Design for product care focusses on stimulating users to prevent early obsolescence of products, which is particularly valuable for electronic household products. One product care strategy is to create attachment and therefore care motivation by strengthening the product-user relationship.
Currently, these strategies lack practicable design directions that designers can use easily, which is why little innovations occur. I propose to stimulate product care behaviour by improving the rela/onship between products and users through ambient interface implementa/on in design.
Ambient interfaces embrace communication with a playful, unobtrusive, intuitive character and gradual presenta/on. The goal of this project was to create a tool that summarises the characteristics of ambient interfaces. This became the ‘Ambient Care-Interaction Index’, an online tool that contains informative text and inspiring examples. It can be used to learn about ambient interfaces and inspire designers to use the qualities to (in)directly stimulate care.