Design 21: Social Design Network

Lee I read through your boards, and my concern is this - you will need to grow a large number of plants at a very quick rate in order to allow the children to pick leaves every time they wash their hands. If you have a school with 50 children, and they each wash their hands three times a day, they could be picking 150 leaves a day. Do you know how quickly these plants grow? Do you know how many children are in the average village school?

If the grey water has sand mixed into it from the exfoliating process, will the sand dropping on the plants affect the plants in any negative ways?

Bridget

Leah Unfortunately I can't read your board, even when I click on the link - can you send me the information another way? I'd like to read what you have written. Reading the feedback you received, I am concerned that you haven't done enough research into what types of bone products are currently in the market. Many companies sell product made of bone in a wide range of items and it is very well accepted as a material in the consumer market - it is already common in high-end stores. I know I mentioned this to you in the ceramic shop, but I have designed product for Anthropologie made of bone as lampbases, hardware (drawer knobs, and doorknobs), mirrors, and frames and boxes. You can see many of these items in the Anthropologie Store at Rockefeller Center if you go shopping. You should also go to Barney's, Bergdorf's, Calypso Home, John Derian and ABC Carpet and Home. There are other companies that sell bone salad servers, flatware handles, and jewelry (bangle bracelets being one item). I wouldn't exactly say that bone is an unknown material in the American market.

Bridget

Brett This sounds good, let me know how your meeting goes.

Brett, I am sorry I didn't get to talk to you in class on Monday, but I have read your Design Brief posted here, and it sounds very clear and well thought out. It also sounds like you are doing well with your NFP and User Group connections. Did you have trouble posting your drawings? Although I don't see them here, your descriptions of your concepts sound good.

Thomas I would ask that you find some more recent statistics about the age of marriage - the ages may have again changed much since 1998.

Although the information you have found about what brings closeness to a relationship etc is still relevant, and useful, with statistical data, it is important to be as current as possible.

Tae I'd love to know more about what you envision these ideas to be capable of. For example, what does the bee navigation robot do? I am also curious how the beehive for households will work? If the bees need to get pollen from flowers, how will they do this in your scenario?

After watching your videos you've posted, I have a few suggestions. First, I would encourage you to contact some of the people that were interviewed in the nature video as most of them are University Professors, and working directly on this cause. (these Universities are most likely NFP's and you may decide you'd like to work with one of these Professors) I would also recommend conducting and "Author" search of some of the on-line Library Resources, if you haven't done so already, to see if you can find any articles published by any of the specialists interviewed here on this subject. If you do not find any published articles, you may then choose to contact one or more of them directly to see if they have any unpublished research they would be willing to share with you. Several of the specialists in the video are teaching in Pennsylvania, which is not too far away. This may provide an opportunity for you to work on a project with one of these specialists.

I also find the suggestions given here for altering how we use pesticides and lawn manicuring as opportunities for solutions to be very manageable avenues for change. Look at the wording of your Mission Statement closely and its focus and see if you can improve upon it.

I'm not sure that conducting a survey of everyday people's opinions about bees is really the best route to take in order to gain information that will help you with your particular project. Conducting a survey that is geared towards scientists or farmers that work specifically with bees, or pollination of crops, and asking them what they know about the problem, then asking them to reveal any thoughts they have about the potential causes of the problem and what they know about current solutions would push you deeper into relevant research.

In conducting a survey, it is important to tailor both your questions and your target audience (who you choose to survey) to best suit the needs of your particular problem, and assist you in attaining the information you MOST need to gain, thereby giving you meaningful insight into the nature of the problem itself that will lead you towards creating a solution.

In your case, you still need a clearer definition of the problem itself, and how it came to be.

It is important when giving statistical information that you let us know where your information came from, and how the data was gathered. Cite the name of the source (for example : The New York Times) and the credentials of the author or person interviewed. Then, give information about how the study was conducted itself, for example, does this information come from a survey of farmers? Or were the bees "tagged and tracked" by a scientist?

Also a few details such as: Are all of these statistics U.S. statistics or are some of them Worldwide findings? When you tell us that the West Coast has lost 60% of its population of bees, I'd like to know since when? Did we lose them all in one year, or was this a gradual loss that has occurred over ten years time?

Do you have any data that relates the loss of bees to defined loss of crops? Are there specific types of crops that have suffered more than others?

Why is the price of a bee colony higher? Is it simply because we have fewer bees, or are there other factors involved that have inflated the price, such as increased demand, increased costs of shipping or raw materials? Also, I'd love to know precisely what one recieves when buying a bee colony and who sells them? Have farmers needed to own a certain number of their own bee colonies to grow crops, or have they relied on nature to provide the bees? Is this changing? Are the farmers now buying their own private bee colonies to replace the lost bees that nature used to...

Your posting shows that you are looking for the right types of information, and using good resources, however, dramatic developments can happen over a period of eight years, particularly in a developing country. Therefore, it is important that you find current statistics to report.

If you haven't checked into this organization yet, Mercy Corps: http://www.mercycorps.org/ it may be of interest to you. I have a contact there if you think that working with them would be of interest.