In this section, we discuss the workshop findings with respect to a number of themes that we identified as central to the info-eco debate. The themes are:

Individual actions (control and education), Social structures (collaboration, community, and care), Design (user-product, and designer-product relationships), and Value.

Individual actions
Many workshops looked at individual patterns of behaviour. Can we use design to make individual people behave more responsibly? There was an interesting difference in approach to this issue -- should the changes in behaviour come from the outside or from within? Some solutions aimed at using technology to control people's actions (external control), whereas others emphasised the potential of information technology to educate individual people about their responsibilities, about the effects of their actions, about the environment, etc.

Controlling the individual

Is there a point where we must say: no more?

---- The "urban footprints" workshop proposed ideas for controlling people's behaviour in cities by constraining people's options to join traffic when pollution levels reach critical levels ("Singapore lash").

---- The "travels to the edge" workshops proposed several ideas for limiting tourist access to fragile sites ("travel point system", "digi visas", "travel visas").

In most discussions, these ideas were heavily criticised for being too restrictive. They are not what we aimed for -- change is necessary, but preferably without coercion. It is not always that simple, however. In the case of fragile tourist sites like the Great Barrier Reef, tourists are literally destroying what they came for... Unless we limit access, there won't be any Reef in the future. The question then becomes "how" rather than "whether". When we can go so far as to limit personal freedom -- when must advice become legislation? And how can we design its enforcement?

Educating the individual

Is education a friendlier alternative to control?

---- The "mapping global processes" workshop proposed bringing together stakeholders around environmental issues in the Black Sea area, where fishing has become a critical activity. All participants would provide feedback on the situation from their point of view, thus educating the group as a whole.

---- The "travels to the edge" workshops also provided a number of ideas that would educate tourists about sites, ecological issues and the results of their behaviours -- educating them, enriching seemingly common experiences, creating value through providing new contexts. One of their ideas even combined control and education: people can 'earn' permission to visit a site by taking exams about their knowledge of a site's ecosystem.

---- The "electronic storylines" workshop is currently building a WWW site where users can learn about myths from different cultures that provide alternative conceptualisations of the relationship between people and nature.

---- The "virtual vs. real communities" workshop proposed to work towards the establishment of eco-communities where participants share knowledge about eco-issues and, thus, educate each other.

---- The "health" workshop saw overpopulation as a central problem and proclaimed education as the only real long-term solution.

---- The "education" workshop proposed two multi-user computer games that aim at educating players about the environment -- one game ("be a tree") aims to educate kids about nature by providing them with an 'inside' perspective (what's it like to be a tree) and by sending them outside to feel and smell nature; another game ("ecoreality") focuses on teaching teenagers to reflect on their actions by providing a simulated environment that gives feedback on the consequences of their actions.

In all these approaches to individual education, the central theme is the action-reflection cycle of feedback, where understanding and awareness result from reflecting on actions, feeding back into the loop in the form of changed behaviour.

reflection <--> action

Information technology seems to have great potential in helping people reflect on their actions. Better feedback from the real world can educate people about the effect of their actions, and simulated environments allow people to experiment and learn in a playful way.

Social structures
Many workshops addressed social issues. We have identified three main themes: collaboration, community, and care.

Collaboration

There is a fine line between collaboration and community. They are closely related, but neither one necessarily implies the other. Collaboration is more about working together and shared goals, whereas community has a much stronger emotional component. Both are important and promising social issues. Information and communication technologies can facilitate the dissemination and sharing of knowledge about environmental issues, allowing people to work together (on environmental issues).

---- The "mapping global processes" workshop proposed to design a collaborative workspace for stakeholders around environmental issues in the Black Sea area. The collaborative workspace allows policy makers, scientists, industrialists, local communities, fishermen, and media professionals to share and discuss information from their points of view, in the hope of improving the quality of the decisions that are made regarding environmental issues in the Black Sea.

---- The "virtual vs. real communities" workshop proposed a similar situation (support decision making by multiple perspectives), but adds another 'layer' of information. When a group is involved in a decision making process, participants can simultaneously be members of specialized communities. They are never 'alone'; these 'peer communities' empower them during the decision making process: e.g., the lawyer in the group is also a member of a community of lawyers, the fisherman is member of a community of fishermen, etc.

---- The "care" workshop's "through the table top" ideas allow older people to 'collaborate' on a private level: they can pronounce themselves available for advice or services supported by an electronic communication environment, thus stimulating local barter economies.

---- The "education" workshop's "ecoreality" game is a multi-user environment where collaboration between players is a central issue.

---- The "work" workshop addressed collaboration in a different way -- not as any means towards any desired end, but, and of course, in terms of a vital ingredient of 'work', where they proposed to first investigate when and where physical contact is necessary, before starting to think about any kind of 'telework'.

Community

Since we aimed at social rather than technological solutions, many workshops investigated 'community': how can different forms of togetherness contribute to the info-eco debate?

---- The "virtual vs. real communities" workshop investigated the nature and the different forms of community that we see around us and delivered a number of ideas and conceptualisations about community. The central idea of this workshop, the "Karma Card" addressed issues of access to community as well as personalised ways of presenting oneself to other members of the community.

---- The "beyond being there" workshop focused on various forms of implicit communication (implicit access), some of which aimed at connecting different local communities by telecommunications technologies in order to allow them to 'evolve' together.

---- The "care" workshop highly valued the creation of communities amongst older people. Their "through the table-top" idea features an electronic space that enables the formation of communities by facilitating transactions in the 'real' world.

It was an explicit issue in the "virtual vs. real communities" workshop, but the other two workshops above also emphasised the importance of community access as a central design consideration. "Beyond being there" investigated implicit presence as a means of 'sensing' others in an implicit, but also intimate way. "Care" proposed a physical device like a common table top as the main interface to the electronic environment. It seems that any community's liveliness is strongly dependent on the different ways that it offers access to members and outsiders...

Care

What is it that we really care about? The environment? Health? Wealth? Friends? Family? What is the role of care in the 'info-eco' debate?

---- The "travels to the edge" workshop aimed at enriching people's experiences of nature in order to make tourists care more about the environment, rather than just enjoy and 'consume' it. This increased feeling of care may then result in more responsible patterns of behaviour.

---- The "electronic storylines" workshop emphasised the power of myths and the beauty of many existing myths from different cultures that feature a spiritual and 'caring' relationship to the environment, as alternatives to the Western 'exploitative' attitude.

---- The "eternally yours" workshop identified care as a central issue in the relationship between users and products: the lack of care and respect in that relationship results in a 'fast-food', 'throwaway' culture that is very harmful to the environment. If we can design products that require as well as deserve care, we will never want to throw them away...

---- Care was identified as an important element in the 'building blocks' of communities by the "virtual vs. real communities" workshop. The reason why many communities are successful is that members strongly care about a shared set of issues.

---- The "care" workshop saw caring for older people as a crucial element of any sustainable future. Their "through the table top" electronic environment aimed at using transactions (in the real world) as the basis for bringing people together.

---- "Be a tree", one of the two games proposed by the "education" workshop aimed at letting children care more about the environment by having them experience what it would be like to be a tree.

Products
Although dematerialisation (designing services rather than products, or information-based rather than material products) was a focal point in many of the workshops, some attention was also paid to the design of products in the 'info-eco' context.

User -- Product

What makes people buy products? What makes them discard them?

---- The "eternally yours" workshop focused on 'life-long' products. Taking the metaphor of the African drum, they identified qualities of products that would make them meaningful for users over long periods of time. If products become more valuable over time, there is less desire to throw them away in order to buy new things.

---- Many products satisfy desires. The "designing desires" examined the motivations behind our consumption patterns. Can we satisfy our desires with immaterial rather than material products? Or is it time to reconsider the meaningfulness of our desires?

Designer -- Product

---- The "designing desires" workshop emphasised the fact that most designers are driven by economic motivations rather than by the ambition to create truly meaningful products. Their proposal to designers was to pay more attention to love, wisdom and beauty in the design process.

Value
How about our value systems? Is nature a 'resource' that we can draw from without much further thought? What role do value systems play in our patterns of consumption?

---- The "designing desires" workshop got deeply involved in the discussion about values. We are deeply mixed up in 'wants' rather than in 'needs'. What do we really need? The workshop identified large gaps between the design community's theories about desires and its practice: can love, wisdom or beauty be designed into products or services as material or immaterial essences?

---- The "electronic storylines" workshop looked at ways in which myths from various cultures -- that embody different value systems -- can be shared amongst a larger audience, where they may inspire or educate?

---- The "work" workshop argued that work as an human activity should be understood as a method of creating value. They saw little use in designing specific systems and methods for telework without a fundamental understanding of this perspective.

In the end, many workshop presentations that addressed values generated mixed reactions, ranging from affectionate agreement to aggressive rejection. Is this what happens when value enters the debate? Everyone agrees about the importance of value in the centre of the info-eco debate, but the design community seems to lack a common language that we can use to discuss and give form to value-related issues.

For a general discussion of the workshop results, go to the 'reflection' section.