Making the user more efficient: design for sustainable behaviour
Making the user more efficient: design for sustainable behaviour
User behaviour is a significant determinant of a product's environmental impact; while engineering advances permit increased efficiency of product operation, the user's decisions and habits ultimately have a major effect on the energy or other resources used by the product. There is thus a need to change users' behaviour. A range of design techniques developed in diverse contexts suggest opportunities for engineers, designers and other stakeholders working in the field of sustainable innovation to affect users' behaviour at the point of interaction with the product or system, in effect 'making the user more efficient'. Approaches to changing users' behaviour from a number of fields are reviewed and discussed, including: strategic design of affordances and behaviour-shaping constraints to control or affect energy- or other resource-using interactions; the use of different kinds of feedback and persuasive technology techniques to encourage or guide users to reduce their environmental impact; and context-based systems which use feedback to adjust their behaviour to run at optimum efficiency and reduce the opportunity for user-affected inefficiency. Example implementations in the sustainable engineering and ecodesign field are suggested and discussed.
ecodesign, sustainability, managing use, managing consumption, behaviour change, sustainable innovation, persuasive technology
3-8
Lockton, Dan
81a4d7f3-6682-4fc0-8e2b-b90147898539
Harrison, David
864be260-5888-46c3-a883-c683bd9bcc98
Stanton, Neville
351a44ab-09a0-422a-a738-01df1fe0fadd
March 2008
Lockton, Dan
81a4d7f3-6682-4fc0-8e2b-b90147898539
Harrison, David
864be260-5888-46c3-a883-c683bd9bcc98
Stanton, Neville
351a44ab-09a0-422a-a738-01df1fe0fadd
Lockton, Dan, Harrison, David and Stanton, Neville
(2008)
Making the user more efficient: design for sustainable behaviour.
International Journal of Sustainable Engineering, 1 (1), .
(doi:10.1080/19397030802131068).
Abstract
User behaviour is a significant determinant of a product's environmental impact; while engineering advances permit increased efficiency of product operation, the user's decisions and habits ultimately have a major effect on the energy or other resources used by the product. There is thus a need to change users' behaviour. A range of design techniques developed in diverse contexts suggest opportunities for engineers, designers and other stakeholders working in the field of sustainable innovation to affect users' behaviour at the point of interaction with the product or system, in effect 'making the user more efficient'. Approaches to changing users' behaviour from a number of fields are reviewed and discussed, including: strategic design of affordances and behaviour-shaping constraints to control or affect energy- or other resource-using interactions; the use of different kinds of feedback and persuasive technology techniques to encourage or guide users to reduce their environmental impact; and context-based systems which use feedback to adjust their behaviour to run at optimum efficiency and reduce the opportunity for user-affected inefficiency. Example implementations in the sustainable engineering and ecodesign field are suggested and discussed.
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Published date: March 2008
Keywords:
ecodesign, sustainability, managing use, managing consumption, behaviour change, sustainable innovation, persuasive technology
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 186495
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/186495
ISSN: 1939-7046
PURE UUID: 73d8ac46-4698-4804-955f-855b246100c7
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Date deposited: 13 May 2011 10:16
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:33
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Author:
Dan Lockton
Author:
David Harrison
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