Climate change: A challenge for design

The problem of climate change is real and serious. The approach to overcoming this challenge should be multifaceted but in many cases will not be simple or easy. Our creative communities can have a meaningful impact on this issue by investigating interventions to make technologies-energy consumption part of the user experience. The benefits are not just for the planet, but are economic as well. Perhaps the term "appropriate reliance" can acquire a broader meaning, one that encompasses an energy-efficient use of technology [11]. Concepts like automation transparency can also be expanded or adapted to represent technologies/automation that share their energy-consumption behavior with the human. To date, many of us may have dismissed ideas about energy conservation because we did not find them practical, or because we thought that not enough people really cared for such ideas to work. However, as we move forward, the issues related to climate change will start to become sobering realities. Now is the time to start working on solutions. © 2010 ACM.