circular design

Creating Companies and Products Conducive to Life

Melissa Gregg presenting on stage at EPIC2022
Keynote Speaker: MELISSA GREGG, Senior Principal Engineer, Intel Melissa Gregg is a senior principal engineer in user experience driving carbon reduction and green software strategy at Intel. With a Ph.D. in gender and cultural studies, she is a widely cited author, theorist, and ethnographer, with over 60 peer-reviewed publications and books. Her research has appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Fortune, The New York Times, The Guardian, BBC, and CBC, and has been translated into Russian, Mandarin, and Korean. Melissa joined Intel in 2013 after a career in academia. She led Intel Labs’ first university investment in the social sciences before building user research to a position of strategic impact in the PC business. In client computing, her research informed a range of initiatives to support a more flexible and agile office, women’s role in the smart home, and increasingly responsive, energy-efficient laptops (Project Athena/ Intel EVO). Her current focus is driving sustainability strategy through software and open-source...

Tutorial: Integrating Sustainability Perspectives in Ethnographic Work

MIKE YOUNGBLOOD Youngblood Group Overview This tutorial examines ways ethnography is uniquely positioned to contribute to the design and innovation of environmentally sustainable (or even better than merely sustainable) products and services. It reviews several emerging design perspectives—such as circular design, regenerative design, systems-oriented design, and value-centered design—and explores ways that ethnographers in industry can use them their own practice and organizations to build sustainability considerations into their work. It is valuable for those who are relatively new to sustainability as well as those with deeper experience who are interested in expanding our collective impact toward more planet-friendly industries. The session covers: Opportunity costs of doing design research “as usual” Key perspectives and approaches for sustainable design and innovation Baking sustainability perspectives into research Ethnographic/anthropological theories and methods that can support a sustainability...