

Episode 7 – Akilah Stewart Akilah Stewart joins Eric to discuss how sustainability is all about people and why it must be inclusive and acknowledge indigenous peoples' wisdom who gifted us this knowledge to live in harmony with the planet. Akilah also shares the work of her company FATRA which is already redirecting plastic and textile waste streams into a more closed-loop system creating products that educate, alleviate, and inspire. Listen to this episode on: Spotify, Apple, Google and other places you get your podcastsAbout our guestAkilah Stewart, the founder of FATRA, a creative waste design company. She works on analyzing plastic and textile waste and reintegrating it back into the production process to reduce pollution and increase holistic wellness. FATRA is pioneering the use of alternative materials and closed-loop design systems. Fatra, the Haitian Creole word for “trash”, is a global leader in the sustainable fashion movement and continues to challenge mainstream ideas while fostering an evolution of radical elegance and eclectic statement pieces.She teaches formally at Parsons while also conducting waste design workshops for different institutions here and abroad. FATRA is committed to a cleaner, safer, more equitable fashion industry and environment overall.On the webhifatra.comMusic in this episodeThe musical is guest is Heads on Sticks performing the song "The Landscape Vanishes".Theme music by Casual Motive   Climate Design AssignmentsAt the end of each episode, we ask our guests what their ideal climate design project would be. They have four weeks with a class full of design students. We translated their response into a project brief that you can use for your class. Get Assignments   Follow Climify on IG   « Back to episodes

Episode 6 – Sahara James Sahara James joins Eric to discuss how designers can be an integral part of climate solutions by creating large systems-based sustainability solutions in supply chains and how she's tackling the climate crisis as a business consultant helping communities make the switch to renewable energy and reducing carbon emissions by making their homes more energy-efficient. Listen to this episode on: Spotify, Apple, Google and other places you get your podcastsAbout our guestSahara James was born and raised in Queens, NY. She received her Associate’s Degree in Liberal Arts from Bard High School Early College Queens. She went on to complete her Bachelor’s in Environmental Studies at CUNY Hunter College in 2018. She is now a part-time candidate at the Bard MBA in Sustainability where she has taken on student leadership roles. In her most previous role, she was an assistant project manager conducting industrial hazard assessments for lead in paint and water in NYC buildings. Sahara is currently a Senior Sustainability Consultant at Kinetic Communities Consulting where she currently oversees the Electrify Staten Island pilot. In her free time, Sahara enjoys traveling, cooking, biking, and yoga.On the weblinkedin.com/in/sahara-jameskc3.nycMusic in this episodeThe musical is guest is Paul Nini performing "Relax, Part 1".Theme music by Casual Motive   Climate Design AssignmentsAt the end of each episode, we ask our guests what their ideal climate design project would be. They have four weeks with a class full of design students. We translated their response into a project brief that you can use for your class. Get Assignments   Follow Climify on IG   « Back to episodes

Episode 5 – Katie Patrick Katie Patrick joins Eric to discuss why if educators and designers really want to create climate action they must use a behavioral science toolkit to actually get people to act. Only teaching about the climate isn't enough to create a big enough change, but instead using environmental or energy data to design fun competitive reward-based games will create that positive climate action we need. Listen to this episode on: Spotify, Apple, Google and other places you get your podcasts About our guestKatie Patrick is an Australian American environmental engineer, designer, and author of How to Save the World, How to Make Changing the World the Greatest Game We've Ever Played. And host to the podcast, How to Save the World, where she investigates academic research in environmental psychology.She specializes in what she calls Fitbit for the Planet Design, which means applying data-driven gamification and behavior change techniques to environmental problems. Katie has worked on environmental gamification projects with NASA, JPL, Stanford University, UNEP, Google, the University of California, Magic Leap, and the Institute for the Future.Katie is the founder of urbancanopy.io, a map-based application that uses satellite imaging of urban heat islands and vegetation cover to encourage urban greening and cooling initiatives. She's also the co-founder of Energy Lollipop, a Chrome extension - an outdoor screen project that shows the electric grid's CO2 emissions in real-time.On the webkatiepatrick.comurbancanopy.ioenergylollipop.comMusic in this episodeThe musical guest is Joshua Singer.Theme music by Casual Motive   Climate Design AssignmentsAt the end of each episode, we ask our guests what their ideal climate design project would be. They have four weeks with a class full of design students. We translated their response into a project brief that you can use for your class. Get Assignments   Follow Climify on IG   « Back to episodes   Episode Transcript[00:03:05] Eric: Well, it's wonderful to meet you, Katie. I'm excited that you're here on Climify. I want to get started and jump right in, uh, get down to the basics. So, I want to know more about who you are and what you do, and where you do it.[00:03:20] Katie: Okay. I'll just start with telling my story of how I got here. So, I grew up in Melbourne, Australia and I was the granddaughter of these master, um, German craftspeople. My grandmother was a fashion designer, and my grandfather was a graphic illustrator. Not very highly trained. We grew up around this technical illustration.And I never talked about this before in my story, but now that I'm really putting myself out there as a designer, I realized how fundamental it was growing up in a household that was made of not the kind of crazy app they're out, but the very structured, technically skilled artwork. But then, I grew up in the, I was a child in the eighties.And so, there was a lot of like Greenpeace marketing than of we saw whales every night on the news, these whales getting dragged onto these Japanese whaling vessels, you know, with blood coming out of them and trees being cut down and the big machines just crashing into the…[00:04:18] Eric: Terrible images for a childhood. Yeah.[00:04:22] Katie: Yeah.And there were also these famines in, um, in Ethiopia and Somalia at the time. And they, ah, just harrowing pictures of these children were on the news all the time. And so, in my, it was probably around the, you know, eight or nine years old, I found these images enormously distressing, and I'd be like, mommy, can we please like help sights of whales?Can we get the, I heard that the dolphins get stuck in the, in the tuna fishnets, you know, um, I also grew up on a, on a big property out of the city. You know, there's a lot of, a lot of trees and bonded very closely with nature. So, my sustainability journey was kind of cemented in those early years.Um, but I loved science. It was good at math and physics really, really into, into understanding the, um, the, the STEM journey, which led me to study environmental engineering, went into green building. So, I thought eco-cities would be cool. Why don't we build like towers with like vegetation coming off the sides and like, skywalks, you know, the sky mangroves of the top of skyscrapers had this really futuristic kind of fantasies about what I could do with green buildings.But the reality is like literally, the only job you could get was doing energy efficiency audits in, um, like office buildings. Like that was like the job of being a green building engineer. And I thought that was like the most boring thing I could ever do with my life. I was like, kill me now, like measuring the kilowatt-hours in buildings.I actually found it quite interesting. I've got a whole new angle on it, but at the time I was like, never. Um,[00:05:47] Eric: How old were you during that time? How old were you when…[00:05:50] Katie: uh, it was like 20, 22, 23. So I got a job sort of while I was still studying and that lasted for a couple of years. Um, but that journey was over in commercial property.It was a bit of in the age of it sort of 20, 21 and 23 years old. Um, and then I, uh, started, so I started a media company. I started my first. Which was a magazine called Green Pages and it was also a directory and a website with videos and events. Um, it was all about trying to rebrand sustainability as being really cool.So, we started this like Wired magazine. I mean, it was like Wired magazine, but for sustainability. So, it was one of the first times was during that time. That sustainability was rebranded as something that was really cool. I mean, before that time there weren't any like hipster, organic cafes, you know, like, um, sort of expensive, really cool foods, uh, organic fashion labels, like it was really dorky and really, it was.Birkenstocks and at the truly, and, um, you know, like deep environmental scientists who went hiking and watched the birds and did scientific reports like this whole idea of it being fashionable and stylish or particular products like it did not exist. Or it was like a turning point as zeitgeists around that early two thousand.And so, I went out on a mission to try and make that to try and totally rebrand the image of sustainability. And there were other people around the world kind of doing that at that time. And that was a really wonderful time. It was like, you know, really working on creative production, going the opposite. End of energy efficiency audits in buildings, super uncreative and boring to like a full like creative production company with like 20 full-time staff.But then everything went sort of the Silicon Valley direction of startups and technology. Um, you know, can you build like the next app, you know, apps for like a big deal, like nobody's ever seen that app before? Uh, so we don't really, we're all sort of like learning how to code, like learning how to build MVPs.Uh, so I moved to Silicon Valley and that company ended up, even though it was successful at the time it died, uh, moved to Silicon Valley to start over. And I became very fascinated by this said your feedback loops. Cause I'd been learning how to code. And I was like, why can't I show somebody like a Facebook notification there. Carbon emissions from their home, go up over a certain level. And there were these Zynga games, you know, there's like Farmville[00:08:04] Eric: Oh, right.[00:08:05] Katie: they were big.[00:08:06] Eric: Oh, gosh,[00:08:07] Katie: Yeah. I don't know what happened to them all, but like there were, this Zynga was like the big thing and I'm like, well, can't we build little things into like Facebook that show you like, oh, this is how much water you used in your shower. You know, like tracking, could we track the, um, the amount of petrol gasoline in America? Cause, and I was like looking for these data feeds and I was like, there are No. the database anyway like I was literally, I cannot get an API or data feed for my own kilowatt-hours for the carbon emissions of the grid for the amount of tree cover in my city for the air pollution on my street, my car doesn't even know it, it doesn't have a car at the time, but all the cars don't even know.Petrol goes into them. Like if you drive a car for a year, it doesn't tell you how many miles you went, but it doesn't tell you like this year or two of what you're doing sort of[00:08:52] Eric: probably on purpose, right? Probably on purpose. They don't want you to.[00:08:55] Katie: No, I just don't think, I think a lot of these things nobody's asked for, like, they just haven't been thinking about this stuff.And then I was like, oh my God, this is basically this, um, this lack of environmental data feedback loops. Like I can get an API for anything for like Stripe, you know, to get to process payments like for Google, uh, clicks, you know, Google analytics, you can tap into their API. You can tap into all these API APIs and get all the data you want to measure the planet there.Hardly anything. It is so backward. And then I just had this big epiphany moment that was like, this is the rest of my life. This is what I'm going to be devoted to, you know, satellite data sensors. Get this data, try to build API APIs that can get those real-time feedback loops. And then, you know, so people that I'm designing the front-end interface or other people are that you can actually get this data.So if you want to put a little dial or a screen next to your shower, that says, you know, this is how many leads because of water and how much carbon emissions happened from heating the water from your shower, the light goes off, or it gets a smiley face or ding or things you on Facebook or Twitter or something like we can actually get this data to build this stuff.Um, and that completely fascinated me. So, I never. Building the startup, which I came to Silicon Valley to do, but I did a very deep intellectual dive into the theory of this type of design. I could read a whole bunch of academic papers. I still read these academic papers on this design theory of, well, what happens if you show people the numbers?What happens if you show a hundred people? What happens if you compare them? How does color affect that? How real-time does it need to be? What if it's daylight? What if it's a month? Like what if it's on paper? What if it's elegant? Really understanding these, these theories, which led me to write the book, how to save the world because I accrued all this knowledge.I was like, oh, I have to share[00:10:38] Eric: When did that book come out? When did your book come out?[00:10:41] Katie: it was about two years now. Yeah. A year and a half, two years. Um, and so that's what I do now. I specialize in this type of design, which I call Fitbit for the planet design.[00:10:52] Eric: It's a great[00:10:53] Katie: Feedback loops of data. I don't even know what else to call it.Um, nobody understood what it was. Feedback loops of data, just like. Showing environmental impact. So, the front-end user design, but also the kind of like backend technology for individual behavior, but also for bigger systems change as well. Like it's not just about individual behaviors. It's about giving whole systems of people, this data to help encourage change all the way through.From individual through to the system. And I just have to add that bit on the end because a lot of people have been coming out saying, but you can't change the load with only behavior change. And I was like, no, no, no, that's not what it's all about. It's really about trying to get the whole system, you know, in a better direction through the disclosure of numbers.Um, and that's the close of my nutshell long, long, big, big, big, not a big nutshell.[00:11:42] Eric: No, it was great. I want to get into your current work, but I want to backtrack just for a second. Cause there were two things that really stood out to me about your journey, this, this big, um, nutshell as you'd call it. First of all, was, uh, you had mentioned when you were a young, growing up in Australia, you witnessed a lot of these things.These, these images stuck in your head. And these things you couldn't unsee. And then you mentioned you had this epiphany. Once you get to Silicon Valley about what you want to do with your life and your career, which became some of the work you're doing right now, including your book. So, do you think that there are these two moments, which you mentioned these terrible things you witnessed as a kid, and then what you learned when you got to Silicon Valley?Do you think, how connected were those things, do you think both of these were just two different awakenings where you can we're committed to environmentalism, or do you think they were very similar?[00:12:43] Katie: Uh, that's an interesting way to put it. I don't think they would directly connect it in, in any way. Like my childhood experiences were making me feel concerned for the planet and that was something I wanted to do central too. Life. I mean, that started off pretty young. Um, and then that sort of led to, you know, one thing after another one thing after another.And then that kind of, um, my, my revelation about feedback loops of data was quite far away in that, in that journey. I suppose that where it started was that, I mean, I've done like a whole bunch of different things in my, my career, and I'm always trying to learn new things. Um, it's just created a kind of like a channel, you know, like I never deviate from environmental sustainability.It's the only thing I've ever done. It's the thing that I know well, um, and I don't really do anything outside of that, but within that channel, within that river, I mean, there's enormous. Um, mean you can do almost anything. So, the, and this is why I kind of like, I add the little, um, sort of outfit at the beginning of this story.Now, when I tell it because I've always gone into everything with this very, um, hyper curious mind like I'm always trying to learn. I've been obsessed with learning all my life. Like I love reading papers. I love reading textbooks, audiobooks, podcasts. I'm just like this cookie monster, just devouring knowledge all the time, but I could just feed them.Since I was, I don't know, 12 or 13 years old, it was just, ah, so when you just constantly trying to grow and trying to learn and trying to always try to break down this, I'm trying to crack the nut different nut now. Um, the nut of like, how do you actually create change? Like, how do you do it? Like, how do you change a million people?Like how do you, and a whole bunch of roads for a whole bunch of buildings, like this is really hard stuff. And honestly, nobody really knows the answer. We have ideas. How we think we can do it. And the deeper you go into that, trying to learn, study and learn, study, it reveals itself kind of like.layers of the onion, you know, like at first you might think, oh, well, it's just, you know, people used to say, it's the media, it's the news, you know?And then the news kind of went away and then everyone's social media. Nobody says it's the nature of the news anymore. Everything's kind of still the same, you know, really the media, you know, like, is it, people's greed people that is grieving. And you're like, I don't really think so. Democracy. And I'm like, well, you can have a democratic process and have people vote against carbon taxes and vote for Trump.So maybe it's not democracy. Maybe if you let everyone be super democratic, everyone's just going to be like freebie a free pizza that used to happen at university. We'd have like student democracies and the free beer, and the free pizza movement and all the anti-patriarchy feminists would freak out.They'd be like, oh my God, the free beer party, you know. Um, so you can't really necessarily blame that. And. So people are just trying to figure out what it is, and you've just got to keep learning and keep peeling it away. Um, and that's the, just the process, the intellectual curious process that brought me to this, um, this had your feedbacks and behavioral psychology.Cause I find that that's getting pretty close, real close as I've come to the center of the onion of what really does create change or it's the best toolkit that I've gotten to know after 20, if you added my teams, you know, 30 years of doing this now,[00:16:05] Eric: Well, I'm really connected to that story. Cause I see a lot of myself in that as it as a kid, um, I grew up with a lot of. Camping and being outdoors and really being connected to the world around me and really respecting that. And then I had like a moment later in life where I was like, I have to do something to conserve this or protect this or make it better regenerated.So, I'm really connected to that story. And I always ask myself, you know, what would ten-year-old Eric think about this? I kind of bring that up, you know, and maybe it's this naive a TA or something, but, um, I think that's sort of a guide that that little, little kid is still there and that wants to save, you know, the animals or, you know, I always watched like, Shows about Africa and the wild kingdom.And I was always connected to that. So, I think I'm definitely see a little bit of myself in your story. Cause I was also very creative, and I did the arts and drew and painted. So, uh, I appreciate that. And I'm wondering too, cause I. There's a sense of optimism there, right. That, um, you have to have, and I'm wondering, it seems like all your work is really rooted in that hopefulness.And where does that come from and how do you, how do you inspire others to be as hopeful and sometimes, and, uh, when you read some of the dire news about the.[00:17:30] Katie: Well, I think my, um, thank you. And, uh, yeah, it's lovely to hear your story as well. I think, you know, for humanity or just like people, I think we need to invest in these more altruistic kind, sensitive and creative parts of ourselves, you know, going out, being a bully, being like, well, I'm just gonna like make money.Pay a mortgage and I'm going to buy a car, whatever, all that stuff is like, I don't know. I honestly don't think it gets you that far in life. I think the most sensitive parts of you to cultivate are the nicer ones and we should be, be real, be real with that, even if it feels hot to some time along the way.[00:18:07] Eric: It is very hard, right? It's...[00:18:11] Katie: Yeah. I mean, I've been going on a journey, just trying to really like ground into that. Like every day I'm like, how do I have the best energy I can and how do I do the best creative work for the world? Like, that's my overarching belief systems sort of umbrella of how I live. And I li I, honestly, I let go of everything else.I'm like money eager, like, whatever[00:18:32] Eric: How do you do that?[00:18:33] Katie: The Silicon Valley hype machine, which has a very strong sort of sucking force or that you need to get into Y Combinator and raise money. I mean, that's a big sort of cultural thing that I live in. I'm connected to, um, just try and let go of it and just, well, I do it.So I block out time. I'm like, okay, three hours, just pure creative channeling of your essence, uh, into the most interesting world-changing thing you can possibly think of. So, it's an allocation of time. Um, and then it's also just very consciously deciding to let go of the outcome and let go of the goals and the society creates.Goals around that. Uh, that's just something I do. I'm not necessarily pitching that as a good idea, because it can be enormous. Like if you have a mortgage or, I mean, I have one child, maybe if you have like four children, it might be really hard to do that. Um...[00:19:26] Eric: ...Yeah.[00:19:27] Katie: ...and I'm Okay. I'm okay with going through a year or two without really making any money, or maybe you're only making like $10,000 a year to cover the bills.Like, I really don't mind doing that. Other people might struggle to do that, so I don't want to pitch it as the ultimate way of life, but it is the way that I've chosen to live. That works, um, for me. But you asked about, about hope for. Optimism. I think sometimes people can misjudge, my efforts with that as just this kind of like, oh, let's just be like, happy about the future and just be like hopeful and stuff.Um, that's really not the lens that I'm coming from. The lens I'm coming from is we have this human have this superpower of imagination. We are the only creature. The only animal that has, this is the one. Distinguishes humans from other animals is that we can invent mental models of things that are going to happen.And then we can plan our lives in very long-term 10 years, 20 years ahead, and then do things now. So that, and the other animals can't really do that. And so, for us to engage in, uh, the enormous kind of innovation that it's going to take like we cannot change the world with just switching off the lights and recycling and just eating organic food.Although I do, I'm a strong believer in individual behavior change[00:20:45] Eric: Yeah.[00:20:46] Katie: in order to. Get to a new chapter of human civilization that is sustainable with the planet. We need a massive revolution in all about civil engineering infrastructure, the way we do building all of our material science, all of that.Transportation systems, the vehicles and aircraft, and ships, all of the production manufacturing of the stuff that we use, the closed-loop type of recycling, the way we grow food, the way we cook, the way we educate people, even our belief systems about we want what we want out of life and our values. Need to change.Like there is a massive, highly technical revolution that is going to have to happen in every single industry. And that is so much bigger than going to the moon or going to bars or even, you know, like solving cancer. Like people don't realize the technical complexity in this challenge. And we need an epic dream to guide us to that.Like going to the moon is a great, um, Colorado for that, because it was a big, exciting, highly technical dream. So, we made the dream of what would an environmentally sustainable utopia world look like? would that be? And then how would I play a role in that? Not in my individual, zero-waste behaviors, which is nice. 10 or 20 years, like if I'm going to be, you know, I'll probably be alive for another 40 years, at least like actively, like I've got 40 years to do some serious technical innovations with this feedback loop stuff that I work on, like what is going to be my, my investment in this, this journey. And when I.Think of these eco-city visions and like what society, what, what society, but civilization could be like, what would be the next chapter? I mean, you feel that the history of humans has civilization. Like they were really nasty. That was like torture or more. It appears that it's kind of a pretty, pretty awful story until quite recently.So, we're at a turning point now where we noticed violent Nazi as we, where we can become this new. Um, sort of semi enlightened species. It's all having all of our processes integrated with this deep ecological understanding of, of nature. That's the high-tech version, as opposed to more of the tribal low-tech version that it once was thousands of years ago.And, um, that's an enormously inspiring sort of epic story to join. So, when I'm pitching this idea of like, I don't use the word hope, but of optimism of imagination and vision, I'm trying to unlock. This epic journey that is bigger than the moon landing and to invite people to come on this multi-decade innovation, um, experience or investment, a multi-decade investment in their own innovation in their careers to contribute to this, uh, this new world.And I think that's a that's much bigger. The more serious story than just like, oh, let's be hopeful in the face[00:23:49] Eric: No. Not exactly.[00:23:51] Katie: So, I don't want to get to. I don't want to get pigeonholed as just as, oh, let's be likely to just be happy about everything like Greenville. Yay. It's quite deep technical roots to what are the story I'm trying to, I'm trying to say, and it's in my Ted talk.Like that's what I, that's what I say in the TEDx talk of why we need creativity and optimism to save the world.[00:24:09] Eric: Well, you mentioned, um, education there and that's, that's what I do. That's what a lot of our listeners to this show do for educators. And so,I'm wondering what you think, um, what role. You can play in helping that achieve that mission, this whole systematic change, um, through what we do in the classroom.What, what are your insights into that?[00:24:33] Katie: Well, when I was studying environmental engineering, the way the degree was structured, I felt was really problematic and did not lend itself. Big vision or next chapter of civilization, because the thing is that all environmental systems, all interrelate to each other, trees affect urban heat, which affects water runoff, which affects air pollution, which affects the kilowatt hours on the grid and all these things.We're all working together. After, I think it was my third year in environmental engineering school. I went to the head of school, and I said, listen, I think we're doing this whole degree wrong. We study like soil science. And then we study, um, pollution, chemistry, and then we study fluid mechanics, and we get a textbook, and our job is to learn the textbook.And then we do an exam, and we do like a project and it completely. Like they never stitched together. I said I think what we need to do is actually go on a full-year project where we have to design up a completely eco, like an environmentally sustainable city. And so, we start at the beginning of our four years and the vision is to create a city that's completely sustainable.And then we have to start reverse engineering that. And so, we still learn, you know, like the soil science and the rainwater runoff and the water pollution. And all these things, but it's all interconnecting like puzzle pieces into this master thesis at the end, which is the complete eco-city, because nobody is seeing the ultimate destination and all of the interconnections between these different things That we study.And she was like, that's a great idea, Kelly really, really cool. I don't want about like I left and graduated, and nothing happened. Um, but it's like the education, when you start with the vision like this is what we want to create. A whole city is completely in synchronization with nature. There's a lot of engineering and science to go into that.And then you reverse engineer the education that you need to learn in order to get to that vision is a totally different style of education. And it's really practically focused and that just learns the discrete puzzle pieces and all the puzzle pieces are scattered. And then maybe at some point in your life, we'll figure out how to[00:26:38] Eric: That the connectome you're 40, right? Is that.[00:26:40] Katie: Yeah. Yeah. I think that it's a really, um, anyway, that's just my thought of how to do environmental education with a kind of like a master goal experiences, real-life focused as the, um, the endpoint and all of the detail you learn in the process of that. Um, but where my own personal work really fits into education.Um, which Is that.I discovered this thing a few years ago called the value action gap. And I was quite late in my career. Like I was in. You know, almost in my mid-thirties, when I, when I figured this out and it is that education doesn't necessarily lead to people taking action. And this is studied by behavioral scientists over and over again.There's a great Wikipedia page. You can look up called the value action gap. It's also called the information deficit hypothesis and a lot of climate scientists would think this they'll be like, oh, if people just knew more about climate change, if they were just educated about. Then people would change.And so, if you are an educated person and you are setting out to do education, or maybe you're an activist and you're setting out to do education, you will be successful in educating people. Like, look, let's learn about climate change and then people learn, but that does not necessarily lead to action.And action design and educational design are two completely different. So, if you're trying to do education design and your whole goal is just education and it really doesn't matter what actions people take after that, then you can just go forth and do some interesting educational design and a lot of fun stuff you can do there.But if your intention is to actually get people to take action, which might be to contact a politician or to swap over their conditioning unit. Switch to an electric vehicle, we'll get rid of their car and ride a bike and stuff. Like you cannot use the educational lens to get them to do that. You need to look at it as a behavior designer and behavior design have a completely different architecture of a tool.To use you go into your toolkit. How do I create behavior design? There are like 20 things that work that are tested and proven that get people to act. And those things don't have much in common at all with an educational process, like your sort of textbook on climate science or the documentary or the book or whatever.They're completely different. They almost have nothing in common at all. And this is what I talk about to people all the time is valuable. Action gap. Don't assume that educating people is going to work. Probably won't work. We need to be using the behavioral science toolkit to actually get people to act.And you can get by with very little education and emotional concerns. Like people don't even need to care that much about the environment that they didn't know much about it. And you can still get them to take action if you design it. And we really need to start thinking like behavior designers and like environmental psychologists, if we want to create change.And this is my current fascination, I read academic papers. I practice it. I have a podcast on it. I'm all about the environmental psychology of action. Now I think it's the next big thing to try and share through the industry.[00:29:44] Eric: You know, I agree with you and that's why you're here on the show because I wanted to pick your brain more about this. I see that a lot with the students that I teach, you know, there are 20 students in a class. We have. Climate science-related projects. And graduation happens and there's like two or three that are out there really motivated.Cause they want to do something about it. But what about those other 17? So I'm wondering, you know, you mentioned toolkits, you mentioned, uh, thing, resources that you can use. Where do you find these? Are these something that is in your book or that you write about on medium? Where can we educators get more information on this?So, we can. We can do better in, in our work.[00:30:30] Katie: Well, I put it all together in my book, how to save the world. Like it's a full design process to follow. It's like a 10-step design process of which all of these behavior and gamification techniques. Are in that, and it goes into the theory of why it works. So, it's like a textbook with exercises to follow.So, it's a perfect tool for educators to use as a project, or if you're holding a workshop or something it's completely designed for that, um, for that type of thing. Yeah. And I put it out on my, on my Instagram little tutorials and on my medium page, and I know my website, Katie patrick.com.Um, but I can go into what those things are now.[00:31:07] Eric: can you share a few? Yeah.[00:31:09] Katie: Yeah.in another, um, another, um, nutshell that I will keep not too, too big, probably. Uh, I just compensate from my big nutshell to talking really fast. I'm not sure if it, if it works that well, um, but the first thing to do so we start off by looking at okay.Just educating people and trying to get people emotionally concerned. Probably not going to create action. So. And this we, except that, and now we move to what does create action. So, the number one thing is we first start by looking into the data. What data do we have to work with? Can we show people feedback loops, um, really looking into the numbers, you know, like turning lights off, especially in a day, it doesn't have a big carbon impact, but thermostats do, especially. really, I sort of look for the low-hanging fruit, right. And again, this is not just about individual changes. It's about getting everybody around us to change or trying to create social influence networks as well. So that's cool. Like the theory of disclosure, like just put the data out there somewhere.If you can't do it electronically with senses and with a digital screen, you can do it by hand. Like you could have a group of people, for example, in your classroom, you could get everybody to figure out what they can do, what hours were for the day. Often you can log in to your electricity provider and get the data, and then you can have everybody turn up and then put everybody on a leaderboard from like top to bottom.Right? You can work out what the carbon intensity is off the grid. And you can just multiply that. Whatever that number is. And then you could say, hey everybody, we're going to do a design, uses the word design to make it sound fun. A design experiment, where are we going to try and figure out where all those kilowatt-hours came from?And then we want to do design interventions into All of these behaviors and do something creative and fun with you. Great design skills to figure out how to intervene in your home. To get that down and then we're going to come back next week and we're going to do the leaderboard again. And then we're going to measure the progress.We'll do one of what top to bottom, and then we'll do another leaderboard that measures the progress everybody has made. So, if someone's like uses a lot of energy, they can still do well because you want. You know, ranking people by progress, not necessarily then at school and then, you know, credit discussion and then talk about the iterations.Talk about the problems, you know, is it technical? Is it behavioral? Sometimes you can just get like a, like a sticker and put it on your fridge or something can be like one thing you stuff doesn't have to be high tech. right.So that could be a way of doing education. It was like, and design education.That's interesting in terms of the kids. And then it's designing, cause pick, you're asking people to design solutions. Um, but then it's also really behavioral. So, you're tapping right into the behavior rather than just learning climate science from a textbook. But you've got, you have the disclosure of numbers you want to use.See backlit. So, when people see their numbers, just like a Fitbit. In itself creates change and it can be anywhere between 10% up to 50% just from seeing the numbers. And then what gets really exciting is when you compare people to each other, like I just mentioned with leaderboard, when something says, hey, you do 20% worse than everybody else.And telling people that do worse than average, it's much more powerful, but telling people that you're better than average. So, the people that are like on the lower part of the, again, it probably gets psyched and probably change more than the people who are doing better. Cause they'll be like, well, I've already doing well.Why do I need to, why do I need to change? Do you want to use reward systems? Like if somebody does something good, you give them a smiley face. It might sound silly. But smiley faces are actually a really powerful way to, um, to affect people. Something that says a good job, thumbs up. Right back to the primordial side of the brain.You know, like if you get like a hundred compliments and one person says something mean it's like,[00:34:37] Eric: you remember that one.[00:34:39] Katie: this primordial system of seed back of faces to us being happy for us or sad for us. So, if you get, like, if somebody put like a, just a Franny face on your Instagram posts, you'd probably get really upset by that If somebody did that to me, I'd just be like, what did I last fall? Like, I'd probably be upset for like an hour. It's like, so if someone put the smiley face, you feel good, right? And one.Franny Fife is a lot more powerful than many smiley faces, right? So, these things might sound silly, but they're actually very powerful behavioral mechanisms.So. you can do a lot more with an emoji than you can potentially do with a climate science textbook.[00:35:13] Eric: Wow. Okay.[00:35:15] Katie: well-positioned,[00:35:16] Eric: This is good advice.[00:35:17] Katie: um, so, in your terms of your, you know, design students taking on these actions, you, maybe something for a week is like to give your roommates or your family, like smiley faces or frowny faces.And then just to like to monitor the reactions that they, that they have. Um, so yeah, comparing people is a super superpower. Once you get data, once you get feedback if you compare people and most of mine. Entrepreneurial work is all based around trying to get this comparison, comparative scores, you know, just giving people a goal.Like your goal might be to get 50% of your 50 is probably not a good number. Maybe 90% of your calories are from plant-based foods. Often asking people to go vegan is too much for people, but you can ask them to get maybe 50%, 90% of their calories. So, you know, monitoring people. The ratio of the calories, you know, really starting to understand, um, how-to, you know, nudge people away from eating meat and dairy.Um, and it, you know, just get, but the point was giving people an explicit goal. You know, this is the carbon, and we do that with one of my projects, energy loaded. And it's quite powerful when you say your mission and you say it like a video game, like, hi, there, there's this problem. And we're going on this quest and your mission is important in this quest is to reduce 50% of the carbon emissions from your home and people.Okay, got it. Uh, which is quite a different mental landscape to just randomly do good things for the planet. So, giving these explicit[00:36:43] Eric: Where can we find energy lollipops? Sorry to interrupt there. But energy[00:36:46] Katie: Oh, no problem. Just go to the Chrome store. You haven't seen it before. Go to the Chrome store and you type in energy lollipop, just type in energy lollipop. Chrome store into Google.And it's just a really great little Chrome extension. And it shows you the carbon emissions of the California grid in real-time with color. Very simple. No crazy metrics about wind and solar and coal, like energy people like to put out. Um, and you can just click on it, you know, through the day. Uh, and now, yeah, I've put, like, I understand the exact problem load profile of the grid throughout all of the year now.Like I'm like hot days, weekends called that, clicking on it for a year. And, um, yeah, it's really, it's great for you around carbon literacy. And I definitely do feel really bad using electricity at night when the grid is really high. But the only thing I do know now is how often I leave lights on in the day because I'm like, oh yeah, it's all solar powered.Anyway, it doesn't really matter. Um, but maybe it doesn't matter. Um, oh, another gamification technique. That's really cool.It's using emotive animals. I just had this guy on my podcast who tests. He gets this mechanical cat that smiles at you. If You save energy and frown that year if you use too much[00:37:56] Eric: That's powerful. You know, that right. Cancer is super powerful for change, right?[00:38:02] Katie: Are they like in just, you mean kind of like spiritually[00:38:05] Eric: Yes. Yeah. It works.[00:38:09] Katie: or you mean like, like the Chinese cat is like with its arm thing that,[00:38:12] Eric: Any, any cat we'll make it happen.[00:38:14] Katie: Right, right. Well, this was really profound. It actually got a 47% reduction, which is the highest that I've seen in any of the studies have looked at. Um, and so what they're doing is calling this thing and I'm an empathetic character gay.So, it's like a gauge, you know, like a dial gauge that says whether you're doing bad or good, like a speedometer, but it's via the face of an animal that's like smiling or frowning, depending on your performance. And it's way more powerful than just using numbers or gauges or, um, you know, notifications. So, I would encourage everyone to figure out how to make an animal that changes its expression based on your, uh, performance, uh, really exciting stuff.Hasn't really been implemented. know, you can like track progress. Where are you going to tracking progress through a game through steps or levels using novelty, using storytelling? Like I mentioned before, like starting people on an onboarding process, it's like, this is where we are. This is where we want to go with bringing you on the journey.We. And then isolating those very specific tasks. It could be five or 10 things that you want people to do, and you're bringing them through that journey. And then it has like an end. Okay.We've now succeeded in decarbonizing your home or your workplace. Great, great job. Um, you can use color. Red is good.Green is bad. Uh, adding a color spectrum to data is very powerful. It might sound obvious, but not always done. You can use maps. Maps are incredibly interesting ways of showing progress as well. Like if you are needing every house or every building or every school to do something on a map, you can present it that way you can use pledges, asking people to give a promise, like writing down, like, Yeah.Eric, I promise that I will not use any plastic for the next week.And then I give you. And now if I screw that up, I will feel like a really bad person. Like I've lied to you. And that's a very powerful psychological mechanism. This they're called the called commitment devices in the psychological literature. When somebody, because trust is so deep. Important to our social relations.You don't have trust; you don't have anything. Right? So, it's just getting into these very deep, psychological causes that get people to do stuff it's quite remarkable. Actually, just getting somebody to write something down on a piece of paper, I've done it with a bunch of people just casually, and then they're still doing it like years later.And I'm like, Wow.this really works. And all I did was just like ask somebody to do it at a party. Like just randomly. I actually stopped doing it because it was so powerful. It was like, Ooh, I feel[00:40:39] Eric: You could start a[00:40:40] Katie: unethical now. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I think everybody should be using pledges because you do not need to do any computer work.Um, and you can use things like chews and chimes, like a red dot notification or a sound like why can't you build something? And nobody likes doing computer stuff, do something that makes like a sound. When the electricity grid goes up over a certain level of emissions, about seven or 8:00 PM has been at spikes.So, you could have something that is. Like a notification on your phone. Um, I designed one thing for classrooms that showed indoor carbon dioxide. And, uh, one of the people on the team said, oh, why don't we make it make a sound? Do you know? So, it reminds the kids in the classroom to open the window to get fresh air in.And I was like, yeah.chime time, sound, you know, so it a little red dot and it makes it. And now the kids that know that the indoor carbon dioxide is high, and they should open, open the window. And, um, and my last point is a social norm, which is just using language like 83% of people in your neighborhood are doing it.So, you're not being like the Well's going to die. Climate change is terrible, and you should do it because really bad things are going to happen. That's not really the most powerful way to get people to do things. And it may even make people completely turn off there's research, a reasonable amount of research coming out that showing people, climate doom, just create a wall[00:42:04] Eric: Right empathy.[00:42:06] Katie: well, it's not even, it's a shutting down.It's like, can’t you shut down. Uh, so. What you can do one, and it's just a little bit of copywriting, right? You can just be like; did you know that? And you can even use stuff like everyone like it doesn't even really need to be accurate. You can be like everybody in your neighborhood and switching to EVs, or like, it's what everybody's doing.You know? Like just stand standard, like copyrights. Yeah.Like it can just be like a tagline. It doesn't need to actually be like research data. And then you, you show images of the people doing it. So rather than showing the melting glacier in the polar bear, what you show is this like super cool hip's family, you know, would they like Evie and the bicycles and like everybody's going in carbon-free now.And then you're like, oh, are they, is this idea that the group is going that way? You want to follow the group? So, you want to create images that we can. Imitate, not images of what we don't want. We want images of what we do want that we can copy because humans will, we can't, we cannot help copying everybody around us.It's an unconscious mechanism for us to copy the group. So, people will copy, even if they don't even know they're copying they'll, everyone is, will be copying everyone. So, the more images you can put up for the behavior you want. People will just adopt it. Like they can't, they can't help it, but to, but to adopt that.And so that's another reason why this I'm against this climate doom messaging and this negative stuff, because, uh, it doesn't work, and it can even go backward. It can even get people to adjust to that being the norm. So, I, not that people are going to be acting like, Ooh, it's like literally everywhere or whatever.But what you're doing is saying that this is normal. This is what everybody is doing. Like, if you put a big picture of like a really polluting SUV with like smoke coming out of it, what you're doing is normalizing that, saying that this is what everybody, and you say like 93% of people drive polluting SUV's.So don't do that. Like, even though consciously you're like, oh, what an asshole would that fleeting SUV unconsciously, the unconscious copying brain will just be like, well, if I drive an SUV, including SUV it's okay. Because everybody[00:44:12] Eric: Yeah, 90% of the people are doing it. So, it's fine. Right?[00:44:16] Katie: And, um, that's basically it is all those toolkits. You follow that in a systematic process to try and change the numbers. And bingo you'll have a really great behavioral intervention that will most likely get people to change.[00:44:29] Eric: Yeah, I think I'm, I'm really, I really believe this will work. I think about all the students that I've taught over the years and even now, and I don't know, I, the vast majority of them play games, they love to play games. And so. Um, why not use that as part of what they do in the classroom as design students?Right. I mean, I'm, I, uh, I'm a runner and I don't really, really cross-train and bike and all that, but I've learned I need to do that. So, I got a, I got a Peloton and, uh, I can tell you that, um, I wasn't really interested in it until I started to see the metrics. And so, looking at the numbers and saying, oh my God, I can do this if I just go a little faster or, uh, so I, I was, I'm really addicted to like beating certain numbers.Right. This is a game it's a game to me. And I could see that working in a very positive way. Right. What if you're, instead of it's like Peloton for the planet, right? Like if you were doing something like you usually do exercise and that turns into something positive and a positive change, right? Uh, you could, you could turn that into a project potentially.So, I really like,[00:45:42] Katie: Peleton, oh sorry. Just a Peloton can pay you to other Peloton uses. Is it a group dynamic?[00:45:48] Eric: yeah. I should explain that. Yeah, it definitely does. Like, you can see what other people are doing, and usually people will high-five you, and then they'll pass you on the leaderboard and you get all upset and then you try to pass them again. Then you virtually high-five of course. So, it's a competition, right?It's. Produce the most kilowatt and lose, uh, uh, go the fastest, all this type of stuff. And, um, I think that's a fun idea for a design project. So that, that kind of leads me into my last question for you. Cause, um, this is what I ask all the guests and they come on the show. Uh, I want to put you into our shoes.You're a design educator, uh, for the next four to six weeks. And by the way, I think you'd be a great educator and your project. Or what you're talking about, I think is super interesting. And I think the students would really, really enjoy working with you. So, you're a design educator for the next four to six weeks.What kind of project or projects would you assign? Uh, the students, um, in relation to the work that you do to, um, create more climate action.[00:46:58] Katie:Yeah. Yeah. Well, my last podcast was all, you know, um, about experience design. A little about that. But, um, with Jesse shell, he was, um, he's, he's a professor of experience design. And we talked about that in the context of, uh, sustainability, which really honestly never comes up with environmental engineers and scientists.Um, well, I, I think the, um, the first, well, that's why we need people like us trying to get out there. These other concepts that often are traditionally not, not thought about when everybody's thinking about, you know, like perhaps chameleon and, uh, liters of whatever. Um, I think the first thing that. It's often not thought about when it comes to products and companies in the bigger context, they sit in.So, if you're looking at making like a product, everyone will be like, say it's like a box or a toothpaste, or even like a video game.[00:47:49] Eric: Hmm.[00:47:50] Katie: Look at the thing itself, like, let's look at the materials that come from it. This is usual, like sustainability way of doing things. If you're making a PlayStation, we just look at the actual plastic that goes into the PlayStation and the kilowatt-hours that it draws, and our servers powered by solar, solar panels.And just looking at the product is this one discreet thing, I think. I, I mean, look at that. It's not important, it still needs to be done, but that's not what I specialize in. And I think there's a much bigger and more impactful way to do it. So, if I was teaching a course, what would I call it? Maybe I'd call it Fitbit for the planet design and the phrase I like to use, or perhaps, you know, environmental behavior.Is that I would ask all the students too, which is more or less what I already do, um, ask people to choose a data metric. So, we're not just going to focus on making the tube of toothpaste more. Eco-friendly we're going to look at the bigger metrics. So. It could be the number of trees in your neighborhood, the number of green rows.It could be the surface temperature of your, uh, of your town because roads get really hot and credit urban heat island. Um, trees don't get hot. So that's. Um, the kilowatt-hours of that, the carbon emissions from kilowatt-hours, the amount of gasoline is being used in cars. You know, if pollution, it could be like water pollution.I would get people to choose a data set that they are most attracted to. And so that's the first principle of. And then we go through a process of looking at, well, how do we work with the steady to get people to drive action? And so, I do this behavior mapping workshop where we isolate who are the individual people that are going to be involved in this system.Like it could be like a government agency or a, um, you know, like a parent or a homeowner or somebody who's out of school or somebody who sells cause like, it could be anybody at all. And you map out who those people are, and then you go through a process saying, well, what's the cue that we want to get to them.All the cue is like, you know, they're going to see something on Instagram or we're going to reach out. So, there's a kind of like the marketing tentacles of whatever it is you'll you're doing. Or it even could be like a chime, right? Like the kids in the classroom. And then, you know, we look in and then you're like, well, okay, what is it. Data sets we're working with. So, it could just be one thing like carbon emissions from harm, or sometimes if you get into something more complex, like water, there's actually, there's like multiple metrics to work with or in an ecosystem. And then what is the action we want them to do? So, once you've had a deep dive into the data, you should know what these actions are.They're not just like, oh, here's like 55 eco-tips. You know you want to just be like, try and get very narrow with the specific actions which will emerge. Once you look in the data, what those actions are. And then once you figured out what those actions are, then we go through all of the behavioral stuff that I just went through earlier, which is Okay.like, how do we show the data to people?How do we add, you know, comparison? How do we compare stormwater, drain to stormwater drainage for the lake? And you've got five stormwater drains coming out. You know, holding lectures, telling you the lake is polluted. Isn't necessarily going to get you there. Let's go to each storm, water drain, test it, give them a ranking for the stormwater drains on a leaderboard.It'd be like worst stormwater drain down to the best, what a drain or maybe the other way round. Um, and then you can give them like a star rating, you know, you know, they were like, you know, one-star down to five. And the action that you might want to be is like, I'm not sure exactly how the pollution gets in.Maybe it's like oil from cars, like going down after rainfall or people putting paint down. Um, there could be a factory nearby or something that you need to get, um, you know, better environmental regulations on, I don't know what, anything, whatever. So, you're putting like a disclosure, then you're putting a star rating.Then you're putting that out there. Maybe you make signs, maybe the, and this is where the design comes in. It's like, okay, going through this process, You're like, Okay.well, the first step is data disclosure. How do we get it out there? Let's all paint a sign, right? And another one in, you know, you understand, oh, cognitive load.Let's not, over-design it. We want to kind of design it and make it simple. So, we're all very used to these like, um, fire dials with like, is it smokey? The bear who has to fire, you know, from like very scary fire, you get a die, you know, all the way to green. Like there's no fire. So, people are used to these like public dials of color.You probably don't need to ask anybody's permission or hopefully, the school will have some supplies and then you go and put one, you take a photograph and send it to the local paper. Um, and then you make a little mock website single page. This is what we're doing. Put it on Instagram. And put the message out there, you know, why is, and then everyone's like, why is that still water dry and so much more polluted than all of the others. Um, but anyway, so you're going through this, like this process of like, what is the action? So, then you figure out what the action is. And then you can say, well, how do we prompt people to take this, um, this action and using all of these types of design kids that we've got, like, how do we make it normal?Do we need to leader board? Are we going to track progress? Um, you can even use things like behavior charts, you know, like a stick, a chat when you've been a kid, and then you get like 10 in a row, like for somebody who has maybe like really, um, going plant-based is really hard for them. I mean, creating a sticker chart and you don't need to write any code 10-day plant-based challenge, right.Like super easy, low tech, you know, that stuff really works. And once somebody has on a 10-day plant-based challenge, they're probably could, you know, for the next decades they're alive will have an impact. So, you can do simple things like that. Um, and that's another thing like a design student can come up with.Um, you know, like the creature that we thought out, maybe, you know, if you are looking at stormwater drains, you don't have smokey. The bear you have, like, I don't know. Sylvia the fish, you know, and then Sylvia, the fish is like on the third day and she's like really miserable, like flaw covered in like, you know, sores and looking really sick.And then there's like the happy fish, you know, for the good stormwater drain is when people go past it, it's really silent. You're like, oh my God, there's a star rating. There are numbers, there's a color. It's got like a red face on it. Fish looks really sad. I was like, oh my God, there's really got to do something about this.There's like something really bad going on in this area. Um, And, uh, you know, you can map it out. You can map. Maybe you can use pledges. And maybe if there's something that you need to get a lot of people to do, like something like oil leaking from cars, it's not like something like a factory. That's like a lot of individual behavior to get to do.Then you can use something like a pledge instead of just educating everybody on it. You can go out to everyone and saying, would you commit to this pledge of getting your car tuned up? Because this is stormwater drain. Really bad-looking Katra and fish that's doing in really bad shape. Um, you want to help the fish be happy and then get people to write down this promise? Yeah, every six months, I don't know that much about the cause, but like, I don't know, every six months to get the engine looked at or[00:54:42] Eric: Yeah, the oil change thing.[00:54:45] Katie: it looked for oil leaks. Yeah. And then, uh, get them to write that pledge. So, we'll most likely do that. If they write it down and give it to you, and then you can like photograph everybody's pledges and put it on Instagram, and then people are like, oh, and then you can even give people a little identity.That's something. I didn't mention a sticker. That's like I'm, uh, an oil change pledge person now. So you give people like a name.[00:55:08] Eric: Right to get a badge.[00:55:10] Katie: Yeah. Yeah. They did this by getting people to turn their car engines off for now picking their children up. They ask people to pledge. Then they gave them a little sticker to put on the dashboard.It was like, I'm a, I'm a, um, engine turnoff picks up kid person now. Um, and it really worked. They got like 70% of the. So, switch their engines off, but very simple low-tech interventions, right? So. if your design students all have wonderful graphic interfaces into graphic design skills, they can go through this whole process of looking at this data, applying all these behavioral mechanisms and they're completely empowered to make it look amazing.So instead of having all the engineers do it, where it will look ugly, you can get your students to do the whole process and they'll make it look amazing. Um, but it. You know, if they're not using those tools, they could just come up with really visually wonderful stuff that does not have the behavioral interventions at all.But when they use these tools, they could have, we're all really working for behavior, but then looking amazing as well. And it's just so much more creatively enhancing through creative person to think like, well, Wow.how would I make an app to assign, like, how would I design a pledge? How would I design a stat chat?How would I design something to sit on the fridge? Like what would be the ultimate fridge reminder sticker? To get somebody to do something. How would I get people to work in groups? How would I get people to copy each other? And then there's just, there's just so much more tools in the toolkit to design for as a creative person.Then if you're just like, okay, I got to design something beautiful for climate change now, or interesting or scary, you know, you just don't have as much to work with. Um, anyway, so that's what I, that's what I would do. Um, and you can use my, my, my, the book I wrote had a sense. The world is more or less a system to go through.[00:56:55] Eric: Sounds like really cool. And, I hope that people who are listening might try it in the fall or whatever semester. Um, and, uh, and they can talk about it on our Instagram page afterward to see how it goes. Uh, Katie, it's been fantastic having you here and, uh, before we go, why don't you give an opportunity to, uh, tell our guests where they can find out more about you, obviously your book, how to save the world, uh, tell us where we can find you on social media and.[00:57:24] Katie: Well, the best thing to do is to sign up to my website, Kenny patrick.com. And I have a lot of free resources. Once you sign up that you can get that sort of will help you along this journey. I'm really active on Twitter, KatiePatrick, K A T I E. That's how do you spell my name on Twitter and also on Instagram.Um, and, you know, feel free to message me on LinkedIn, really active on LinkedIn and love, uh, chatting with people. My podcast also called how it says worlds is easy to find, but I definitely recommend people read through the steps in the book. I mean, it has a, um, a life-changing effect on some people, if they've been going in the wrong direction, the value action gap direction.I hadn't realized that, like I get people emailing me quite often. I shredded my whole project and started again in 3d in your, your book or like I had like a complete earth-shattering, like, oh my God, what am I doing moment? And then started again, or for much more sound principles. And, um, that's really wonderful to see.Is there always a bit shaky a bit like, like a kind of like you, you, you momentarily ruined my life. Um, but then I'm like, no, this is good. This is good. You're going in the wrong direction. And so. Yeah.If anyone who's interested in design and climate change, it's a really good framework to, um, make sure that you're making a real impact.[00:58:40] Eric: Well, thanks again, Katie. And I'm happy that you were able to take some time out and talk with me today.[00:58:45] Katie: Thanks. It's been fun, Eric.

Episode 4 – Katharine Poole Katharine Poole joins Eric to share how her skillsets as both a climate scientist and a brand designer are a perfect combination to craft better and more informed communication strategies for organizations and campaigns. She also explains why designers should reach out to climate scientists to collaborate as climate change needs a rebrand. Listen to this episode on: Spotify, Apple, Google and other places you get your podcasts About our guestKatharine Poole is a Climate Change Specialist and Designer with a Master's in Climate and Society from Columbia University. Most recently, she led the brand design for Twitter and climate journalist Eric Holthaus’ new local weather service, “Currently”. She’s focused on giving climate change the rebrand it deserves by integrating climate action with design.On the webkatharinepoole.me Ttwitter.com/katharinepooleMusic in this episodeThe musical guest is Alexander Roman from the band Free Paintings performing "She's Got Me Riding" from the album Free Paintings for Sale.Theme music by Casual Motive   Climate Design AssignmentsAt the end of each episode, we ask our guests what their ideal climate design project would be. They have four weeks with a class full of design students. We translated their response into a project brief that you can use for your class. Get Assignments   Follow Climify on IG   « Back to episodes   Episode Transcript[00:00:57] Eric: Welcome to Climify I'm Eric Benson, and I'll be your host this season as we talk to climate experts from all over the world. To help us design educators fight the climate crisis in our classrooms. And yes, I'm also a design educator. I've been teaching for 15 years here at the University of Illinois.[00:01:21] Eric: But even if you're not a design educator, listening to this show, there’s so much useful information jam packed in each. That you too can learn how to do your part to help reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.Today, I'm excited to have on the program. Katherine Poole. Katherine Poole is a climate change specialist and designer with a Master's in climate and society from Columbia University. Most recently she lived the brand design for Twitter and climate journalist, Eric Holthaus', new local weather service called Currently.She's focused on giving climate change. The rebrand it deserves by integrating climate action. With design. You can follow Katherine on Twitter at Katherinepoole. That's K AT H A R I N E P O O L E. And you can find her online at Katherinepoole. Me.Katherine, it's wonderful to meet you. I'm glad that you're here. And so, let's get started really with the basics, you know, who are you, what do you do? And, and where do you do it?[00:02:32] Katharine: I'm a climate change specialist and designer. I have a master's from the Climate and Society Program at Columbia University, where I studied. The intersection of climate and how it impacts the people, places and things that we all care about. Um, currently I'm specializing in brand design and content creation, some communication strategy for climate related organizations and campaigns.Previous to that, uh, I was teaching climate mitigation and adaptation at Clinton University and also at a climate education nonprofit. And most recently  and currently working with Twitter and climate journalists, Eric Holthaus', doing brand design for his new collaborative weather service called Currently.[00:03:24] Eric: You're the perfect guest, because you know, both things that were, we wanted to talk about today, climate and design. And so how did you get involved in design then? Um, and how are you, uh, navigating working in both, both fields, kind of at the same time?[00:03:44] Katharine: I got into design because I felt that the issue with climate change was more of a messaging issue than a scientific issue. And the only way to really communicate that is to have visuals and assets and campaigns. That really emphasize not only the human aspect of climate change, but. The scale and severity.I think oftentimes we don't talk about climate. It's kind of a, a silent issue. Uh, that's changed in the past few years due to, you know, youth climate movements and more serious politicians that are trying to focus on it a little bit more. Um, but yeah, that, that's how I got into design. I'm pretty self-taught.I love YouTube. I love taking design courses. Um, I love learning from other people. And in grad school we touched a lot on design thinking, and I think that was a big influence into me recognizing that that was a big way to solve climate changes, to kind of use design wisely and respectfully in a way that works with communities, but also, you know, really does a powerful job at advertising the issue in what we need to do.[00:05:08] Eric: Yeah. So, you said it's a communication issue. So how do you think, um, design can, can help fix that communication issue?[00:05:16] Katharine: I think climate change needs a rebrand. I think that's really the key here. Um, climate change is pretty in my opinion, uh, elitist sometimes and has a little bit of an issue where climate scientists are oftentimes talking to themselves. And there are a lot of wonderful climate communicators that's for sure.But I think that for the most part, you know, people aren't reading academic texts, they're not reading the IPC report. They are looking online. They're looking at social media, they're looking at the companies they follow and. Uh, consume from, to kind of reflect what's going on. They're looking at meteorologist when the weather gets crazy.Um, and there are so few meteorologists that are making that clear connection and explicit connection between climate and weather. Um, so I think it's just not integrated necessarily into our communication structures. And you can see that, you know, based on. The failure sometimes of, uh, international climate negotiations, as well as the, the lack of climate questions.It almost like every year, you know, presidential debate, uh, mayoral debate. And, you know, this is something that's going to impact everybody, uh, whether they like it or not. And I think it's a lot easier to not talk about it, but it's also almost disrespectful not to talk about it, right. When people are already dealing.With climate change. Currently, there are a lot of people who are bearing the brunt of climate change first, and they're not necessarily in the global north, but I think the global north has obviously, you know, super complicit and responsible for the situation that we find ourselves in. So, it's important to keep talking about it and, and listen to not only the youth who are doing a great job. Advocating for a livable, but also the, the people who are being impacted right now, I think they're often ignored, and climate change is viewed as a, a later issue or a future problem, but it has been a problem. It is a problem and will continue to get worse unless we start really taking it more seriously and communicate.[00:07:44] Eric: Yeah, I love that idea of the rebrand and that's something where…[00:07:49] Katharine: We're trying.[00:07:50] Eric: Yeah. So, yeah, they kind of leads me to my next question for you is that, I'm really interested in how you got involved in all of your environmental justice and climate work, everyone that I've talked to, um, on this program and then out in the world that is involved with social justice, environmental justice issues had something that, you know, stirred them or some epiphany or something that they couldn't unsee. And I'm wondering how you got interested in this and, and why.[00:08:26] Katharine: I don't think climate change was really ever on my radar until I lived in New Orleans. And, um, in Louisiana they're geographically very vulnerable to climate change. Right. So. That really reinforced the urgency of mitigating and adapting to climate change. Um, just by living there, you know, I, I constantly encountered reminders of destruction and unpreparedness from city officials, um, from environmental disasters that really tested the resilience of the city and are kind of a perfect example of what will happen to other cities as well.Um, I think probably the, the, the real factor in me getting interested in climate change was, uh, taking a climate science course and listening to my professor, uh, at Tulane advocate for immediate action. While I was very aware that I was sitting in a classroom, I was probably going to be underwater during my lifetime.Um, it was jarring and pretty traumatic to be honest, but it was also motivating because I felt. I almost had more of a purpose by understanding the severity of the situation. And, you know, I learned a lot about the historical and current environmental injustice issues in Louisiana of which there are too many and got an understanding of how it mentally and emotionally, physically, and socially impacted.Right. Um, when you live there, it's pretty hard not to feel terrified during hurricane season.[00:10:06] Eric: Hm.[00:10:07] Katharine: Um, there's a lot of, yeah. Underlying anxiety, even when it rains, it floods, um, you know, people lose their cars every time it rains and have real issues that aren't necessarily attributed to climate but are impacted by climate.And I was lucky enough to witness firsthand all the land loss and cultural loss that we've had through the protective wetlands disappearing at extraordinary speeds. that's because of decades of oil development. Um, and they have the oil and gas industry has a pretty big hold on the state. So, it was really interesting to see the political dynamics and the climate dynamics that were influencing it.Um, and I think that just residing in a city with a lot to lose, um, not only solidified my interest in studying climate change, but yeah. Really made me understand the urgency in a way that I don't know I could have if I hadn't personally experienced it, which I think is the case with a lot of people right there, it's easy to ignore climate unless you see it, how it impacts the places you love, the people you love and yourself selfishly.Um, it's really. Kind of amazing to get that experience. And you know, there wasn't a lot of climate education opportunities while I was at Tulane but yeah. I really felt unsatisfied when I was about to graduate with my education in it. And there's a lot to learn online. You can definitely get a pretty good climate science and climate policy education for free online, but I felt that I needed some more formal education and climate physics and coding and trying to figure out how to really understand climate.In almost every aspect and get it interdisciplinary and education. So, I ended up applying to the program at Columbia, thankfully got accepted and, uh, here we are now.[00:12:17] Eric: So that one lecture was this like moment where you said I have to do something, this, this is immediate danger and I'm wondering. From the climate communication perspective, what did the professor do? How did he communicate this? Or she, I didn't catch what you said, but, um, uh, yeah. How did, how did he, um, grab you by your heartstrings or whatever, whatever it was to get you so motivated, what did they do?[00:12:51] Katharine: I think he was just honest. And I think that was something I had never really encountered before. I think sometimes professors, um, not sugar coat, but maybe don't really show how, you know, the subjects they're teaching have really impacted them. Um, rather it's a little bit more sterile and, uh, analytical rather than emotional and yeah.And I had never, in my life taken a climate science course, so it was really difficult, and I did pretty awfully for the first test or two, uh, and. Somehow, it just clicked. I think learning about it and hearing someone who definitely knows what they're talking about, tell you what's going on in a way that you haven't heard that before is really powerful.And there was always a lot of humor integrated into discussions, right? Like it was a traumatic class for sure, in the truest sense of the word, but it also was nice too. Laugh and to try to figure out what the solutions are. Um, I think there was just a lot of creative freedom, even though it was a science class.We didn't always focus on the science. Right. We focused on the human aspect and, um, and then also just being available to students. I think the fact that even after I failed the first test or two, um, That the professor didn't really give up on my interest and kind of took my interest seriously, even though I was very much struggling with trying to figure out physics when I had never done that before, uh, was really motivating and encouraging and, and, you know, treating people with respect and, you know, like they have what it takes to succeed, even if it's not evident at the.[00:14:44] Eric: As an educator, that's something that, um, we're supposed to do where not all of us do it, but we're…[00:14:51] Katharine: Yeah, exactly.[00:14:53] Eric: we're supposed to be there too. Help the student, no matter what level. Right. Um, you also said something there, which I thought was, um, so true, which is that just humanity in general, right?Doesn't seem to, to act or to take things seriously until it happens to them, right? It's this like self-righteous ego and you know whether it be a health scare, whether it be an accident or climate change, you know?Um, do you have any thoughts about how we as a society, we can change that, you know, psychology of don't wait until it happens to you, you know, put, you know, put your seatbelt on now and let's get bigger this out.[00:15:46] Katharine: Yeah. Lucky enough in grad school to take a semester long writing workshops seminar with, uh, justice writer, Mary Hagar. And she was very focused on kind of demonstrating the power of a personal story and, you know, personal narratives. And I thought that was really interesting. I, she created a, basically like a 12-week list. Reading and it was all themed differently, but a lot of what I read was something I had just never heard of before. And I was, you know, really struggling with my grad program because it was emotionally very heavy to go into class every day and realize, oh, we have real issues. And having the smartest scientists in the world come at you and say, you know, we're.We're not doing good and we're going to do a lot worse and feeling very helpless and powerless in that situation. So, it was nice to kind of go into a different environment where I could take what I learned about climate change and climate science and see how climate change really impacted people. And not only reading, you know, narratives from the past couple of years and seeing how the dialogue has shifted from, you know, silence to a more robust language and, uh, advancing that dialogue, but also going back and, you know, reading texts from James Baldwin and MLK and seeing that, even though they weren't explicitly talking about climate change in a lot of those texts, They were, and you could take what they said, you know, decades ago and shift a few words and modify a few things.And you're, you're in 2021 you're in the century. Um, you're, you're really realizing that even though we've come a long way in many aspects, that we're still also in a lot of the same places that we've been before. And I think that gave me a lot of comfort, right? To know that people have been thinking this way.Stuff for a while and have articulated. It was reassuring, but also frightening, right? Like if I could write like James Baldwin and not make a difference, what does that really say? I mean, not that he didn't make a difference, but you know, we're still in a big climate crisis, so it's tough. I think, you know, using the power of personal storytelling, respecting people's stories, listening to people's stories and.[00:18:27] Eric: Yeah.[00:18:28] Katharine: Kind of identifying yourself in those, you know, text was really a big, um, a big influence in not only me feeling more emotionally healthy when it comes to dealing with climate change, but also understanding why I was doing what I was doing and why it matters and how to better communicate.[00:18:52] Eric: Yeah, that's personal storytelling is something that, um, definitely people who make visual designs or photography or videography. Be important part of it. And one of the other conversations I had, we talked about videography or filming what climate scientists actually do to tell that story of what's going on there.Not just some, you know, making, what is, what is the, uh, some of the recent, uh, attacks on climate scientists that they're just rich living off grants, you know, like that, that, that isn't the reality. No,[00:19:28] Katharine: I wish.[00:19:29] Eric: Yeah. You said you felt pretty helpless. Like, um, I think that's common. Um, I, I feel that way a lot.[00:19:38] Katharine: Yeah.[00:19:39] Eric: Um, I try to push through that.I try to find little pieces of hope, big pieces of hope, you know, that's even better. Um, what do you do or what do you recommend people do when? They're feeling that way. Right. And you know, what can they look to for, to move past that sense of helpless helplessness and to into action or, or something that, um, keeps them motivated?[00:20:08] Katharine: Yeah.It's really important to allow yourself to kind of go through the stages of grief and really be okay with that. I think you can really get stuck in the anger stage or the denial stage. Um, but once you're getting through that and past that you can kind of have more of an acceptance of the situation.And I think that really frees up your, your mind to. Doing what you can. Um, there is a really good essay by my old professor, Kate Marvel, who is a climate scientist and a NASA research scientist. And she has an article about, you know, we need courage, not hope to face climate change. And the theory behind her argument is that climate change.Definitely going to be bad that there's no way around getting, um, the physics of that mitigated. Right. Um, you know, it's a lot is locked in already and so many around the world, whether people realize it or not yet are dealing with the traumatic impacts of it. Um, but we need to continue to fight and work really hard, especially if you can.Um, any amount of privilege in this world, uh, without the assurance of a happy ending, I think that's really something I've had to like to internalize. Like it may not work out and it's sad to, you know, live in a place like Louisiana and, and see, see the future almost when you're walking around and feeling that wow. That weight and heaviness around you, but it's worth it anyway, right? Like we need to do it. Um, and if you have the, you know, time and space to get involved and contribute whatever talents or perspectives you have, then you should, um, you know, it's not going to be pretty and it's going to be a really hard fight, but it's the only way to.Do anything. So, I think, you know, really internalizing that thing and the notion that you're doing this because you need to, because you want to, um, and you don't need things to be perfect or you don't need, um, that reassurance of a happy ending to keep on going. I think that's really difficult but embracing that courage.Ki. Um, so I encourage everyone to check out her article because she's much more[00:22:54] Eric: Hey marble.[00:22:55] Katharine: Uh, yeah, she is. She's a great climate communicator. Um, and I think that her perspective on that notion is spot on[00:23:04] Eric: Well, we'll find it and we'll put it in our show notes for everyone.[00:23:07] Katharine: lovely.[00:23:08] Eric: So once, once I get through the seven stages of grief, Yeah, once everyone does. Um, uh, what do you think like the, the number one thing that just an ordinary person in the country should do to get involved or make an impact, make a positive impact?[00:23:28] Katharine: I think the most important thing that needs to be done by everyday people to fight climate change is to talk about it. Katharine Hayhoe who is a climate scientist and professor at Texas Tech University has a wonderful Ted talk on that concept. And I, once again, encourage people to find that or watch that, uh, she basically says that, you know, climate.Is often not talked about either because people don't feel like they are knowledgeable enough to talk about climate, or they don't want to talk about climate. And I think that's true, but you know, when it comes to feeling unqualified to talk about climate, like you are the expert of your own life and you know how climate has impacted you, even if you don't necessarily know the physics of how it's impacted you, you can know.You know, the social aspects of how it's affected your life and the things you love and where you live. Um, so I think that.[00:24:32] Eric: Okay.[00:24:33] Katharine: It's important to break the silence on climate and kind of integrate it into all your conversations, even if, you know, if you're in a state where climate change, isn't really accepted talking about it as extreme weather or as justice issues is just as important as talking about, you know, the physical dynamics of climate.So, I think really. Trying to figure out ways to talk to your Uber driver about climate change or talk to, you know, your friends or your family about climate does one. Because not only does it help you enhance your own communication skills and your own thinking about the topic, but also helps you empathize a lot more where, where people are coming from.Um, and I think having that empathy and respect for people and how they think about the world, even if you very much disagree with how they think about it, can teach you a lot about how you need to be commuted, to be successful.[00:25:34] Eric: We need conversation starters for our, you know, sitting on the plane next to someone or sitting in the coffee shop.[00:25:42] Katharine: I can't say that you're going to make too many friends, but I think that, um, it could be a good experience. I meant for you to practice your effective communication skills, you know, your invites to parties may decrease, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. And then yeah.[00:26:04] Eric: It's a needed.[00:26:06] Katharine: Yeah.I think another thing that's really key that I think is really overlooked as a climate solution is supporting and elevating women's voices. Um, that's a really big thing we can do to take on climate change and. You know, documented pretty well that women and girls are disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate, especially when it comes to disasters and, you know, having to take care of families.Um, so I think that it's really key that we do what we can, where we're at to not only respect women and their voices, but also to provide or encourage that access to education. And, you know, in organizations. Promote women into leadership positions because, you know, I don't know if you've heard of project drawdown, but they say that,[00:27:00] Eric: I was going to say that it's like one of the top two things.[00:27:03] Katharine: It is one of the top things you can do. And even though, you know, people on an individual basis don't necessarily have right. The, the power to, you know, you know, make most of the boards of climate organizations. So women, I think that even in your own life kind of reflecting about how you respect people, um, as well as, uh, Encouraging the organizations or political structures that you are a member of, or you, you know, subscribe to, to really go all in on that climate change solution is a great thing that you can do with your privilege and also your free time.[00:27:47] Eric: Okay. That's great. Cause you know, my next thought is like, our audience is mainly designed educators. We're pretty privileged.[00:27:55] Katharine: Yeah.[00:27:56] Eric: um, we, uh, we're doing something that we love to do. And, um, helping others and doing it. Uh, what do you, what role do you think we play in, in helping fight the climate crisis as a, as a design educator?[00:28:11] Katharine: I think that, you know, not only do we need emissions reduction solutions to fight climate change, but we also really need education solutions, um, you know, educating and engaging. Children youth, adults and climate solutions and supporting their creativity, um, too. Implements and develop climate action projects in their own personal lives or in their schools or their community is really key.And I think that also comes down to supporting the creativity of teachers and professors as well. Um, I think that teachers and administrators seem really eager in my opinion, to take up this challenge, but a common concern and hesitation that I've found is that. They need more training, and they need the relevant learning materials to do so.And that's not often provided, I mean, you can be a kindergarten teacher and not have that, but you can also be a tenured university professor who doesn't have that support as well.[00:29:12] Eric: Oh, my gosh. Yeah,[00:29:15] Katharine: Yeah,[00:29:15] Eric: true. I mean, it's kind of like educating the educators really on this.[00:29:22] Katharine: I think that, you know, it's a big role for, you know, administrators. Because so many youth want to study climate, but they have very few universities or schools or programs to do so at. Uh, so I think that not only could it help admissions and retention for schools, but it also can really make a positive impact from a university.And it's something that. Uh, a slam dunk PR wise to do so, as long as they're, you know, not also taking money from, you know, fossil fuel companies, et cetera, which is always an uphill battle. But I think that educators should really be encouraged to figure out how climate change will impact their field. Um, because chances are it most likely will and then figure out a plan to.Integrate that into their teaching fully, um, and also be really opened to listening to what their students want um, what their hopes are and what their fears are, their concerns, and essentially just create that environment for them to feel empowered, to take action and not necessarily. Yeah. Traumatize them or, you know, um, make them feel scared, right?Like I think that's a big thing that, you know, even climate scientists really do.well. Right. They have a lot of their own fear, and they project that out onto their audiences. And I think that it's important for you, not only as an educator to kind of work through that fear and figure out, you know, I feel this way, but I'm not going to, you know, tell people how to feel.Right. It's there. It's their right to feel the way they need to, to cope with something like this. And to instill that kind of fear just isn't helpful in my opinion. So, you know, trying to figure out ways to empower them and facilitate that learning and engagement is crucial for design educators to be.[00:31:19] Eric: Yeah, I like that answer. I mean, I love that answer because that's hopefully what this podcast will be helping. Our design educator friends do is, is learn more about what they can do and how they can help. Um, And I also think your answer is, you know, very reminiscent to what you experienced in the class with your professor.That honesty, I think is super important. That's something I'm taking away from this conversation is I've taught, um, climate ethics in a design class. And it was more about what the students felt and how[00:31:54] Katharine: Yeah.[00:31:55] Eric were working through it. And they were emotional about it. They were upset, but I never shared my own.Um, beers and I think that's something I'll have to do going forward because, um, I think they want to hear from me based on what you're saying, that, that I need to be more honest about my fears and what I'm doing.[00:32:17] Katharine: I think students really look up to professors and kind of use him as a bellwether for how they should be feeling about a certain topic or subject. And even though you could very much disagree with your professor and some students make, you know, write you a Massy course review saying[00:32:31] Eric: Especially on grades.[00:32:34] Katharine: Um, I think that it's worth to experiment with, right? Yeah. Even if it's one class like opening up about how you feel, or if you're presenting a lecture presentation, you know, including a slide or just an anecdote about why you think it's important to be doing this. Um, I think that's really interesting and something that students don't have access to a lot, like I said before, like subjects are very clinical and cold sometimes and that emotional aspect, or just an understanding. Feelings is really lacking, um, sometimes, but yeah, I encourage you to do that. Yeah.[00:33:12] Eric: Well, this seems like a good time for a quick break. We will be right back after these messagesWell, you know, as a, as a design educator, myself and others who are listening might wonder what can they bring from climate science, your field, into our design classrooms. To a set of projects, um, uh, to maybe even a seminar, like what, what kind of things do you recommend is uneducated or bring from your field into ours?Um, to, to kind of continue that conversation. That's so important.[00:36:42] Katharine: I think that Brittany, even just a basic understanding of the science and scope of climate change is really important for design education. Um, it's hard for people to understand what's going on with them. That knowledge and toolkit to really not only see their role in the problem, but also to see society's role in the problem.Um, you know, design is about society. So, it's about how we interact with the world, how we communicate with each other. And if you're not including, you know, the greatest problem that humans are going to be facing for the next, who knows how long? Um, I think that's a real. A real failure. So, I think that understanding the physical world and the physics of what what's happening, even if it's really basic, um, is really transformative and also really cool.I think I never saw myself as a science person before I started to get into this, but I think that, you know, learning about stuff, mines not only helped me figure out how the world works and why it's so. Incredible and something worth protecting, but also how I relate to the world. I think that was really a key, right?Like if I can understand why something's happening, I think that it makes me feel more confident in my ability to explain the situation and also take action. Right. I think that's the whole reason I went to grad school was because I needed to learn more. But I also think that you don't need to get a master's in climate change to, to take action, right?Like[00:38:24] Eric: good to hear.[00:38:25] Katharine: Yeah.definitely. And you know, you know, economically sometimes it's very much not feasible to do so. So, I think that finding all the free resources you can, like utilizing, like I said before, like utilizing YouTube and utilizing free courses on climate, listening to lectures about climate, I think that can really help.And for professors, yeah.I think bringing in people or experts and communities who have been affected by design issues and climate change or climate change is important. Um, I'm a, like I said before, a big believer in the power of personal narratives and storytelling to facilitate change. So, giving some space for those communities and experts to talk and share about their stories and perspectives and experiences can really connect the dots together for designs.And, um, you know, climate scientists are always eager to talk. I think they are always looking for people to listen to them. Uh, I think, uh, you know, some of them are, you know, more high-profile than others. Right. And don't have the time to come to every lecture class you give, but yeah.You'd be probably surprised at how open they are to helping and teaching students, especially.Um, so I think facilitating those connections, you know, looking for, you know, the climate scientists within your university, uh, is really. Oh, low cost, high reward way to show students, you know, this is not only a career path for you, but it's also a way for you to integrate the things you love, which is design and the earth, hopefully.Um, so Yeah.[00:40:04] Eric: I'm glad that you're volunteering to come part in my class.[00:40:08] Katharine: no, no. We can find, we can find some people for[00:40:10] Eric: Yeah, but I also love the idea of having people that are or have been, or are currently affected by, climate issues. Also there, that's not something I thought of actually. , but that seems like. From your storytelling perspective. And as designers, a lot of times say they're storytellers, that's arguable and debatable.But, that story I think is super important. , not only the science part, but Hey, it happened. It's happening right now in my neighborhood.[00:40:40] Katharine: Yeah. And even if you can't get, you know, someone with a crazy personal story that will change your whole life, uh, in your classroom or on your zoom classroom, I think that. There are so many articles and storytelling already on the internet and it's free usually if there's not a paywall. So, I think that, you know, just putting that in the syllabus can be really influential.Even if students don't necessarily understand why, it's relevant to their, you know, graphic design course. I think that even if it's just an elective article, it can really help people. Not only deal with their own emotions about climate, but also see why, what they're doing. Then try to integrate climate into their work is so important and beneficial for not only themselves, but for their communities and the environment overall.[00:41:34] Eric: You mentioned syllabus. And so that's a great segue into my last question for you. And that is since you are a designer, um, and a climate scientist, I'm wondering if you were asked to teach a design class or project could be anything, um, about this issue, um, could be big, don't worry about funding or, or anything like that.Uh, what kind of, what, what would that be? How would you, how would you, uh, kind of meet all of your passions into, uh, this class or project? Okay.[00:42:12] Katharine: I would probably teach a design thinking class that's related to climate change. Um, I think design thinking has been really helpful in my personal experience to kind of figure out how to tackle problems and to be a creative problem solver. Um, and we touched a little bit on it in grad school, but I feel like it should almost be its own course.Uh, probably, definitely be its own course. Um, using design thinking. Um, you know, which is just essentially an approach to building solutions with, and for communities closest to the climate crisis is something that seems to be a really easy way to integrate climate and design. Um, you know, we're not trying to develop huge campaigns, um, which also could be a really fun project to work on, but it's more of the philosophy behind.What you're doing and how to get from point a to point B. Um, you know, you're scared, your client's scared, but, um, how do we overcome that and facilitate something that is not only aesthetically pleasing, but, um, not harmful. Right.I think something that bothers me a lot about creatives is that there are a lot of creatives who are, you know, needing to work for companies that they don't align with, uh, emotionally or practically.And it's no surprise that, you know, there's a lot of design and PR and advertising agencies that are really intertwined with the biggest contributor to climate change. And I think that that's something that we really need to. Start talking about more and there are really great organizations, but do talk about it, including climate designers.But I think putting a lot of pressure on those companies and for university, it's not funneling their students to those companies necessarily is, is important, but it's also. Not feasible sometimes economically we need jobs. Um, and sometimes those jobs are working at places that you don't ethically align with.And I think sometimes doing those jobs in those. Spaces is really important because I do think that a lot of change organizationally comes from within. Um, so if you have a lot of employees that feel passionately about, you know, cutting ties with fossil fuel advertising, um, it's hard to ignore that. And it's really important that creatives don't cause more destruction than good.Um,[00:44:54] Eric: I agree. Do you think we need, um, required design ethics courses?[00:45:00] Katharine: Always[00:45:01] Eric: Yeah. Cause I agree. We, we have,[00:45:04] Katharine: yeah.[00:45:05] Eric: we have a required one, so we're a little bit[00:45:08] Katharine: It's definitely important. And even if you're not a designer, it's important to understand the ethics of things. Um, I've been in a lot of classes at undergrad, even in grad school where, you know, there's a lot of climate solutions being talked about. Without a full understanding of the ethical implications that come along with them.Um, I can think of, you know, like geoengineering, which is something that's really accepted in society. Um, as a solution, you know, I would say most people who study ethics would say, you know, we need to really step back and focus on this and really sketch out the implications that will come if we do something like this.So, I think you can kind of take that. Into the design world as well, right? Like if you're doing a project with a client and they're greenwashing, or they're not doing something that is beneficial to society, um, kind of taking a step back and saying, okay, like, what are the ethics of me working on this project?What are the ethics of this project? And I think being more selective with, um, what projects you take or what you're even learning. Is really important, not only to maintain your integrity, but to also give a better future for the design field, right. You. don't want to be attached to, or stuck to, uh, organization or, um, a partnership that. May not be there sustainably for a while. So, it's good to set yourself up and say, Okay. we're working ethically. We're making decisions earlier. We can go to sleep at night and feel fine. Um, I think that's really something that a lot of creatives struggle with and it's not their fault necessarily. It's just more of something that needs to be taught when students are younger, Um,before they start becoming professionals for them to really. You know, walk the walk and talk the talk, um, rather than graduate and say, oh, like, these are my only options and I have to work for it, these six organizations. So, I think, uh, yeah, and also encouraging students to do things independently and creatively. Um, you know, even if they have to have a job that they don't agree with, or even if they're in a class that, you know, doesn't support the ethics, like doing that self-learning and designing things that you want to do.And really fueling your creativity is so important to not only staying sane in the climate crisis, but also to feel useful and not so helpless.[00:47:45] Eric: okay. Well, thank you for your advice. This has been, um, a wonderful time talking with you and I'm taking notes because put a lot of ideas for my fall classes and classes going forward.[00:47:59] Katharine: yeah, keep me updated.[00:48:01] Eric: yeah, well, I think that, um, you definitely, um, um, went to one of the top of my list here to people to come Skype into my class or zoom, whatever the whatever preferred method you would like to do.Um, and I also really would like to say that I appreciate your idea for a class. Um, I usually see design thinking classes about like, Entrepreneurship. And they use that process about like the next great widget. And, but I also see some about social issues too. Right. And, but I liked that semester long idea of let's just use this powerful design process that we have and put it to use over the biggest problem we're facing right now as a society.[00:48:48] Katharine: Yeah, definitely.[00:48:49] Eric: I love that idea. And I'm going to, I'm going to tell a lot of people about it and hopefully, hopefully they, uh, they invite you into LPG that helps them do that. But[00:49:00] Katharine: That'd be great. yeah.I think teaching students is, is really not only emotionally fulfilling and it's something that I've got the privilege of doing a few times now, but it also really helps you grow as well. Um, I think it's really important to, yeah. Always be learning from people younger than you and older than you.And making sure that you're setting up a generation for not only success, but to really be, um, meaningful with whatever they choose to do.[00:49:32] Eric: Yeah. It's like, uh, I think it's Antwan, Joe bear, he said to teach is to learn twice. Right. And[00:49:38] Katharine: Exactly.[00:49:40] Eric: I learned so much every time. My own faults. I learned things about the students, and I learned things that they teach me out in the world. So, you got to keep an open mind when you're teaching for sure.[00:49:53] Katharine: Definitely.[00:49:54] Eric: Well, thank you, Catherine. It's been a wonderful time sitting down with you and, uh, I really wish you the best of luck and, uh, we will definitely be in touch and thanks for, for promoting the climate designers’ group, because we're really trying to do what you're saying, and we should be doing so.[00:50:11] Katharine: Absolutely. Thank you. for having me.[00:50:13] Eric: Thank you.

Episode 3 – Lisa Zimmermann Lisa Zimmermann joins Eric to share her research and teaching tips in sustainable design from her day job as Lecturer at Griffith College in Dublin, Ireland. She laments how much we still don't teach in design school – from where paper comes from to the life cycle of the products we make, and how changes in our design curriculums don't come fast enough to match the quickly changing times. Listen to this episode on: Spotify, Apple, Google and other places you get your podcasts About our guestLisa Zimmermann is a German-Irish design researcher and educator specializing in "climifying" the profession of Communication Design.While her passion for advertising, copywriting and design persists until today, she realized early on that she couldn't work for traditional ad agencies for moral reservations towards working for clients she doesn't consider ethically sound.Her initial research into Sustainable Graphic Design Practice in Ireland, undergone during an M.A. in Design Practice led her to specialize in this niche area of Graphic/Communication Design. According to her findings, Sustainable Graphic Design can only be achieved through close collaboration of the design, print, paper technology, and IT sectors, and she made an effort to work in all four of them, to gain a deeper understanding of their point of view and pain points. An M.Sc. in Environmental Sciences at Trinity College Dublin led her to undergo research in environmentally friendly paper sizing options – paper sizing is the process of coating paper with starch and chemical ingredients to make it possible to print on it.Lisa currently lectures a broad range of students in the Design faculty of Griffith College in Dublin, Ireland in the areas of web design, typography, communication design, and digital tools/software skills. But rather than just integrating sustainability principles in the existing modules she teaches, she is also developing a "Certificate in Sustainable Communication Design" program aimed at professionals.Lisa is passionate about her dog Milo, gardening, learning, cold-water-swimming, and her new podcast "Conscious Communication Design" (available on iTunes, Spotify, etc). She also hosts workshops on Digital Environmentalism and wants to expand her network, so please get in touch!On the weblisazimmermann.comMusic in this episodeThe musical guest is Kurt Bielema performing "Passing Phase".Theme music by Casual Motive   Climate Design AssignmentsAt the end of each episode, we ask our guests what their ideal climate design project would be. They have four weeks with a class full of design students. We translated their response into a project brief that you can use for your class. Get Assignments   Follow Climify on IG   « Back to episodes   Episode TranscriptEric: On this episode of Climify. I'm joined by Lisa Zimmerman. Lisa Zimmerman is a German, Irish design researcher and educator specializing in clarifying the profession of the communication designer. She currently lectures abroad at a broad range of students in the design faculty at Griffin college in Dublin, Ireland.She specializes in the areas of web design, typography, communication, design, and digital tools and software. But rather than just integrating sustainability principles into the existing modules, she teaches, she's developing a certificate and sustainable communication design program aimed at. Professionals.You can also find Lisa as host of the conscious communication design podcast, which is available on all regular podcast platforms. You can also learn more about Lisa on her website. Lisa zimmerman.com. That's lisazimmermann.com And on Twitter and Instagram @CCDByLisa.[00:02:45] Eric: Glad to have you here. Lisa, we're excited that you, you're in Ireland and we're excited that you, despite the time zone difference, found the time in the day, to talk with us here on Climify, so I just wanted to start things off by, letting everyone know who you are and getting the basics, what you do and, where do you live?[00:03:15] Lisa: Thanks, Eric. And thanks for having me. Um, I think, um, if I were to describe what I do around, I, I usually say I'm a design researcher and also educator. Um, so my background is in communication. Yeah. And I specialize in sustainable graphic and web design, which I kind of call a conscious communication design for myself.But that's true too, like terminology mostly.[00:03:43] Eric: Trademark that, right?[00:03:44] Lisa: Yeah. Well, see, it's mostly due to sustainability having that like ambiguity, um, with, you know, often being interpreted as like a business term. And then I don't really like the term graphic design either because hardly anyone really works as just a graphic designer anymore. It's kind of like it's the, you know? The old term for a profession that doesn't really exist anymore.Like nowadays you're not just a graphic designer. You are also. You know, UX or web designer or whatnot, like it's, that's why I prefer communication design as a term. But then in the end, when it comes to sustainable graphic design, this is kind of like a coined term that we can find online when we're looking for, you know, what, the thing that we do, like you and I.So that's kind of why I need that term. And um, whenever I write or publish something online, I would always use, you know, sustainable graphic design, but I'm kind of trying to add web design to that as well. So sustainable web design, and it's kind of like, uh, another niche area, but there's more and more written about it as well.And that's fine. It's, it's very important for us as well. Um, to consider the website of things because most graphic or communication designers are doing web-based products as well.[00:05:02] Eric: And there's probably a lot of people. And I was in this category when I first was doing more UI /UX work, where I felt a lot better when I was doing it because I wasn't making these things that then, you know, we're headed probably to the landfill, but there's a lot more environmental impact with things that you make that are hosted on it.[00:05:23] Lisa: Exactly, exactly. And we need to consider their impact as well. Um, there's something I heard recently is if you have a very, if you have very little impact or the product that you're producing or designing has very little impact, it impacts almost gets like, uh, accelerated by, um, you know it but let's say an email, for example, it's very low in, uh, in, in file size.It's, what's, it's a couple of kilobytes. So, it is seemingly unimportant. If you think about, you know, storing an email, sending an email, keeping it in your inbox, not deleting it. Um, but then of course this adds up and because we're not considering it as much because it's such a little impact. Um, but that's why emails are dangerous.Really.[00:06:13] Eric: How many millions, billions of people have are doing that? Right? It's just[00:06:17] Lisa: Yeah.[00:06:18] Eric: not to leave them in an[00:06:19] Lisa: And especially this year, I find with everything that we do online or the, like, for example, my lectures are being recorded online, whether I'm doing them in person or not, they have to be like recorded in a stored in a cloud. But I just kept thinking, God, it's like hundreds of hours of me talking in an online cloud.And I haven't been warned by the system so far that any of those recordings have been deleted. So that must be. Hundreds of gigabytes at this stage of my online recordings and it's not just me. So yeah, it does make you, you know,[00:06:53] Eric: Now what's the climate footprint, all the zoom classes we've been teaching?[00:06:57] Lisa: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a tremendous amount of data that needs to be stored.[00:07:04] Eric: So, I'm wondering then, you know, you, most folks that I've met that are doing what we're doing, and social and environmental justice in the design world, or even outside of the design world has had some sort of like an epiphany or something happened to them that caused them to get involved. So, I'm interested in how you got involved in sustainable design and sustainable design education.[00:07:29] Lisa: Yeah, I love that question. And I'm sure you get some really interesting responses from other people there as well because it's something that is in the end, quite personal. I think whoever, uh, focuses on, uh, sustainability, uh, probably does it out of, you know, uh, yeah.For, for personal reasons, mostly, uh, for most people I'd say, um, I think I've always been very good at questioning everything myself. Yeah.Even when I was a kid questioning and not necessarily answering, but questioning was very good at that. Um, but myself, my own morals and beliefs, uh, but also my surroundings. So, um, I became vegetarian, I was 10 years old, for example, and then, uh, um, later on vegan then, but I think this kind of questioning nature has always been on my mind.Um, I think the aha kind of moment must have been at the end of my undergrad studies. In communication design, when I did my first internship, I did the internship as a copywriter actually, and then a pretty standard ad agency type setup and, uh, realized in just the three months internship.I mean, it had kind of dawned on me before that I might have actual issues working for certain clients, but this is where I realized, okay I can't. I can't actually do this job that I was made to do really. Like I dreamed all my life to be a graphic designer. It was like my big passion to design and to advertise as well, a lot of advertising as a thing itself, uh, communicating ideas and solving problems.That's my greatest passion, but I realized, yeah.[00:09:25] Eric: Yeah.[00:09:26] Lisa: I can't work for most clients really because, uh, I wouldn't agree with what they produce or how they produce it. And even in this three-month internship, half of the projects that I had to do, I struggled myself with, um, even doing those. So basically, I was at the end of my, uh, my undergrad, my education, and, uh, I realized I can't actually execute this job that I was dreaming to do, you know?[00:09:51] Eric: Lost at that point,[00:09:53] Lisa: Sorry.[00:09:54] Eric: I felt really lost at that point too.[00:09:56] Lisa: Yeah. Did you have the same kind of experience?[00:09:59] Eric: Uh, I mean, yeah, I would say so. I, I did work, um, in a number of different places where I just was like, yeah, like you. Uh, I just had a lot of ethical concerns about what was going on with what I was making. And I did work in some advertising for a while, and then it was completely inappropriate stuff and, and it wasn't even environmentally related.It was just, you know, um, you know, body image type and, you know, let's, let's Photoshop this and get rid of that. And it's just, you know, I just had some issues. All that stuff. So[00:10:41] Lisa: Yeah. I see you probably have the same experience though. In my education anyways, I don't remember having talked about that in classes, you know, like we actually had, we had a module which was very progressive, really. Um, it was called green design. Great lectures. We talked about kind of, it was kind of just touching though on, on the surface of, um, it wasn’t creating more like, he was introducing us to projects where you use sustainable biodegradable packaging or something like that. Um, in the end, I still think like it was progressive and it was great. Loved it, but it was very much just touching on the surface. I don't remember in any time during my education, having really had, you know, like debates about what should, what should we be doing as designers and what should we maybe refuse to do as well?Should we question? And I think I, uh, kind of, I tried to introduce that at any point when I think my students should be questioning something, I kind of like encourage them to. Um, so when I do like, uh, what are some of my modules are, um, I'm teaching Photoshop skills too. Not just communication designers, but to fashion and interior designers as well.So, they're like in the first year, and they're getting an intro to Photoshop, illustrator, and design from me. And whenever I do a class on like photo retouching, the fashion designers are obviously, oh my God, this is amazing. So cool. I can, you know, liquefy filter, and squeeze, and like, you know, those cheeks and make people skinny and eh, but yeah.I, I tried to like, you know, introduce the thought off, eh, having them decide what is ethical to do with a person's image, you know, um, very, very interesting to have them.I mean, I don't really have the room to really have a proper conversation about it, but I find that through practice, I can still encourage them to make up their own mind of what's. right and what's wrong.[00:12:46] Eric: So, you were out after school in an internship for three months in advertising at your dream job and realized it was not what you thought it was, and you were very, um, shaken by it. What did you do after that then? Like how did you get into where you are now teaching? Like, I was wandering back to school at some point, but where did you say I need to get involved in, you know, environmental or social justice issues?[00:13:20] Lisa: Yeah. Um, I had decided after my undergrad study is thank you to, to do a master's, um, and that's when I moved to move back to Ireland really as well, I'm originally from Germany. So, I did my undergrads in, uh, Berlin and then, uh, moved on to do a master's in design practice. Um, so very general, really.And I hadn't really thought about, you know, what I was going to do in that masters yet. Um, but moving to Ireland then, um, it wasn't very loosely defined, masters. I started and they weren't like giving us too many, like directions. We were very open and like, what were we going to like to write about? And I'm focused on sustainable graphic design and figured for myself because I knew that.The agency landscape in Germany, roughly from studying and internships and blah, blah, blah. Um, but it didn't really know the landscape in Ireland yet. So, I figured this is going to give me a good opportunity to get to know agencies, uh, potential employers, but also what sustainable graphic design is like in Ireland.So that's what I wrote my first thesis on as called sustainable graphic design in practice. Um, blah, blah, blah. But I was like looking at the overall landscape. So, I interviewed, uh, Irish graphic designers or people who like working in that field on their views. I kind of like tapped onto, um, into, uh, their beliefs in their practices really and realized it's just, it's not really a thing yet.Um, that's that was 2015. So, we have a little bit more going on now, but it's not that much. And definitely, it's not reached education. Yes. So, we don't have any modules or courses in that area. Yes. Um, it is. But, um, even after that thesis then, um, I had, you know, discovered it, this niche area for myself and I figured, okay, cool.So, this is, this is what I'm about. This is what I researched, and I know more about, you know, the practice side of things, but I didn't know what to Do I didn't really want to work freelance. I didn't really want to work for an agency. So, I've been like puttering around. Yeah. And I didn't feel confident enough.I'm like one of those typical cases of, um, people have like a great idea, but don't feel confident enough to actually go for it.[00:15:57] Eric: Yeah.[00:15:58] Lisa: I did another master’s then in environmental sciences, um,[00:16:02] Eric: you have two masters’ now?[00:16:04] Lisa: I'm doing my third one right now actually.[00:16:07] Eric: You should feel very confident than with all those master's degrees[00:16:10] Lisa: it took, it took me the three years to actually start going. I know it's ridiculous.[00:16:16] Eric: no, it's not. I feel that way. I feel the same way about a lot of stuff that I do. And once you put it out there, you automatically say, oh shoot, why did I do…[00:16:31] Lisa: I just wish for other people that they can, you know, kick-started a bit earlier when they have a great idea, because I wasn't ready for it. I always thought, oh, I don't know where the Irish market well enough. I haven't really worked as a graphic designer much except for freelance work. So, it didn't really know the, you know, the agency life.And I still don't really. And that's why I didn't feel connected. Enough to engage with designers to say, hey, this is, you know, what we should be doing, because I was felt like, well, I'm not from this country and I'm not, uh, you know, I'm not actually like working as a graphic designer either. So, who am I to tell you what to do?Like, you know, um, but I have to. Just finally overcome this. So yeah, then the masters. Yeah.And environmental sciences. I did some research on paper, which is really fascinating. Um, so I looked at, um, paper sizing recipes. So, paper sizing is the, uh, method of. Uh, treating pulp or like paper.And so, to make it printable, there are chemicals involved in that. And, uh, I looked at those and thought that was fascinating, which also made me realize though, you know, one of the big issues is a lack of collaboration between industries. Do you know how, um, I think in interior design, fashion design, sustainability is Yeah, or in other areas of design really is sustainability is ingrained in the whole process like certifications and labels and stuff like that? We don't really have that for graphical communication design. Not yet. No, not yet. Not really. Um, and I find it's also because. Been this eternal miscommunication between designers and printers, for example, who has always like, not like each other.And don't really like to talk about stuff, but, um, you know, talking about print processes and, and, uh, uh, how to set up documents properly to avoid like, uh, to avoid paper waste, um,[00:18:42] Eric: these are the little fundamentals, you know, the overlooked things that you don't learn in design school. I had to…[00:18:50] Lisa: Right. Yeah.[00:18:51] Eric: …get, I did get yelled at, by a printer. And in my, one of my first jobs, you know, sent over a Pantone color, and didn't tell him about it. And, uh, you know, that caused a huge accident.[00:19:04] Lisa: Oh,[00:19:05] Eric: I didn't learn any of that stuff in school, but…[00:19:08] Lisa: …printers always hate us and I have full understanding for it because no one teaches you properly in, in, um, how to set up your documents.[00:19:20] Eric: there's so much to teach. That's one of the things[00:19:22] Lisa: Yeah, but it also has to be like a, it has to be a constant learning curve as well.[00:19:28] Eric: Oh, yeah.[00:19:29] Lisa: …we have to just collaborate better. And then the same goes with paper technology.I find that's the printers usually don't know anything about the paper that they're using. Um, and what's involved in the process, or when is my paper? Like how much, can I print on it and do with it until it becomes, not recyclable anymore? Like that's stuff that, you know.We still have to learn about and it[00:19:53] Eric: Oh, yeah. And I work with paper too. And I ask students, you know, where does your paper come from? And they have no… they don’t know that much, but…[00:20:03] Lisa: Yeah.[00:20:04] Eric: …does it come from? And, uh, and especially in North America, it's a couple of places and it might be the same in Ireland. Where does all the paper come from?And that's a good question.[00:20:15] Lisa: Yeah, yeah. That is a good question. Uh, well, all our paper really comes from abroad. Um, I don't think, I didn't find any paper manufacturing in Ireland, uh, in the past research, but yeah, that is a good point. And that's what is so interesting in Ireland as well that, um, you know, we are a small island, eh, obviously everything has to be imported, so.[00:20:36] Eric: right?[00:20:36] Lisa: When you're looking at, you know, using sustainable graphic design books, resources, most of them are written in, uh, in the States. Some may be in Europe, but then half of that, isn't usable for OCR and RN because general, you kind of have to consider the whole life cycle of the whole, of the product and if I'm using recycled paper, that comes from further than an FSC certified paper. That's from closer, you know, comes from DOK. And now with Brexit, it's all like a total messed up in many ways, but yeah, because we don't, yeah. we have to figure out where our stuff comes from. But…[00:21:19] Eric: …another podcast right there. Right?[00:21:21] Lisa: Um, yeah, I kind of was wondering about this stuff when thinking of, uh, you know, choosing sustainable printers, uh, which is often like, you know, mentioned as one go-to kind of method for systemic graphic design, you know, pick your one good printer eco-friendly printer that prints with soy inks and, um, use recycled papers or certified papers.And I couldn't find any. So, what do, what do I, what we have, I found one now, but, um, I still wonder what do I even recommend? You know, if I do a talk over, have a conversation with either students or designers do say, um, she was a sustainable printer, but then that would be in the UK. So, you would have to get that shipped over here.[00:22:10] Eric: Right.[00:22:11] Lisa: be very sustainable or do you talk to your local printer and see what you can do with them? And it might be not soy-based inks, but at least you can work with, you know, the process of the papers. Yeah. I don't know. This is all, yeah. It's very difficult to make those decisions.[00:22:29] Eric: Yeah. Yeah. And you've mentioned, sustainable graphic design, many times or sustainable design. And I'm curious, you know, since you have to work on your third, master's now, like how do you define it? And, and, um, are we getting close to it yet?[00:22:44] Lisa: Great question. Yeah. Um, I define it for myself, sustainable design in general, as I'm looking at the whole life cycle of a product or service of anything that we produce and looking at each individual step and trying to optimize it. So, each individual step within their life cycle. How can we optimize it, how can, we reduce the environmental footprint of everything that's involved?So that's kind of why we can't ever reach, you know, sustainability. I mean, you know, it's always about the reduction of the impact, cause we're always going to have an impact. So even if I, even if I managed to produce something that is, uh, not being down cycle, but, you know, doesn't lose in value when it's being, when it's staying in the cycle, basically, even then I'm using resources and we're talking a lot about carbon neutrality and neutral.What is that word?Being, being carbon neutral, being carbon neutral, which for a lot of companies means offsetting. Do you know? Does that actually mean being neutral? Not really.[00:24:01] Eric: Not really. No[00:24:02] Lisa: to me, it's like, it's like, uh, I'm still sitting. And then I go to confession and, you know, to say it in traditional Irish Catholic[00:24:11] Eric: Confession.[00:24:12] Lisa: right.It's like, yeah, so you, so you sin, then you confess and then you're forgiven and Okay.So that's kind of what I don't know to me, that's what, um, offsetting means in the end. I mean, of course, it's kind of, it's better than not doing anything, but is that solving the issue? So, we're always having an impact, um, but we need to work on reducing that.So, we can't ever have the perfect sustainable product, whether that's a service or, you know, in communication design, it would be like a web or print product most of the time. Um, or, um, any tool of communication, really.[00:24:51] Eric: Lisa, let's take a quick break for some commercial messages.[00:27:20] Eric: I wonder that you know that because I know when I was involved with finding out about sustainable design and maybe you as well, I looked at it as like, okay, we need to do this. This makes sense. And we need to minimize our impact. And now I'm a design educator. I'm older and you are too. And there's this thing called the climate crisis.And that for me, really jumpstarted the. You're like, I need to do more. Right. You know, uh, there's a, there's a clock that's ticking. And so, I'm wondering for you, like you're a design educator, you're a designer. What do you think designers and design educators can do best to help fight, uh, the climate crisis draws down those emissions?[00:28:19] Lisa: Um, I think every single person on the planet has, you know, has to be aware of their responsibilities, but. A designer graphic designer specifically should be aware of. There is because we have a lot of influence. Like our job is literally to influence consumer behavior that is kind of, you know, what we do.And so, we need to be really aware of that responsibility and, uh, whatever we do with that responsibility. So, we have to ask ourselves, you know, which w what is it. Ethical and what isn't and when it comes to what isn't, you know, what can I do about it? Um, I think that's, uh, that's kind of the main thing.Um, as an educator, I'm trying to have my students be aware of that, of the influence that they're having, that there, the impact that their job is going have. So that they can build their own ethical framework. Hopefully, that's kind of, I think the ultimate goal is that students learn to decide for themselves what's right.And what's wrong. And I do have a bit of hope there that, um, I find the new Generation Z that's coming up there, you know, the Friday for future guys. They're, they're amazing. And that they're. Raising their voices about stuff that we've all been, you know, screwing up for them. Um, and I think I have high hopes that they are going to be a generation that enters the workforce saying I'm not going to do that.You know, like as in, you're giving me a task and I'm not agreeing with it. And I'm just saying, no, I think so far, we've all been, I think, eh, with. Generation Y is kind of like started to question this a little bit, you know, and like started wanting to have like a different work-life balance and questioning work hours and work ethics.But I'm hoping that with, you know, that we're getting to a stage where we're all questioning, whether what we do for a living. It's like the right thing to do and not just what we do for a living as a job itself, we all need to do our jobs like, but, um, in practice, I think that means also saying no to a client or educating them.And that's kind of part of sustainable design. I think that, uh, If a client is completely disagreeing in principle with my beliefs, I might be better off seeing no one. I'm not going to work with them. I'd rather focus on someone else. And I know that's a very bold statement. Um, I used to be very wary of, of seeing this, but thankfully there's more, uh, sustainable designers popping up and they're, they're saying the same thing that we need to, you know, um, make mixed selections as well with who we work with.Um, and even if we don't want to do that, where, you know, we see potential with the client in, in maybe shaping the way we can communicate for and with them that maybe we can, you know, like I don't have to, she was, if I work as a designer in an agency, I don't necessarily have to say, okay.I'm only working with, you know, XYZ clients now, which would be very limited.But we maybe with some, I could say, okay.do you know the idea for this ad campaign is not really, you know, what we can, what we should be doing, or if you have any concerns, we raise them and just say, you know, it's, not the right thing to do? So, steering them into the better correct direction of that.[00:32:13] Eric: Yeah, you're going to have to know a lot before you get there. Right?[00:32:17] Lisa: Yes.[00:32:18] Eric: that's our job as educators, right. To help them, our students, get there. How do you, how do you help your students?  I think there's kind of a two-part question for me cause, uh, I think there's, there's a couple of components here.I think the first part is like, how do you get your students to that information? Right. As an educator, I know you said there's not a class in Ireland about this, but you can kind of do that in other ways. Um, and too, I think, and a lot of us as educators I've experienced, you know, Gen-Z and all the stuff that they're going through. How do you get them from a mental health perspective to not just be apathetic and sit back and you know, not do anything, you know? So that's why I think it's a two-part question, get them the information and how do you, how do you handle like the mental health side of it?[00:33:16] Lisa: yeah. that's, that's a good one. It is tough. Um, I've been doing like a heavy load kind of project with, my very small communication design class last year. And had some of them really struggle with, like, they were able to decide themselves in the project, which, uh, the ethical dilemma they wanted to tackle basically.Um, so they chose. Well, all the topics were very, um, heavy from like mental health too, um, uh, voter suppression and to violence against women. So, they all had like very like heavy topics and some of them got like personally yeah, very personally involved. And you could see them like getting worst stage every week, you know, it was, uh, yeah.Difficult.[00:34:09] Eric: yeah.[00:34:10] Lisa: Yeah. It is a very important question. That's true. Um, I think so going back to the first part of your question when you're giving them the information, um, it's definitely something that I'm like in, uh, there's two sides to it. I think, uh, you can like all of us that are involved, in this trying to make our profession more sustainable.You know, uh, reducing our environmental footprint or raising awareness, we can create communication ourselves. Um, we create, you know, work on the curriculum, and include it that way. So, I'm working on my own course right now; a certificate course in sustainable graphic and web design that I'm looking to propose to colleges, uh, that would be aimed at professionals though, as an add on, uh, uh, after, you know, either having worked in the industry already or directly after their undergrads.And, um, so, you know, designing an online course could be, could be a way to go, but also, you know, we can, we can use are, um, besides our regular teaching, any other means of communication, it seemed the most sustainable graphic design courses I've seen popup were like privately organized. So, there is, um, A little Fox design in Canada.There's a Domestica course. There's a LinkedIn course in design. And then I think there's one other Australian one. So, they're all like, uh, privately organized to not through an Institute of higher education institution.[00:35:50] Eric: with that.[00:35:51] Lisa: Like to know, but, um, it's, it's still like, it's, it's a trend. Definitely. I think.And they might be easier to clean Sue me, you know, most of those are like overall it's like video footage of like two to three hours. Um, so maybe that's, you know, easier, more palatable to people, easier to digest. Um, you don't have to commit to like a whole, you know, whole certificate courses.[00:36:16] Eric: Yeah. Well, I also think it's back to what you were saying a little earlier is that you have to teach these students so many things on an undergrad level with printers and, um, basic fundamentals and then advanced techniques are that you run out of time. Right? And I see a lot of sustainable design courses at the grad level more. So, and maybe that's one of the reasons why are not enough people, not enough people can teach it.[00:36:44] Lisa: True. Yes. There are not enough people that can teach it. That's for sure. Um, and it takes a long time to change. The curriculum often existed in existing chorus and undergrad courses, isn't it?[00:36:58] Eric: A lot of red tape. I, I went through this, and it took like, I, I can't even tell you how many years, like three years.[00:37:06] Lisa: Oh, wow. Amazing. What you managed to change the curriculum of your work.[00:37:12] Eric: Yeah. Yeah.[00:37:13] Lisa: and integrate sustainability.[00:37:14] Eric: All the people who taught there to do it.[00:37:17] Lisa: Amazing. That's fantastic.[00:37:19] Eric: a success story, but[00:37:20] Lisa: That is a huge accomplishment.[00:37:23] Eric: I don't hear enough of those success stories. That's the, that's the problem.[00:37:27] Lisa: Yeah.So, in the college where I currently teach, um, the communication design course, it's like a three-year course, so it's very new still.Um, so it's also for me is like a relatively new, like I'm in my third year of teaching now still wanting to be new to teaching, you know, where do I start? Like integrating those. But I have been asked to like, you know, eh, uh, look over existing modules and I can integrate stuff. So. And teaching the typography module, for example.So, integrating, um, concerns around accessibility and diversity, um, into the curriculum, wherever I can, I would, you know, drop those things in. So, when I got a chance to, uh, revise modules, you know, like giving my input there. And even if you can't as an educator, if you don't get the chance to modify that you can still in existing projects where you can write your brief specifically.So, they include, you know, something. Um, so if I have them do a product design or would use, you know, uh, specifically brands that already are in that area. Or making something more sustainable. Um, but I find it even more important because I noticed, I think, you know, the first year with my students, I did a lot of.They kind of figure it out very early on. That was kind of my direction. You know, I had to do like a recycling bin labeled project, for example, and they, sometimes it felt a bit like they're doing it for me or they're doing it just because, well, it's how I chose the brief. Um, but. I try to kind of sprinkle it in with regular briefs as well, and kind of make them question their own thoughts or medium as well.So, if we're seeing, I mean, good communication. Would generally be more sustainable and you know, like it does go hand in hand very often. Like, um, even if you advertise for your, uh, local takeaway, would they're printing out brochures and distributing them to thousands of, or hundreds of households, um, would that be the best means of communication, or would online ads be more successful, like always considering, you know, which medium would be the best platform so that we're not wasting resources and it doesn't, it's not really print versus web. It is an overall consideration of what's the best means of communication.[00:40:16] Eric: Yeah, for sure. I think your advice to educators, who don't have the sustainable design class, but to sprinkle it in, as you said is perfect. I experienced that when I first started teaching too. I called it… I wanted to give the students the soup, but I couldn't give them the soup. So, I had to put vegetables and all their little classes.So, they, they got, they got it[00:40:39] Lisa: It's a nice metaphor. Yeah.[00:40:42] Eric: Yeah. The few times that you are frustrated about the lack of classes, especially in Ireland, especially in your school. So, I'm giving you the opportunity here. Creating a dream design course. Maybe it's a project curriculum. However, you want to frame it on sustainable design on, you know, the planet and the climate crisis.What would you create? What would it be? And it could be as big as you know, don't worry about money. Don't worry about bureaucracy, but what, what would you, what would you want to create?[00:41:17] Lisa: Yeah, it's good. It's a difficult question.When you tried to prepare for this course, I've thought about it, you know? Especially because I am currently creating a course myself. So, it made me wonder, is this my dream course? I mean, it should be obvious, but it's, um, it's, it's also considerations of, you know, what's feasible and what makes sense.And I'm still. I still have to like, figure that out. Most, mostly, really is my, is my market even there, you know, so what I'm currently designing is a certificate course in sustainable graphic and web design. I'm envisioning a three-module certificate. Um, so we would have one module for general business practice.One based around printing and one based around, uh, web products, uh, or web design. Um, and this would be aimed at professionals. But of course, when we talk about, you know, changing the curriculum of, uh, for undergrad courses, that's really what it should be like they would, they ultimately, there shouldn't be a need for a certificate course, like the one I'm designing right now, because it should be part of all the undergrad courses already,[00:42:36] Eric: Yes.[00:42:38] Lisa: but we need to get there somehow.Like, there are only very, very few people in Ireland that I know that are, you know, even concern themselves with sustainable graphic design, um, very few people. So, we don't even, we wouldn't even have the educators for a course, really. Um, so we need to educate all of us, suppose, but it's, it's difficult.Isn't it? I don't know how you do it. Like, how do you talk if you, you, if you're in the street and you meet like your box standards, I do know, sounds awful now, but like a regular graphic designer? How, how do you tell them what you do or focus on without sounding demeaning or, you know, like they are doing something wrong.[00:43:28] Eric: Oh gosh. So, you're flipping the table there. Okay.[00:43:30] Lisa: Sorry,[00:43:31] Eric: Yeah, no, it's fine.[00:43:32] Lisa: I don't have, see That's what I mean. I'm good at asking questions. Not so good at answering.[00:43:36] Eric: That's a great question. You know, I'm, I'm, um, I'm, I'm even terrible at explaining before I was doing this. Like what I did as a, as a designer, you know, I remember telling people like, I'm a designer. I do, you know, graphic design or I do digital work and they would always ask if I was a fashion designer or, you know, furniture.And so. When I've. So, when I give, so when I get into that point, you know, I'm talking to other graphic designers about it. I do feel like you said, I do feel like I'm talking down[00:44:11] Lisa: Hmm.[00:44:11] Eric: I don't, I don't like that feeling because it makes me, you know, and I'm sort of elevating what I do. You know? Like, why haven't you guys thought about this?Why are you still, and so the few times where I have been asked that question, um, let me think, um, Geez. I think, I think I was just sort of saying to them, like, um, I really consider, you know, the environmental and social impacts of the things that I make. It really is concerning to me. And I usually don't get many follow-up questions after that.So, I don't know if it would. Good or they just were like, I don't know what she means, and I don't really want to talk about it anymore. That's a really good question. I, how about, do you have a better answer than I hope you do because mine[00:45:03] Lisa: Um, not really, but I think that's, what's been holding me back the whole time in like getting out there and getting my knowledge out there. Um, is that. I didn't feel confident enough to stand there and teach people who are doing their job for God knows how long, longer than me anyways. Cause I didn't really practice it that much.Um, and telling them what to do that can't really be the answer. But I think, um, I'm getting there now because I realize it has to be a conversation that always has to remain a conversation and an iteration process anyways. So, I can only get more knowledgeable on how to approach them if like start talking to them and[00:45:47] Eric: Yeah.[00:45:48] Lisa: have to start.Doing workshops with people and maybe calling them workshops rather than talks or presentations. And so that it becomes clear that it's a, it's a two-way thing. You know, it's not me telling them what to do, but rather me questioning with them on what we can, how we can do a better.[00:46:06] Eric: Well, you do ask good questions. So that would be, yeah.[00:46:09] Lisa: Thank you. But I think that's, that's kind of, all I can recommend as well is like constantly asking ourselves.Like, is it right? What I'm doing or is there a better way of doing it? And that's all we can do. Really. There's never a good, perfect answer. A solution to anything.[00:46:27] Eric: I mean, I think the first two people I've interviewed on this podcast are climate scientists. The question to them was, you know, what can we do to stop our climate crisis?[00:46:42] Lisa: Hmm.[00:46:43] Eric: their number one answer was she got to talk about it. Both of them said this, you need to talk about it and then reflect upon it.Right? And so that's where that's the two-way dialogue you're talking about. It's not just you lecture like empty vessels and they, and they learn everything from you. It's, it's a back and forth.[00:47:03] Lisa: Yeah. Yeah. That's very true.[00:47:05] Eric: We're coming up on time here. I wanted to give you a moment to since most of our audiences are design educators as a design educator, yourself, what kind of advice would you give to another design educator? Or just in general, if they're interested in this topic, how should they get started on it and how could they learn more so that.We can change this issue of all these, you know, non-sustainable design classes or it's just as a bedrock foundation of what we do in[00:47:38] Lisa: Yeah. Um, Hmm.[00:47:46] Eric: How do we change the world, Lisa, please give us.[00:47:49] Lisa: Yeah, let's start. So, number one. oh, okay.I think the most important thing is that, that we are aware of our responsibility as educators. Um, which is a big one and can be very frustrating to think about it because it's, it's a massive responsibility, but in the same way, making our students aware of the responsibility, the whole world, like, they're not Okay.So, I'm silly when I say that now, but it's not like they're not just learning a profession. It's more like you're going to be communicators and they need to decide on what they want to communicate, um, and figure out for themselves, you know, what's important to them and whatnot, what isn't. Yeah.So, I think, yeah, making them aware of their responsibility, that's the one thing, and that's what we can do.Like every single day in every class, you know, pointing out why something is important. That's part of teaching anyways. Um, but why. Why they should care as force about, uh, about certain issues and how it ties in with or a future job? Um, that's probably, that's, that's one thing. Yeah, And apart from that, whether my colleagues that are listening to this, um, are designing their own courses, which would be great, whether they’re integrating it into the existing curriculum by.Maybe focusing the next brief on something in that direction, or even phrasing the brief so that students have to ask themselves certain quests. That can be one thing. Uh, even if you work with existing briefs, you can focus your attention towards a questioning kind of, of, um, inquiry, which is, you know, part of problem-solving anyways.Um, but directing them, I suppose, into, uh, sustainable or environmental considerations and. Apart from that, we need to all kind of organize ourselves a bit better.I think the Climate Designer’s platform is, is a really good start and. I kind of hate that there aren't really enough people in Europe, uh, joined up there yet.So, if there are any Europeans listening to this, please join the chime and designers because that's, you know, that's what we need. Not necessarily this one platform, but it's. What we can, we can use social media, we can use whatever, but we need to connect all design educators. We need to connect, uh, and not just in the, in the standards kind of conference national level.Um, but internationally, uh, because we can learn from each other on how we can change how design has been taught. Like we're in a massive kind of a curveball right now on how design is changing. Um, especially communication design changing so much because there's more that's being asked of us of the professional of the job.Then a couple of decades ago, like it's, it's constantly evolving, and sustainability has to be part of it. So, we need to figure out how we can integrate it and maybe, maybe figure out how we can change the curriculum in general, a little bit quicker. I'm still very new to the education system, but it is a bit frustrating when you're coming from when you're used to. I didn't know, even working in corporations, you know, where policies can be changed quite quickly actually, but then you, then you enter the education sector and you're like, oh yes, this is the norm for the next four or five years. And then we can like, kind of talk about it, you know? And it's, it's, it's very frustrating.[00:51:57] Eric: I laugh but I’m crying inside when I hear it.[00:52:01] Lisa: Yeah. And I still have to like figure out how all of that works, but I would wish that you know, we would, we were doing more like, uh, even within my college where there would be like more round table discussions on how we can change things[00:52:21] Eric: Yeah.[00:52:21] Lisa: keep them up to date.[00:52:23] Eric: Yeah, I a hundred percent agree with you. We need that stronger community and the things that I learned about teaching sustainable design weren’t only not just my ideas. They were ones that I talked and learned with other people, you know like it's the way that we build it up. You know, it's[00:52:42] Lisa: Yeah.[00:52:43] Eric: not one person doing it all.[00:52:46] Lisa: Yeah.[00:52:46] Eric: a heroes game here where we all need to be individual heroes.[00:52:52] Lisa: Yeah. That's very true. Yeah.[00:52:55] Eric: Well, Lisa, thanks so much for[00:52:57] Lisa: Thank you, Eric. This was a great conversation.[00:53:01] Eric: It was, it felt like I could go on a little bit longer, but, uh, trying to keep it to 45 minutes, but, definitely, thank you so much. And, it was great having you.[00:53:11] Lisa: Thank you. Eric. It was fantastic to talk to you.

Episode 2 – Gerardo Celis Dr. Gerardo Celis, a plant ecologist, joins Eric to share his research and consequent predictions on permafrost thaw in the Arctic, its effect on global warming, and why designers are amazing and needed collaborators to help better tell engaging stories that detail the day in the life of climate scientists and visualize the data from their work. Listen to this episode on: Spotify, Apple, Google and other places you get your podcasts About our guestGerardo Celis is an ecologist with a broad interest in terrestrial ecosystem processes, in particular how anthropogenic impacts influence these processes. He is currently working on understanding the impacts of rising Arctic temperatures on the C balance of Arctic ecosystems. He has also studied the role of exotic invasive species in the trajectory of ecosystem recovery after disturbances and identifying management methods to enhance and/or speed up ecosystem recovery.On the webwww.gerardocelis.comwww.researchgate.netMusic in this episodeThe musical guest is Joseph Shipp performing "Where are You".Theme music by Casual Motive   Climate Design AssignmentsAt the end of each episode, we ask our guests what their ideal climate design project would be. They have four weeks with a class full of design students. We translated their response into a project brief that you can use for your class. Get Assignments   Follow Climify on IG   « Back to episodes   Episode TranscriptEric: [00:01:02] Welcome to Climify I'm Eric Benson, and I'll be your host this season as we talk to climate experts from all over the world. To help us design educators fight the climate crisis in our classrooms. And yes, I'm also a design educator. I've been teaching for 15 years here at the University of Illinois.  But even if you're not a design educator, listening to this show, there’s so much useful information jam packed in each. That you too can learn how to do your part to help reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.  In this second episode, I'm talking to climate scientists. Gerardo Celis. I met hereto through a colleague of mine and was instantly interested in his research in the Arctic circle. Gerardo is originally from Costa Rica. With a PhD in interdisciplinary ecology from the university of Florida in Gainesville, where he lives and teaches. His research currently is focused on understanding the impacts of rising Arctic temperatures. And the C balance of the Arctic ecosystems will learn about what all that means in this episode. You can find out more about gerardocelis.com. Gerardo it's, it’s wonderful to meet you. We're excited that you're here on Climify. So, to begin, let's start by just getting the basics who you are and what you do, and where are you? Gerardo: [00:02:48] thank you for having me here. I'm really delighted to be here and kind of share, and I guess my 5 cents to the story and my name is Gerardo and I currently live here in Florida, the sunshine state, but I'm originally from Costa Rica.I'm born and raised in Costa Rica. And then about 2004, I decided to kind of continue my studies and do my graduate studies here in the us right here at University of Florida and my research area has been plant ecology. I'm a plant ecologist and I've conducted research from the tropics all the way up to the Arctic and some of the topics that I've been kind of working on, have been looking at ecosystem restoration.So, looking at degraded ecosystems, what would be the best way to kind of bring them back to, to a kind of functional form. I've also been interested in looking at the introduction of non-native species into ecosystems. So, looking at plant invasions, and then more recently I've been kind of up in the Arctic was looking at and looking at the ecosystem up there in the Tundra and trying to figure out how climate change is going to impact the Tundra in the Arctic.And so, we're looking at carbon dynamics. So, the big question is, is the Tundra going to be a net sink or source of carbon? Kind of moving forward in these future scenarios of climate change. And then I guess more recently now I've kind of switched gears from being mostly a researcher to I'm now more of a lecturer.So, I am a hundred percent teaching. Yes. A hundred percent teaching in agronomy. So, they were looking for an Agroecologist. And so, kind of my background in plant ecology kind of fit in that, but as I moved more into kind of an applied science, then kind of the research I've been doing before. And so, I'm in the agronomy department here at the University of Florida, which I started in December of 2019.Eric: [00:05:18] So couple years ago. Gerardo: [00:05:19] Yeah. Eric: [00:05:21] What was it like? Being in the Arctic, since you're from Florida and Costa Rica, what's the temperature like? Gerardo: [00:05:28] So yeah, no, it was, first, I, I, I go only in the summer, so I definitely wasn't there for those really frigid months, but it, it definitely took some time getting used to, I didn't have obviously.The wear and kind of equipment and stuff too, to live in that kind of environment. But we had an experiment there where we were warming the Tundra with some snow fences. And it's kind of counter-intuitive that you would accumulate snow. Kind of warm the Tundra, but it actually works as an insulator for, and those really frigid temperatures in the air.And so, our idea was to use snow, to kind of warm it. And get the soil temperature to increase. We're able to increase it about a degree Celsius and then kind of see how much, what, what, what would be the dynamics if that soil was too warm and, and the Tundra is, uh, they have a lot of permafrost, which is technically, it's a solid.Remains frozen for at least two years. And, and so the question is, once you start warming it, what's going to happen with that soil and the carbon that's in that stuff, Eric: [00:06:47] what's going to happen yet based on all your experiments. Gerardo: [00:06:50] So sadly enough, we've eh, our experiment has been running for about 16 years and we've been measuring the carbon kind of bets being admitted and up.And in that whole period and the trend right now is that it's emitting carbon. So, it's going to, yeah, it's not good because it's all that organic matter that's in the soil is being decomposed and that's outpacing the amount of carbon that's being up taken by the plants that are currently there. And so…That's one of the big kind of questions is if we're in this trajectory, it's always, it's going to be kind of a positive feedback where it's going to look at carbon. That's being released in warm up the, uh, the climate as well, because it's releasing Eric: [00:07:42] a feedback loop. So, it's constantly…Gerardo: [00:07:48] you're increasing the carbon.Right? Oh, uh, climate change, which is the main gas is CO2 or carbon dioxide. Eric: [00:07:56] So you're, you're a diagnosing a lot of problems up there in the Arctic. You also locating solutions there as well, or Gerardo: [00:08:05] so, unfortunately not it's something that I get a lot. I'm kind of just a bearer of bad news. Yes. And, but I think, yeah, the definitely where we're collecting a lot of data, it's, it's a lot of unknowns there.There's kind of two big theories in the Arctic is that they call it the Arctic greening or the Arctic brown. So, we don't know. if over time, it's going to switch just because the vegetation is going to change and then it will be able to capture carbon. But right now, from what we've been experiencing, instead, it is changing another kind of important feature.There is that a lot of this soil has ice in the soil. And as that ice actually melts, you get a lot of slumping of this. And that creates another big dynamic of moisture and things. So, we're trying to figure that out as well. And methane then comes into a picture that can be in an important gas as well.Eric: [00:09:11] Yeah. And, and maybe we can educate some of our listeners. Methane is, uh, tell us about methane as a, as a greenhouse gas. Gerardo: [00:09:21] So methane is, also, it's about 43 times and higher capacity of retaining heat than carbon dioxide, but just by the mere volume of what's in the atmosphere and how much it's being exposed is a carbon dioxide tends to be the one we talk about the most, Eric: [00:09:42] rightGerardo: [00:09:43] but methane like, carbon dioxide are these gases that help capture the heat. That's aerated from the, from the Earth’s surface, then it gets captured and then kind of a reality back to the soil and to the earth. And so, but, but methane… Normally when, when microbes are decomposing organic matter, they're either, if there's a lot of oxygen, they tend to then produce CO2.But if there's lacking oxygen though, the way they kind of decomposers is the by-product the product and that they kind of produces methane. So, this math thing goes up into the atmosphere and it's doing this. Warming effect that the main difference is that the residents' time, how long it can be in the atmosphere without it, then decomposing is much shorter than CO2.So, it won't remain the lifespan of, of my thing in the atmosphere isn't as long. Eric: [00:10:45] So there's a silver lining potentially. Gerardo: [00:10:49] Yeah. And so, so depending. Yeah. And so that's where you hear, like cows become a big issue because they need a lot of methane. Yeah. Rice patties are also, so when you think of soils that are inundated, they tend to produce a lot of methane because they lack the oxygen. Eric: [00:11:08] We usually do get a lot of work with climate and.  Most people that I talk with that are, are into some sort of environmental justice work or social justice work, have some sort of backstory or some like big epiphany that happened to them. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got interested in, in what you do as, as a scientist?Gerardo: [00:11:33] Sure. Yeah, my mine wasn't really an epiphany, but more of kind of a gradual interest in moving through my career. But I would say probably my father was my main kind of mentor that the person that initiated this, because he's a, he's an economist of natural resources. Eric: [00:11:55] Interesting. Gerardo: [00:11:55] So he does kind of evaluations of supply and demand of natural resources and trying to figure out how we can have like a sustainable system where our, where we're using our resources in a convenient way.So, I kind of had that background and in exposure as I at a very young age, I didn't want to go into kind of the mathematical and economist route. So, I've been, I started exploring a little bit more and I found that biology kind of like biological sciences was the area that, that really influenced or that I, that I thought would be a good fit with what I wanted to study.Eric: [00:12:40] Was that in, was that in like, when you were really young or in college? Gerardo: [00:12:45] So that was when, when I was really young, I really wanted to kind of understand these. Big crisis is we're having right. Cause we would, you would see all the time that we had all these different crises environmental crisis. I think the ozone layer was really popular back then and the nineties and talking about the ozone.And so, I just wanted to see how I can contribute to fixing some of these problems. And so that was kind of really young. Eh, my, I lived in a. When I was around five or six, I lived with my father, and he got a job in a research station in Costa Rica called CATIE. It's an agronomic tropical research station in higher education.And so, they had research plots all over the place and I would spend all day up there and just looking at the different experiments they have.  coffee, you name it. They had all these different experiments. I didn't understand anything of what they're doing.  It's really interesting. They had a I think they had one of the largest coffee collections of germ plasm in the world. And so, they have all these different coffees from different parts of the world, and they have bananas. They had a collection of bananas. And I remember there was a banana that had seeds in its things like papaya seeds, and I didn't know why a banana would have seeds in them.And then now kind of after learning genetics and understanding, we, we, we have kind of modified those bananas to let they don't produce the seeds they're there, but they're just like little speckles. Eric: [00:14:27] So they're genetically modified most bananas. Gerardo: [00:14:29] So they’re, eh, bananas than, actual banana. Two sets of chromosomes like humans, right.We have 48 pairs of 46 pairs of chromosomes. And so, what happens is there is um, the bananas crossed with, uh, a kind of a mutant that has an extra chromosome and or is missing a chromosome. So, then they have three sets of chromosomes and in that. Kind of mutation or that extra chromosome and doesn't allow it to, to become reproductive, but it still produces the banana.And this is, uh, a technique they use a lot in, in kind of adding. Chromosome sets, eh, eh, to either increase fruit size, increase the leaf. And so, this is something normal. It's not that they're modifying the genetics. It's just that they're adding more pairs of chromosomes. And so, so the bananas, what they call the triploid, it has three sets of, uh, of those chromosomes.Eric: [00:15:40] I knew nothing about banana genetics until right now. Gerardo: [00:15:42] Yeah. So yeah, the banana is, is it in theory should have seeds and so that, because it's, uh, it has no seeds, it can't reproduce and through seeds. And so, there's a lot of issues that have come up through. And kind of other diseases that they because it literally, they use, they clone each banana and it's almost the same individual that you're just reproducing and it's not crossing with anything because it just can't cause it's not producing it.Eric: [00:16:14] And so your father was working with both coffee and bananas. So, his fields are his plots. Gerardo: [00:16:21] So yeah, who's in charge of kind of the whole research area. And, and so they've been working with cacao. They had a lot of different kind of research areas, but yeah, I was exposed to that. I kind of like the biological side of things.I wasn't sure if I'm wanting to work with animals or plants. And then when I went to kind of my undergrad. It was there where I, I guess it's just having those really good mentors and professors that kind of motivate you. And those were all kind of in the plant science and that's where I kind of just took my path and decided to, to work with educators, Eric: [00:17:01] helping to guide.Gerardo: [00:17:03] Yeah, it's just those that motivate you. They kind of click that light bulb and then you just get really motivated. And, and so that's kind of why I went towards the plan, but I really, before the starting year, the university, I wasn't sure from wanting to work with animals or plants. Eric: [00:17:22] Well, as our audience is mainly educators, they can relate to having to mentor and guide. People along the way. And I know probably as your teacher now, you’re kind of understanding. Gerardo: [00:17:35] yeah. That we're definitely going to impact somebody along the way. Eric: [00:17:39] Well, let's take a quick break here for some commercial messages. Eric: [00:20:07] I'm sure you get our next question a lot, which is about climate change and how everything is connected, what we do in our personal lives and work.And there are a lot of, a lot of issues we're facing well. Uh, what, what do you feel is the most important. That needs to be done just by like people like us, everyday people to fight or to help solve the climate crisis. Gerardo: [00:20:31] Sure. I mean, I don't think there is a silver bullet for. For everyone. I think there's really kind of three things that, that come to mind that people should be thinking about.One is to actually study and try and understand what the problem is. Right? What, what is the actual problem? We hear it a lot, right. Climate change. Okay. What is the cause? What, what, where's it going and just understand the problem. And then I guess the second step is to then think about your own personal reality, right?What are, what are some of the things that you do that can impact that, that problem that you've kind of learned about? Right. So, the main culprit. You hear it a lot is this carbon dioxide and emissions and the burning of fossil fuels. So that the question is okay, based on your reality and in your everyday life, what are some of the things that probably have a high fossil fuel demand that you can reduce?Eric: [00:21:36] Like driving? Gerardo: [00:21:37] Driving could be one. Your diet can be another one. Maybe reducing the amount of red meat, you eat. Another big culprit is air travel. So, I think more than anything, don't, don't think of it that you're going to have to just stop the life that you currently have and not do anything, but I think it's still kind of gradual steps of figuring out audit, audit yourself.Okay. This is everything that I do, and I'm willing to maybe modify it. A certain aspect of my life to kind of improve it or decide to, instead of buying a new car, I'm going to slap some solar panels on my house or certain something that, that, that, but I mean, and I think. It just takes the effort to understand yourself before you can kind of decide what it is.Right. And, and, and then I think the next most important thing is to understand that other people have different realities, right. That what could be a solution for yourself might not be a solution for someone else. Eric: [00:22:44] Great point. Gerardo: [00:22:44] Yeah, because I mean, what if you're not immediate or in your solution was to reduce, not eat meat, right.Well then is that person does not have to worry about it. And so, but also, it's the reality of income as well. Like I just talked about. Putting some solar panels on your house, but most people probably don't own a house. And why would they want to put solar panels on their house? So, I think it's also thinking about the reality of that, that other people have different needs in different aspects.Like maybe driving less, but if you, your job depends on you driving, I mean, you're not going to take it. Eric: [00:23:22] Yeah, no. Your third point is really important.  I'm a father and I have a partner and a daughter, and, you know, they're on the same page for the most part is me, but I think we're at different levels of like investment in things.Gerardo: [00:23:35] Yeah, but I think it goes back to that point right where that's maybe a lack of knowledge of what those, what the issue is and how it's connected. Because I mean, if you go to the supermarket, right. And you're like, okay, I'm going to go vegetarian then, which of all the vegetables and fruits are you going to eat?And then the question there is like, do I eat an apple that's coming from Chile versus a local apple. Right. And so. There's a lot of things that, that you can kind of fine tune and get into the details. But I think there are different decisions that you can make and at different levels of complexity, but, but it’s all kind of like a circle it's like going back.Okay. I'm not doing this. It's probably because you're not aware it's an issue or yeah. Eric: [00:24:22] Well, speaking of households one of the many reasons we wanted you to come on the podcast, you’re married to a design educator and this, this shows for design educators. And so, you'd bring in a really important, uh, set of overlapping insights to the discussion.So, I'd like to turn a little bit about, a little bit, a little bit more about how designers. Help do some of the things that you mentioned, as we're designed educators here interviewing you what role do you think we have in helping with the climate crisis? Gerardo: [00:25:00] I guess based on my personal window into and its graphic design, right?It's not the whole sweep of design, but yeah, graphic design. I think it’s; it's just coming up with innovative ways to communicate the crisis. Right. I think we as scientists have, uh, kind of a very narrow window of how things get communicated. And, and I think, eh, the, you as design educators have kind of the capacity of dealing with the communication part of this crisis.But, uh, but I also want one thing that I've noticed from kind of my, my, my wife's kind of window of, of that world is that. Graphic designers have a very kind of intrinsic unique characteristic that I've noticed is that you tend to work. Diverse groups of subjects, right? Like today you might be working with a museum that's working and needs, uh, kind of the communication and, and, and all the graphic design for their, their specific need.And then tomorrow you're working with a realtor. That's gonna need to kind of promote their business. And then the next day you're working with a chemist. And so, you really have capacity to kind of find information from very diverse sources and then come up with a way to communicate it in an effective way.And I, and I find that very fascinating and interesting that at least from running around, like we were raised. Narrow tunnel. And we're kind of concentrating in our areas of expertise, but I feel graphic designers have this capacity of being exposed to these very vast levels of, of different and subject matters.And you're able then to kind of distill all that information and make it in communicated in a very effective way. But yeah, no, I think that's one of the things and, and so I really think it's kind of the communication.Eric: [00:27:09] That's, that's good to hear. Wanted to, to kind of build on that question here. You, you, you talked about your kind of slim window with, with your wife in terms of, you know, about design and son education. Um, what do you think in particular we could bring from the world, your world of climate science, into our world of design education, any specific things or general things that you think we can, we can look at?Gerardo: [00:27:39] Yeah, I think there's, I guess, one big area that I think, and it has to do with data. And, and I think one of the things that we struggle with that, and because academia and kind of like the scientific community wants our data to be presented, did in a very specific manner, which, obviously, it's not made for them assets.And so, I think data visualization is something that I feel that we could use a lot in, in kind of the expertise of graphic designers and help us visualize our data. And so, my, my previous employer was Northern Arizona university and they had a. Uh, centered there for ecosystems, sciences, and society, and they actually contracted, uh, he was more of an.Kind of, uh, artist and illustrator that helped us kind of get these really complex and I guess, subject matter and trying in kind of come up with a visual way in which we can explain what the research we were doing. So, I think that's one really important thing. And then I think the other one, in which, again, going back to.Seeing my, my wife in the process of graphic designers is, is that you're. Documentation of, uh, the whole process of, from the very beginning to the product that you guys have, you guys go through so many iterations, but it's all documented and that's part of the product right. In the end. It's all that. And, and I think from kind of our realm of data, like we come up, we have this figure that we've created.It has that thought, but there's the story of how you got that thought is kind of lost. We do kind of document, like we went out, we measured this this time, and we did this with this instrument. And so, there's, there's some information, but it's not very conducive to understanding. And I think that's one of the stories that we're missing from.And kind of explaining the data so that the public is more confident about it because I think that there's not now with all these conspiracy theories and people not understanding how like, oh, how do you know that this, this is the world is really warming? How do you know they're not making up the data?And so, I think we're missing that process of explaining to the public that this is a process. This is how we measured it. And in a way. Again, it's easy to communicate because if you put scientists to try and explain it, they're just gives you a Eric: [00:30:30] list of go over your head. Gerardo: [00:30:34] Yeah. It's just a recipe of instruments and things that were used.And so, I think that because of the graphic design community is so used to creating these kind of process books and understanding like what that whole irritative process and documenting it. I think we could learn from that or are these get involved in a way that that can help us then document cause even like picking.Pictures of our experiments were really bad at that. Like,we, we have this communication we have to give out, do we have any pictures of our experiment? Oh my gosh. Well, we have these. And so, we don't really take, we don't where we're kind of concentrated in producing the science, but not like the process of creating it, which is. Eric: [00:31:18] So tell the story of the data, Gerardo: [00:31:20] tell the story of the data.And I think that's, what's missing from people believing in the data because I mean, the community, the science community understands and believes it. But I think the public is becoming very skeptical, especially now with a lot of the environment that we're having is, is people are, are, are skeptical. Yeah.Eric: [00:31:40] And so you need a crew of. Photojournalists basically to join you, but the Arctic. Gerardo: [00:31:48] Yeah. Eric: [00:31:49] So I'll volunteer. If there's enough room on your grants, Gerardo: [00:31:52] definitely. We would love to have you, Eric: [00:31:56] and we've mentioned your, your, wife numerous times, but never her name Gerardo: [00:31:59] Gaby Hernandez.Yes. She's a faculty here at the university of Florida as well. Eric: [00:32:04] a great design educator. I've met her many times. Gerardo: [00:32:07] Yes. Eric: [00:32:08] I just didn't think it was fair to keep on saying your wife, your wife, and, uh, let's let's give her name Gerardo: [00:32:14] or really introduce her. Eric: [00:32:15] Yes. So, I'm going to put you on the spot here because, um, you might be able to answer this question with the things you just said.I want you to put yourself in our shoes and your design educator for the next five weeks, and you have to assign a design project. What would that project be? Could be a big idea. Gerardo: [00:32:39] Yeah, Eric: [00:32:40] it doesn't have to be constrained by budget, but yeah. What would you think it would be best suited to, to bridge climate science with, with design?Gerardo: [00:32:51] So I think one of the, and this is something that I believe in and that I think we should probably move more towards is when we, when we contacted. Graphic designers. We tend to contact them after the fact, right after we've done all the research and done everything.Right. And, and I remember my wife Gaby saying, yeah, you, you just think of us as beautifers. Right. You got all this content and you just, yeah. You're just going to hate it here, make it pretty. And so, I think from, from, I think a project where not even that the whole kind of ideation of, of, or coming up with the research project that we want, where everyone is at the beginning.Right. And I think there's a lot of things to learn both ways. Right. I think graphic designers are going to then ask the researchers questions that, that research haven't really thought about and vice versa. Like the, I think, probably scientists would be like, well, why did she choose that type? Why are you choosing those colors?Right? What, what, what, what, what's the whole process, because I think it's there there's so, so I think the project more than a specific project, I think it's just the idea of creating something from the very scratch but including. Graphic designers and the researchers together, but also so that they kind of respect each other.Right. Because I think sometimes the graphic designers might think as the researcher, as a client, more than a colleague or somebody who's going to work. Okay. Let's work with this together and try and solve the issue. Right. And so, but I think that dynamic requires you partnering with someone who believes that graphic design has a lot to offer, and you must also believe in the science that has something to offer.Eric: [00:34:52] You’re kind of volunteering yourself for many of the design educators, because you match all those things. Gerardo: [00:34:59] Yeah. Yeah, no, I, I think so. And I think that's that that's something that we need to do more on, because I think for, for, from, I guess, even from the graphic design perspective, you understand the problem and, and it's, and like I said, it's even the whole data creation and process.Like if you're in there doing it, I mean, not hiring you as just a photographer, you would go out and collect data. We would work together. And, and I think that's kind of the dynamics that I think are going to be needed kind of moving forward in these really big crises, because it really takes everyone to be emerged in, in submerged, in the issue so that they, the solutions can kind of come forward.And, and so I think. Yeah, just having these, this that's kind of mine. I mean, and then it doesn't only have to be graphic designers and the researchers you can bring in social science. everyone's welcome. But I think. Creating a, uh, kind of level playing field where everyone respects each other, and everyone has an opinion and can contribute.Right. And I think that's where, where I think a lot of these solutions and information is going to come out. Get to that level, because if we kind of are all working separately, we can kind of produce some type of solution. But I do believe that the sum of the parts is, is, is, is better than the home. Yeah.Eric: [00:36:36] Well, you're preaching to the choir here. And designers have been for years saying, give us a seat at the adults table. You know, we want to, we want a chance. To be on a level playing field and be part of the team. Yeah, that is, uh, like you said, like make it pretty, I can pretty Gerardo: [00:36:57] much make it pretty.And like I said that I think that graphic designers, because they've been exposed to so many different diverse subject matters, like they probably worked with an environmental lawyer that has been they've done work for them. Sure. So, the whole round. And so, I think what you, what designers can bring to the table, and it's very important, but not just like beautifying, but also that whole thought process.And, and, and I think even one thing that I've also noticed from graphic designers, they're really good at taking critique. You're used to editing every day, getting critiqued and so when you combine those, there probably be some rough edges. But I think in the end, scientists will, will become better scientists too, right.It gives me a lot of ideas. I might have to reach out to you.  Eric: Well, we're coming up to the end here and didn't want to take up too much of your time today, but I wanted to ask one last thing. As we kinda wrap up is, you know what, there's a lot of, you know, you, you see it all, like from your peer work, if they're in the Arctic, all their projects, do what gives you hope that we're going to have a better tomorrow based on everything that you're collecting and data.I think that the hope comes in and kind of these types of interactions. I think once everyone understands the problem in a way that then is starting us to create these different venues in different ways to kind of address the issue. I think we, as humans were able to kind of take us in this trajectory because of our past, but I think our future is, is.Going to require these types of interactions that we're having right now to kind of solve it. And I think as long as we're moving in that direction, I think it, solutions aren't going to come up and at least become more aware of, of the issue. So, I, I think in the end, that's what gives me hope is that there are people who are interested there.There are people who are trying to think out of the box and trying to come up with solutions that then can. Kind of shed some light into the issue and hopefully you've come up with solutions. So, so I, I think it's out there. It's just a matter of time that we, we kind of get to it, right? Yeah, definitely.Eric: [00:39:25] It reminds me of the Gretta Thunberg statement where that the older generations have failed us, but homosapiens haven't failed. Gerardo: [00:39:34] Exactly. We're still alive. Eric: [00:39:36] Gerardo, thank you so much for joining our show. And, uh, we look forward to all the work that you're doing up there and, uh, helping us, uh, learn more about climate.And so, we can come help communicate it to the masses as designers. Gerardo: [00:39:52] Yeah. No, thank you for having me. It was a pleasure and yeah, hopefully who knows maybe in the future, we'll be working too.Eric: [00:39:58] I love it. I love it. Gerardo: [00:40:00] Excellent. Thank you. Eric: [00:40:02] Thanks for tuning in today to Climify. But don't leave just yet. I've got more goodness for you coming up. As the pandemic has really affected our friends in the performing arts where they're unable to book shows tour, or sometimes even get into a recording studio. I thought I'd highlight one at the end of each of our episodes. Since this is a podcast for designers. The musicians featured on each are also designers. Well, I'll turn it over to our first artist to explain who they are and the reasons behind their music.