WASHINGTON, D.C., Mar. 29, 2007—InformeDesign® (www.informedesign.umn.edu) recently released a new issue of Implications, a monthly newsletter on design and human behavior, that explains in brief the benefits of doing life cycle assessment, a methodology in sustainable design for assessing the environmental performance of a product over its full life cycle. It also describes a number of tools that can assist practitioners in the building industry with conducting LCAs.

Rather than relying on singular material properties, such as recycled content or distances traveled after the point of manufacture, LCA assesses more performance-based outcomes by determining the embodied environmental effects of materials that can result from the manufacture, use and disposal of a product. It goes beyond just focusing on the embodied energy in a product.

“The essence of LCA is to cast the net wide and capture all of the relevant effects associated with a product or process over its full life cycle,” says author John Carmody, director of the Center for Sustainable Building Research at the University of Minnesota. “It also takes into account the production and use of other products required for cleaning or maintenance during its use phase.” An example is provided by Wayne Trusty, president of the Athena Sustainable Materials Institute.

Life Cycle Assessment should not be confused with Life Cycle Costing, note the authors. Although the two methodologies are complementary, LCC focuses on dollar costs of building and maintaining a structure over its life cycle, while LCA focuses on environmental performance.

InformeDesign is the first searchable database of design and human behavior research on the Web. The site currently contains more than 1,600 “practitioner-friendly” Research Summaries of findings from research literature transformed from more than 170 scholarly journals related to design and human behavior. All services on the InformeDesign Web site are currently available at no cost to visitors. In addition to the searchable database of Research Summaries, the site features a calendar of research-related events and a glossary of terms. The Web site is interactive, allowing visitors to provide comments about specific Research Summaries or other site issues. Visitors may register with InformeDesign and receive automated email notifications about Research Summaries pertaining to their areas of interest or practice. Once registered, users have access to MyInformeDesign, a tool to catalogue and store Research Summaries of interest in a personal cache, available anywhere there is access to the Internet. Registered users also will be notified by email when a new issue of Implications is published.

The staff of InformeDesign recommends that registered users who are not receiving requested notifications check with their information technology administrators to ensure that emails from informedesign@umn.edu are on a “safe” list and not considered spam.

ASID is a community of people—-designers, industry representatives, educators and students—-committed to interior design. Through education, knowledge sharing, advocacy, community building and outreach, the Society strives to advance the interior design profession and, in the process, to demonstrate and celebrate the power of design to positively change people’s lives. Its more than 38,000 members engage in a variety of professional programs and activities through a network of 48 chapters throughout the United States and Canada. To learn more about ASID, visit www.asid.org.

The University of Minnesota is one of the most comprehensive public universities in the United States and has been ranked among the top three public universities. It is a state land-grant university with a strong tradition of research, education, and public service with faculty of national and international reputation. The College of Design unites programs in architecture, clothing design, graphic design, interior design, housing studies, landscape architecture, and retail merchandising creating a nationally distinctive, multidisciplinary college engaged in research, teaching, creative production, and public engagement.