Ulla-Maaria Engeström (Mutanen) of Social Objects, maker of entertaining & educating services such as Thinglink, a free product code for creative work, argues that renting is a much more sustainable concept for luxury than owning:

“The idea of luxury typically infers ownership, but perhaps renting is really the practice that embraces the idea of sustainable luxury. To consume more ecologically, we need a large-scale renting revolution. Renting quality should be the next disruptive innovation that shakes up the market of buying cheap.”

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What is the experience design terminology in other languages? Here are some equivalent expressions dealing with interface design, user experience, experience design, user-centred design and usability in nine European languages (updated version of older post):

- Czech: design uživatelskeho rozhraní (interface design), zkušenost uživatele (user experience), design zameřeny na uživatele (user centered), uživatelskeho prožitku (experience design), použitelnost (usability)
- Danish: brugeroplevelser, oplevelsesdesign, and brugercentreret innovation.
- Dutch: gebruikservaring, gebruiksvriendelijkheid, gebruiksgemak
- Finnish: käyttöliittymäsuunnittelu, käyttäjäkokemus / käyttökokemus, kokemussuunnittelu, käytettävyys (thanks to Marjut Mutanen)
- French: design d’interfaces, expérience utilisateur, conception centrée utilisateur, utilisabilité
- German: Interfacedesign, Benutzerfreundlichkeit, Gebrauchstauglichkeit
- Italian: design delle interfacce, esperienza dell’utente, design utente-centrico, usabilità
- Portuguese: desenho da interface (or “design da interface”), experiência do usuário, desenho centrado no usuário (or “design centrado no usuário”), usabilidade
- Spanish: diseño de interfaces, experiencia de usuario, diseño centrado en el usuario, usabilidad

Note that some of these words seem a little akward for native speakers (e.g. Gebrauchstauglichkeit, kokemussuunnittelu), who often prefer the English version.

Please send me other words and languages to add to this list.

Rob Walker of the New York Times Magazine asks what so many crochet-hook-wielding, papermaking, silversmithing handicrafters are doing online and tries to prove that the future of shopping — and of work — is all about the past.

The article is mostly a profile of Etsy, a company that hosts an online shopping bazaar for all things handmade.

“Only about two years old, the company is not currently profitable but is somewhat unusual among Internet-based start-ups of the so-called Web 2.0 era in having a model that does not depend on advertising revenue. It depends on people buying things, in a manner that the founders position as a throwback to the way consumption ought to be: individuals buying from other individuals. “Our ties to the local and human sources of our goods have been lost,” the Handmade Pledge site asserts. “Buying handmade helps us reconnect.” The idea is a digital-age version of artisanal culture — that the future of shopping is all about the past.”

The author is particularly interested in the new technologically enabled “new craft movement” as a social commentary on consumer culture, but has not explored what the possibilities might be if these objects themselves would become carriers of information.

If you want to know more about this, I suggest you to explore the work of Ulla-Maaria Mutanen, whose Thinglink (blog) organisation is all about the Internet of Things, applied to the world of crafts, and whose approach is closely connected to the Spime concept envisioned by Bruce Sterling.

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According to modern western thinking, work and play represent two opposing concepts, writes Ulla-Maaria Mutanen in her blog “Hobbyprincess”.

Play is associated with enjoyment, irrationality, spontaneity, experimentation and fun, whereas work is serious, rational, economical, normal and entirely predictable. The juxtaposition of work and play is partly explained by the Protestant work ethic, which holds work to be a virtue and a model of the good life. According to this philosophy, sensible and hard work could not be, and was not allowed to be fun, entertaining or anything that would promote disobedience, enjoyment and smugness, all of which were thought to be ruinous to true Christian belief.

The juxtaposing of work and play may also originate from the view that play is a child’s activity. Especially within the fields of psychology and education, play among children and animals is studied as a phenomenon connected to biological and cultural development.

Removing play from the scope of socially significant work and adult activities has led to its trivialisation. Play has no place in the professional world or the social innovation system.

In the light of current trends, however, it looks like the role of play in work, especially in design and research work, will have to be re-evaluated. One reason for this can be found in the ongoing innovation crisis within established institutions and businesses. Organisations trimmed to maximise their economic performance no longer represent the kind of environment in which the best new ideas and innovations can develop.

Instead, scholars such as Eric von Hippel and Henry Chesbrough have highlighted how the latest applications are being developed in the fringes, among communities of users, hobbyists and amateur developers.

Read full story (to be published as an article in the Finnish Design Yearbook 2006)

Finnish designer Ulla-Maaria Mutanen (aka The HobbyPrincess) argues that small communities will have to radically change their innovation policy in the near future. This will include the moving from strictly institutional, business-oriented idea of innovation and competence development towards an idea of innovation as practice-based, interactive, and often times semi-professional learning activity.

This was the topic of her talk yesterday during a seminar organized by the Finnish Foundation of Municipal Development and attended by the Finnish President.

Mutanen first discussed this argument in the light of the recent innovation studies, which suggest that an increasing number of innovations emerge currently within the communities of users and semi-professional developers. Second, she introduced learning theories that emphasize the collective, situated, and object-oriented nature of new knowledge creation and capability development. Finally, she discussed the MIT FabLab concept as a concrete example of an organizational arrangement that builds on the idea of a cooperative, practice-based, municipal innovation activity.

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(via The Innovation Insider)

What is the experience design terminology in other languages? Here are some equivalent expressions dealing with interface design, user experience, experience design, user-centred design and usability in six European languages:

- Dutch: gebruikservaring, gebruiksvriendelijkheid, gebruiksgemak
- Finnish: käyttöliittymäsuunnittelu, käyttäjäkokemus / käyttökokemus, kokemussuunnittelu, käytettävyys (thanks to Marjut Mutanen)
- French: design d’interfaces, expérience utilisateur, conception centrée utilisateur, utilisabilité
- German: Interfacedesign, Benutzerfreundlichkeit, Gebrauchstauglichkeit
- Italian: design delle interfacce, esperienza dell’utente, design utente-centrico, usabilità
- Spanish: diseño de interfaces, experiencia de usuario, diseño centrado en el usuario, usabilidad

Note that some of these words seem a little akward for native speakers (e.g. Gebrauchstauglichkeit, kokemussuunnittelu), who then prefer the English version. This is especially the case for Dutch and German speakers.

Please send me other words and languages to add to this list.