What products and services will we encounter in a sustainable future - in, say, 15 years from now?

This question was posed to design students right across the UK in a competition called 'A Changing World: products and services for a sustainable future'. Its winners have just been announced and their submissions are now available to view on an online exhibition.

The competition, part of the annual award scheme Design Directions was organised by the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce) and sponsored by Forum for the Future, Unilever and AkzoNobel.

Design students were challenged to imagine the world in 2025, and to develop product-service proposals for two markets: Personal Care, and Surface Covering. They were given a briefing document, prepared by Forum for the Future, that described an extremely challenging environment. 

By 2025, the students were told, water supplies would be in crisis; oil would be in short supply and very expensive; the UK would have a much older population; global food harvests would be oscillating wildly from year to year as unpredictable and unseasonal weather took its toll; China and India would have displaced ‘the West’ as the main centre of influence of the world; and so on.

Not exactly business-as-usual, then.

The competition's overall winner was Laura Morris, from Northumbria University. She received a Wally Olins Opportunity Award of £2,500 for ‘Locally Pure’,  a hair care 'product service system'.

The product itself consists of a big droplet of solid shampoo; note, no ecologically unsound plastic bottle. The droplet is packaged in an abrasive foaming mitt. Local communities are shown how to make the shampoo by a representative from Unilever.

What local groups buy is access to a starter kit comprising base ingredients and recipes, with further optional equipment. Locally Pure is then made communally. Locally-sourced ingredients, such as honey, or herbs, are added to the base soap. The shampoo is sold locally and can be traded between rural towns – but none of its ingredients come from a distant foreign factory.

Laura’s second design proposal was for a product-service called ‘Palette’ – a system that enables people quickly and easily to change the colour or design of their walls. The Palette eliminates the need for environmentally unsound liquid paint.

Colours and patterns are selected on the Dulux website, and the customer pays for them to be made into ‘Colour Chips’ – small glass panels containing a coloured insert. The Chips arrive in minimal reusable packaging; unwanted Chips can be returned to be recycled and receive a discount on future purchases.

When a Colour Chip is placed into the ceramic Palette, the wall instantly changes colour to match the Chip. More Chips can be added to mix and layer the colours and patterns. The Palette uses radio frequency identification tags to identify colours within the Chip and sends a signal wirelessly to electronic E-ink wall hangings.

Joe Harrison, a student at The Arts Institute at Bournemouth, was the competition’s second winner with a Wally Olins Opportunity Award of £1,000. His project, ‘Digital Growth’ was a surface covering concept for 2025.

Joe's system combines nature and technology to create a dynamically changing ‘digital plant’ that grows in homes and develops uniquely in relation to the occupier’s energy consumption. The plant changes shape and colour depending on the efficiency of the appliances around the home.

The concept in Digital Growth is not unique; two media artists, Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau, caused a stir in 1992 with an installation at Karlsruhe Media Centre in Germany that featured growing interactive plants.

What the jury liked about Joe’s project was its focus on energy behaviour in the home. The growth rate, colour and shape of the plant are directly linked to the efficiency and lifestyle of its residents. It therefore acts as a monitor of energy consumption at a time when minimising energy costs has become essential.

Joe explained that Digital Growth works by taking data (using wireless communications) from different appliances; it converts these data into a visual format on a section of electronic wallpaper. Water and electricity usage, and the efficiency of particular appliances, affect how the plant will look. Each leaf represents a different appliance; its stems represent water, gas and electricity.

Digital Growth copies patterns of plant growth and mimics how healthy or dying plants behave. Brown and drooping leaves indicate low efficiency; when they appear, the user can find out what is causing this using touch screen technology in areas of the digital plant to get detailed pop up information.

The RSA jury comprised: John Thackara, director of Doors of Perception (chair); Fiona Bennie, senior sustainability advisor at Forum for the Future; Dr James Taplin, Principal Sustainability Advisor, Forum for the Future; Bob Crawford, Discovery Platform Director at Unilever R&D; Rob Holdway, Co-founder and Director of management consultants Giraffe; Jonathon Porritt, Founder Director of Forum for the Future and Chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission; and Dr Philip Taylor, a Paints Research Associate in the Global Research and Innovation Group of AkzoNobel Decorative Coatings.

John Thackara, who chaired the RSA jury, is a guest blogger. As Director of Doors of Perception, he connects together a worldwide network of paradigm-changing designers, media artists, and technology innovators. www.thackara.com

To read more about the competition and its winners, click here.

For further information, please contact Fiona Bennie, Senior Sustainability Advisor, Innovation.