Exploring sustainable practices with trigger-products: A case of staying warm at home

Heating of dwellings forms a significant portion of societies energy use and is increasing. One way of approaching the problem from a sustainable design point of view is to offer thermal comfort in a more energy efficient way. However, the idea of offering comfort to passive receptors (i.e. people) has been argued to be problematic for energy...

A social approach to energy metering: The energy mentor

Industrial designers are used to applying their skills to modify or change user’s behaviour, inducing attributes to the product to empower/inhibit the use into a certain direction (e.g. scripts). These approaches might bring the desired results, and modify behaviour to one that favors sustainability. Such approaches, however, have a major defect...

Cultures of sustainability

In our research, we have been expanding our conceptual and methodological frames of reference as designers, in order to explore the complexity of factors involved in environmental sustainability and the consequent challenges posed for design research. In this paper, we discuss some of these issues in user-centered and sustainable design, drawing...