Hasta La Ideas

Autodesk’s Sustainability Workshop is a free online site with short videos to educate viewers on the environmental impacts of design. Right now they’ve got a section up for Intro to Whole Systems design, which encourages viewers to think through the entire lifecycle of a product, and the self-explanatory Intro to Lightweighting and Material Reduction.

While the project was built specifically for mechanical engineering undergraduate students, the team thinks it would also be interesting to industrial design students (who may not get this technical with their sustainability approaches), mechanical engineering and industrial design teachers (who are looking for a quick resources to supplement their already super full curriculum), other young students, and adult engineers and designers who are retooling and learning new tricks.

Says sustainable design strategist Jeremy Faludi, “[The videos] could be used for a design class, or a mechanical engineering class, or even a management class that wants to educate managers about the more technical aspects of sustainability. The combined Whole Systems & Life-Cycle thinking process could potentially be a very powerful tool for designers and business executives to innovate their products and services.”

Check it out here.

(more…)