Why Your Storage is Always Full: Identifying Design Opportunities to Support Divestment of Households’ Unused Products
Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 2025

This study explores which unused products are retained in households and discusses design opportunities to facilitate their divestment, bringing them back into use. Exploratory visits to 20 households were conducted, each comprising a sensitizing activity, an interview, and a tour of the households’ storage. The study revealed various types of unused products retained in the households; products with potential utility, products with emotional significance, and those that were unwanted by the household. Three key factors driving the retention of these products were identified. First, many households retained items due to the perceived product benefits, hoping they would be useful again in the future. Second, the divestment conscience, the consumers’ apparent desire to ‘do the right thing’ with a product, made it challenging to divest certain products as households struggled to find a satisfactory way to do so. Overall, the perceived effort required to divest products, the perception of divestment work, emerged as a major barrier, influencing all divestment scenarios. The paper discusses the opportunities for design to address these factors, to support divestment of the various types of unused products in households.

Product Retention

Household Visits

Design for Divestment

Product Attachment

Circular Economy

Författare

Karin Nilsson

Chalmers, Industri- och materialvetenskap, Design & Human Factors

Helena Strömberg

Chalmers, Industri- och materialvetenskap, Design & Human Factors

Oskar Rexfelt

Chalmers, Industri- och materialvetenskap, Design & Human Factors

International Journal of Design

1991-3761 (ISSN) 1994-036X (eISSN)

Vol. 19 1 95-108

Att utvinna garagets guld – en studie av potentialen att öka svenska hushålls återbruk

Formas (2021-01489), 2022-01-01 -- 2025-12-31.

Ämneskategorier (SSIF 2025)

Annan teknik

Design

DOI

10.57698/v19i1.06

Mer information

Skapat

2025-05-07