Design for Sustainable Consumption Behaviour - Systematising the use of Behavioural Intervention Strategies

Paper in proceeding, 2011

It has been well debated if user centred design, UCD, can actually lead to innovation. This paper discusses the case of sustainable innovation, specifically addressing the development of solutions to influence users’ resource consumption behaviour. The approach presented, suggests how knowledge on user actions and habits in a resource consumption situation can be used in the product development process in combination with systematised behavioural intervention strategies to facilitate the creation of innovative solutions aiming to motivate resource efficient everyday actions. The Design for Sustainable Consumption Behaviour-approach, defined through a combination of UCD-methodology, studies of user consumption behaviour and categorised behavioural intervention strategies, explores how systematised knowledge within the domains can be applicable in an industry context to stimulate innovative solutions supporting actions for a decreased consumption of resources. The DSCB-approach can be regarded as an exploratory tool, which has the potential to help companies to integrate a behavioural perspective within their existing product development processes by providing guidance and an overview of available intervention strategies. To illustrate the use of the approach and conduct a first evaluation of the applicability, this paper reports on an explanatory case study carried out at IKEA of Sweden. The innovative results and outcomes of the case study suggest that the approach has potential to bring forth sustainable innovations. However, the presented approach should be developed further and tested through additional research before further conclusions can be drawn.