Background: Taking care of products is a relevant approach to prolong products’ lifetimes and retain their desired level of performance, and is thus an important aspect of sustainable consumer behaviour. Although consumers have a general motivation to take care of their products, previous research has shown that they struggle to repair, maintain or treat their products carefully in daily life. Design has the potential to increase consumers’ product care activities, but designers need more knowledge and distinct strategies to evoke this product care behaviour with consumers. Methods: By the means of a multi-method approach—individual and group brainstorming sessions as well as an analysis of existing solutions—we created a large number of ideas on how to stimulate product care among consumers. Results: We were able to summarize these ideas in a clustering session into eight strategies and 24 sub-strategies that can foster product care through design. These eight strategies are: social connections, informing, enabling, appropriation, control, awareness, antecedents & consequences, and reflecting. The integration of the consumer perspective into strategies for product care extends currently known design strategies for repair and maintenance. To support designers in the implementation of these strategies, we developed a toolkit that can be used in the product development process of different product categories. Conclusions: This paper identifies product care strategies that have a distinct focus on the consumers’ perspective of sustainable behaviour and that can be stimulated through design. These rather psychologically-driven strategies thereby complement existing technology- and product-oriented design strategies. Furthermore, to facilitate implementation, a design toolkit has been developed that points to key requirements in practice.

In this paper, we introduce a framework that conceptualizes a multi-stage process through which technology can promote sustained wellbeing. Intentional wellbeing-enhancing activities form the centerpiece linking direct product interaction to, ultimately, wellbeing. The framework was developed following a bottom-up–top-down approach by integrating theoretical knowledge from positive psychology, behavioral science and human–computer interaction (HCI)/design with empirical insights. We outline (a) the framework, (b) its five main stages including their multidisciplinary theoretical foundations, (c) relations between these stages and (d) specific elements that further describe each stage. The paper illustrates how the framework was developed and elaborates three major areas of application: (design) research, design strategies and measurement approaches. With this work, we aim to provide actionable guidance for researchers and IT practitioners to understand and design technologies that foster sustained wellbeing.

What role does the design of products, services, and the built environment have on people's psychological well-being? This chapter introduces the emerging field of Positive Design, which studies the mechanisms and manifestations of design that stimulates human flourishing. After a brief account of research on Positive Psychology Interventions, this chapter examines the possibilities and limitations of design for well-being. It is argued that especially the enablement of pleasurable and meaningful experiences and activities in daily life is a promising approach. Four Positive Design examples related to taking notice and savouring are provided in order to illustrate new forms of Positive Psychology Interventions. These examples range from designs whose explicit core function is the promotion of well-being to common, everyday products that foster determinants of well-being as an additional effect. A number of challenges that Positive Psychology Interventions in practice currently face and the potential benefits of Positive Design are considered. In particular, this chapter discusses the strengths of Positive Design in terms of reach, adherence, and person-context-activity-fit.

This paper introduces a design approach for co-wellbeing. We exemplify how design enables designers to facilitate a meaningful interaction between two diverse groups of people with different pleasures, needs, concerns, strengths and virtues. Given that people meet each other constantly in daily interactions, it is relevant to look at these social interactions from a Positive Design perspective, which has hardly been done before. In the presented approach, the perspectives of both parties are studied separately first, before aligning them to create one positive experience that is meaningful for both. The identification of ‘co-experience states’ is essential in this process, to give the designer insight into why certain complications and matches during mutual interactions occur, and how design can be used to achieve co-wellbeing among the two parties. This approach is demonstrated in a research and design case of parents and toddlers (1,5 up to 3 years old). It builds on existing knowledge in the field of Positive Design and design for co-experience, and intends to support and inspire designers in their aim to design for the subjective wellbeing of diverse user-groups in interaction.

The range of positive emotions experienced in human-product interactions is diverse, and understanding the differences and similarities between these positive emotions can support emotion-driven design. Yet, there is little knowledge about what kind of tool would be effective to leverage the differentiated nature of positive emotions in a design process. The current study explores the possibilities to develop design tools that facilitate a nuanced understanding of positive emotions and the considerations for developing such tool. Four new tools were developed that were different regarding how they described distinctiveness of positive emotions, formats, and usages. This paper introduces the tools and reports a focus group study that investigated when and how the tools would be of use in design processes, and their strengths and weaknesses.