Garrath T. Wilson

The considerations and limitations of feedback as a strategy for behaviour change

Design for Sustainable Behaviour (DfSB) is a maturing research area concerned with the application of design strategies to influence consumer behaviour during a products use phase towards more sustainable action. However, current DfSB research has focussed on strategy selection with little research into understanding the real-world impact of the behaviour changing interventions debated. This article presents the results of an extensive literature review of one specific DfSB strategy, feedback – a user agentive performance indicator. These findings exemplify the considerations and limitations of this particular approach to behaviour change, drawing on empirical research conducted by a breadth of authors, including two of the only medium-term case studies in the field of DfSB. Considerations discussed include the frequency, duration and accuracy of feedback; the selection of metrics and the presentation medium and mode; the use of ambience and the location of the installation. Limitations of feedback include the need for additional information and comparisons; the issue with multiple users; technical issues; relegation to background technology and the potential rebound effects. This article provides insights to both improve the effectiveness of future feedback design efforts and also to help facilitate discussion on feedbacks position as a strategy within DfSB.

Situating Digital Interventions: Mixed Methods for HCI Research in the Home

One of the enduring problems of researching and designing digital technologies for the home is that both media technologies and uses tend to be dispersed spatially and temporally throughout the environment and routines of home.This raises a number of methodologically challenging issues: how digital media technologies are situated amongst other technologies; how materialities and textures shape the experience of home; the ways in which practices of media use are entangled with the other activities and practices that are part of the routines of home; and how digital media content and communications create part of a wider ecology of communication and interaction in home environments. In this article, we outline a methodological and practical response to these questions and describe its application through the development of tailored interdisciplinary research methods. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS • This paper describes research undertaken within an interdisciplinary energy project that is seeking to explore domestic energy consumption and everyday digital media use through the individual and combined lenses of engineering, design, social and computer sciences. • The paper describes the interdisciplinary application of two methods that were enacted within participants’ homes: the interactive floor plan method; and video ethnography tour and re-enactment methods. • The benefits of embedding design research in this way are discussed in relation to studying the use of technology in the home and recent research trends in ubiquitous computing.

What Is ‘Value’ and How Can We Capture It from the Product Value Chain?

The mobile phone industry is based upon the rapid development of handsets and the high turnover of devices in order to drive sales. Phones are often used for shorter periods of time than their designed life, and when discarded it is often through channels that result in lost resource. This unsustainable business model places strain on resources and creates adverse environmental and social impacts. Through interrogation of a stock and flow model, a product-service system (PSS) for a small consumer electronic device, a mobile telephone, is proposed. The points at which value may be extracted from the PSS are identified. A quantitative measure of value is proposed in order to allow the evaluation of the most appropriate time to extract it. This value is not solely monetary, but is derived from the combination of indicators which encompass environmental, economic, and technological factors. A worked example is presented, in which it is found that the precious metals within the phone are the main determinants for value extraction. These metals are found in the printed circuit board, leading to a requirement to design phones for ease of extraction of these components in order to access the value within.

PORTS: an interdisciplinary and systemic approach to studying energy use in the home

In this paper, we present an alternative and novel approach to identifying energy demand reduction opportunities in the home. Through the creation of detailed narratives informed by our interdisciplinary research team of social scientists, designers and engineers, we employ a systemic view of how energy is consumed in the home. By interrogating clusters of people, objects and resources through time and space as they come together within our qualitative and quantitative research, we have identified opportunities for sustainable HCI design. This paper outlines our approach and presents an example product concept in relation to laundry.