00271 Needs and Yields Charts

At a meta level, design connects the dots between mere survival and humanism. — Erik Adigard

One approach to observation, study, and evaluation is to make a chart showing various elements of your life and the household and community where you live listing the needs and yields of each element, and its connections with other aspects of the design.

Yields are useful resources if they are productively utilized by other elements in the system. They are pollution if they not productively used.

If needs are not supplied by the local community, then they have to come from somewhere else.

We therefore require extra energy or work or money (which embodies energy and work) to satisfy those needs. When you create your chart, you will probably find a lot of pollution and extra work in your system — those are areas that need design work.

Example:

Element — Herb container garden

Needs — Water, fertility, space, human attention, plants

Yields — Food, teas, compost materials, habitat for beneficial insects.

Connects — Personal health, nutrition, soil fertility, beauty, community, local food system

You could add a level of functionality to the spreadsheet by sorting yields and needs into individual columns (one per column). This would enable you to sort your list and find connections in both benefits and needs. One useful column is “Characteristics” where you can put a brief description of the item.

Don’t forget inanimate objects, like “Kitchen Equipment.” It needs use, storage, cleaning and offers yields — food preparation and maybe even decoration.

Don’t forget the systems and invisible structures in your life. This can become complex so you may want more than one spreadsheet, with one dedicated to invisible structures and systems you have or need in your life.