SUSTAINABILITY
Three questions about "Flx Tech+ Waste/4"
Elisabeth Bohnet: Your course focussed on interaction design and agriculture. How did the exchange with "agriculture" take place? How were needs identified and design tasks derived from them?
Prof. Sebastian Oschatz: It was important to us to generate creative tension: on the one hand, through an excursion to Claas, a leading manufacturer of agricultural machinery, which gave us a compact and vivid demonstration of the state of industrial agriculture today. On the other hand, through a scientific paper from Nature, which shows that and how agriculture must change. On this field of tension, we used AI to generate around 150 project ideas based on the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which we then selected and refined together. These project ideas were further developed by the students through individual research and interviews with key players.
What realisation claim have the products achieved?
Prof. Sebastian Oschatz: We wanted to design realisable, concrete products. That's why we deliberately refrained from artistic approaches or speculative design approaches. From a purely technical point of view, all projects could be realised immediately. The teams built wireframes and mock-ups. But of course the work only starts from here.
Which results stand out because they have recognised a gap in the market?
Prof. Sebastian Oschatz: We started with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, so we immediately had valid and relevant problems. Gaps that could be filled in a very concrete way. We deliberately left out of our considerations whether these gaps are also market gaps. All projects have central components that are orientated towards the common good. I was impressed - but also dismayed - to see how much creative potential emerges and how concrete solutions are on the table as soon as the focus is not on monetisability.
