Seminar Western Design Issues
Tong Huang (Emma)
Take Responsibility For User Behavior:Thinking About Sustainable Behavior in Design Process
The social responsibility of designers is an increasingly popular topic in contemporary design. Designers should have a sense of responsibility for society and the environment because evidence shows that there is an influential relationship between design work and the environment, as well as society. A concept known as “sustainable design” deals with the relationship between design and the environment. However, how people use design work also can have a great influence on the environment and society. Therefore, “design for sustainable behavior” is becoming a more common field of research. This paper mainly expounds the point of view that designers should design for sustainable behavior, and not only focus on environmental protection. This paper discusses how a design influences user behavior and the impact of user behavior on the environment. Furthermore， it also discusses the effect of user-centered design in design process.
In the field of contemporary design, the responsibility of designers has been widely discussed.Recently, Eco-design has emerged as a growing field of design. Because of global climate change, increasing awareness of the energy crisis, and the public perception of massive overconsumption, most designers have already realized that they have a responsibility to society and the environment, and intend to engage in eco-friendly design in response to these social issues (Tromp, 2011).Much evidence suggests that products and the environment have a considerable influence on each other.
In the eyes of the public，“sustainable design” is synonymous with “environmental friendly” design. However, the environmental impact of a product’s “use phase” has been less studied (Lidman，2011). Sustainable user behavior, however, also cannot be ignored. The significance behind sustainable behavior is demonstrated in many ways in people’s daily lives. Because of the connections among products, user behavior and the environment, designers should have a sense of responsibility for user behavior. In addition, designers have the ability to affect how people use and interact with things, and they should consider this factor, rather than simply meeting people’s needs without considering the consequences. In order to reduce the negative impact of products on the environment, it is necessary to design products to promote certain behaviors.
The great impact of user behavior
The relationship between products and the environment is obvious. A life of a certain product, from production to recycling, can have a great influence on the environment (Bhamra, 2007). For instance, a plastic product will cause pollution when it is recycled Fortunately, different plastics have different degradation abilities (Feelfriendly,2010 ). As a result, designers are more likely to choose eco-friendly materials like high derivative plastics for their design works. However, user behavior also has a great impact on environmental and social aspects.
First of all, user behavior can influence the environmental aspect during the “use phase” directly and indirectly. Energy-using products in particular create waste while being used, which can have a significant impact on the environment.In people’s daily lives, habits while using certain products may cause a lot of waste. For example, people love charging their laptops while they are gone all day. This behavior has already become a habit and is rarely a concern. However, even if your laptop is fully charged, if it is plugged into the wall, it is still using energy (Better World Betty, n.d). Some people also do not like to shut down their laptops when they go outside. According to statistics, “in sleep mode, your laptop (while plugged in) will still consume an average of 15.77 watts of electricity (Better World Betty, n.d).” This kind wasting can be avoided completely by remembering to shut down your computer. This evidence shows a simple truth that a product’s energy use can be limited by user behavior.
Secondly, A design work also can influence social aspects by influencing consumers’ cognitive responses (Cary, 2010). These kind of psychological responses can lead people to have unhealthy consumer attitudes, such as engaging in massive overconsumption. Since the advent of the era of consumption，some critics have claimed that we are living in a “disposable society” or a “throwaway culture”. For example, 90% of all products are thrown away within 6 weeks of purchase (Mont, 2008). This is clearly an unsustainable consumer behavior and contributes greatly to wasting and pollution. This is a not the consumer’s fault. Designers are always creating more exciting products to compete with their peers；companies are always eager to produce fancier products to expand their sales. As a result, the purchasing behavior of consumers is no longer based on needs.
These issues demonstrate the relationship between user behavior and the environment as well as society. However, many experts believe that, in many ways, influencing behavior can be seen as a design problem (Lockton, 2012). So, designers should have a sense of responsibility for the environment and consider the user impact in their design work. In terms of environmental aspects, designers should design products that not only consider the sustainability of supplies, but are also concerned with the user’s response.In terms of social aspects, designers should intend to affect how people use and interact with products, and consider what are the needs of people, rather than simply accommodating existing needs.
Design for sustainable behavior: A concept is a solution.
Designing for sustainable behavior is a new design approach which aims to reduce the negative impact of user behavior on the environment and society by shaping the interaction between them (Tromp, 2011). As Lockton argued, “Design for sustainable behavior” is a burgeoning research area and design thinking, which focuses on solving problems, is contributing to more environmentally friendly user behaviors.
Taking the example above, people do not like pull out the plug of their laptops when they go outside.A product named Ring Socket aims to help people reduce power wastage in this situation. The Ring Socket provides a time control system, and people can manage their time using energy when they plug in the socket. This system can enlighten and spur people to manage their energy use.
With the development of technology, consumer products are becoming more and more efficient. As a result, individual behavioral decisions are an important factor that influences household energy use. Dietz (2009) estimates that “20% of direct household CO2 emissions in the USA could be saved through behavioral change, with little or no reduction in household well-being.” They also claim that, “26%–36% as the proportion of home energy usage due to user behavior decisions.” These data show that user behavior or daily habits have a conspicuous impact on the environment. In order to address the waste caused by excessive consumption, designers should design products to encourage sustainable consumption. In other words, they should design for needs rather than satisfying desires.
Traditional eco-design has a strong focus on the supply side. However, from what has been discussed，the way the user interacts with a product may strongly influence its environmental impact. Furthermore, this kind of impact will be more apparent in the future; therefore, behavioral aspect concerns will become more popular. As Robert Fabricant (2009) suggested, design and the development of new products and services is a growing concern related to user behavior. Sustainable behavioral design will be an important principle in the product design field in the future.
User-centered design: a sustainable design principle
For designers, it is important to design products to promote certain behaviors. In order to guide users towards more sustainable behavior, there are many strategies which can be used in the design process. Lidman (2011) claimed in his thesis that these strategies were created with five categories: Enlighten, Spur, Steer, Force and Match. However, these strategies are following one design principle: user-centered design. In other words, designers should consider both human behavior and the psychobiological response of humans to a product in their design process. Designers can learn from the psychological and physical impact of a design element on users.
When designers create a product, they should investigate the user behavior and user experience, which is the most important part of a design process. Through this approach, designers can incorporate behavior into the design. Designers can shape an interaction between users and products through people’s physiological process. As a simple example, some toilets have a dual flush function. When people use this toilet, they have to choose one of the two functions. Instead of simply pushing the middle of the button, users have to make a decision on how much water should be used. This function forces users to think about their behavior of wasting water.
Another example is a programmable thermostat named NEST. Most people do not turn down the thermostat in their house when they leave. The system used with this product will remember your schedule and manage your thermostat for you. For example, it will turn down temperature when you leave your house. This product can help people save energy indirectly; it will not only help people to manage energy efficiently, but also encourage people to be more concerned with their energy consumption. By using this product, people may begin to care more about their energy use, and then develop good saving habits (NEST, 2014). The function of this product is not aimed at changing user behavior but is a program that can act sustainably for you. This design can be seen as an approach, which is very caring because it can perform a sustainable behavior for you. Obviously, the function of this design work shows that the designer considered the user impact on energy consumption and cares about the relationship between the environment and user behavior.
These examples reflect the user behavior research of designers. The purpose of these designs is to convince people to do a certain behavior with the goal of energy saving. In the process of NEST design, designers aim to use this design to persuade people to make conscious decisions or enact behavior changes, thereby achieve the goal of energy saving. During the design process, this design team conducted a three-week diary study, which aims to collect data about participants’ actual daily behavior（Yang, n.d.）. Through this approach, designers can investigate how to create a supply that affects human behavior. Base on this research, it is a user centered design process, which focus on promoting sustainable behavior.
Designers can also change a user behavior by studying the user experience in terms of psychological aspect. This means that the user’s psychological outlook will change because of a design’s appearance or function; the user's behavior will be affected indirectly as a result. There is a typical example in New York’s subways. The seats in the subway are designed using two colors. The issue was that there are five seats in one line; however, people find that only three or four people chose to sit on these seats even though there are free seats. Designers wanted to encourage more people to sit, so the seats were colored yellow and orange. These colors show boundary of each seat. This way, people can more easily realize that there are five seats. This design idea is very clever because the issue was solved in a very sustainable way. People do not need to redesign the seats and change them. Designers used colors to separate the seats and encouraged people to sit more often, increasing the number of hosts. This design makes full use of human psychological factors. This design team investigated how people respond to these seats and their user experience. Then, they try to use colors to separate a space. This resolution efficiently saves the space resources in the subways.
These examples demonstrate how designers can trigger different psychological and physical processes and thereby affect the user experience. In addition, designers can encourage or discourage a behavior through a design work by investigating human behavior and psychological responses. In these design works, the designers attempted to lead users to perform a designed behavior that has to potential to reduce energy consumption or use resources more efficiently.
Conclusion
With highly developed science and technology, there is no doubt that energy use will be more efficient in the future. In addition, the prosperity of commercialization makes it very easy for people to get what they want. As a contemporary designer or a designer in the future, we should aim to create products that benefit the environment and society. A product’s impact on the environment is not only demonstrated in the approach to material selection and recycling. Designers should realize the great impact of user behavior on the environment and society. Furthermore, they should take responsibly for sustainable user behavior.
There are also many approaches and strategies designers can use to change user behavior. However, when designers intend to design for a sustainable behavior the most important principle and strategy to use in the design process are investigating human behavior and psychology. We know that social issues deal with human behavior and in modern society designers have become significant creators of meaning in everyday life. Designers cannot hide behind this because they are the ones who provide products and services. (Grant, 1992) From what has been discussed, designers should design for sustainable behaviors because it is their job and mission and it is highly important to further explore sustainable behavior.
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