Drawing from human computer interaction theory and user study, we propose the following 10 guidelines (3 don'ts and 7 do's) for persuasive sustainable design:
5.4.1 Avoid things which are not directly related to sustainability (Don’ts -1)
Persuasive tools which are not directly pointed to sustainable concept (e.g. shopping bags in different colours) should be applied less. Users pay less attention and care less when they find it not related to them, or not expressing the sustainable ideas.
5.4.2 Avoid using social actors as “recommender” (Don’ts -2)
Social actor could be a good way to mediate people. However in terms of influencing sustainable concept, “teammate/partner” characteristic looks far more important than “familiarities/mirror”. To be a spokesmodel for sustainability, users need a helper or a partner to work with. Someone who represents eco-friendly will associate with users better than someone who seems to be like them, that is likely to minus the effect on persuading when users find it more like an advertisement.
5.4.3 Focusing on “who is the participant” is less necessary (Don’ts -3)
Social influence is a critical aspect on mediate people as stated in 5.4.8. Though users do care about the joint participation, they do not seem to pay much attention to the distance of the relationship between them and others. In other words, presenting “who exactly” is participating8 does not seem to be influential.
8 For example, your neighbour has also bought this item
5.4.4 Designing for instant motivation (Do’s -1)
As shown in the previous study, aside from LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) advocates, most people are passive to the idea of sustainability and environmental protection, especially the targeted users from the following study, who have to take care of both work and family. Under such circumstance, what can anticipate them to participate in green activities is the main concern for the sustainable design. Therefore, in making a sustainable design, it should minimize requirements, simplify actions, make it eye-catching and easy to accomplish and the like that will successfully elicit participation from people. Moreover, it should also include interesting and fun elements in the design in order to satisfy the users’ desire to try new things, and to further formulate a motivation for trying it out.
5.4.5 Designing new experience – what they are going to do (Do’s -2)
In addition to anticipating motivation, the users may also be interested in understanding how sustainability in this platform works, and therefore, the transparency of information should be considered as well, and should also avoid any under the table procedures. Designing new experience is bound to open up to what the users are about to be involved with and what aspects they will influence, and allows them to understand the whys and what for’s of this concept, current situation and what changes they can bring by their own practice. Furthermore, new experiences should be integrated with the needs of the users’ activities. For instance, the activity for purchasing food ingredients involves freshness of the food ingredients, health information, such as calorie, dish combination, the way of preparing food and so on. Hence, when designing a whole experience and process of interaction, it should take this into consideration.
5.4.6 Designing trustworthiness (Do’s -3)
Taking the activity of environmental protection as an example, what the users care the most about is reliability. They determine if the activity is authentic by observing while they are involved.
Therefore, besides the authenticity of the activity itself, it should adopt some adequate approaches
to reveal its reliability, for examples, logos that can represent environmental friendliness, descriptions that delineate the product’s resume, and even a record about the number of purchasers, etc., all of which can emphasize and represent that the activity or the service platform is reliable and trustworthy, and it will enhance the users’ sense of identification.
5.4.7 Designing to educate (Do’s -4)
Offering chances for education is also an important part that requires attention in the platform of sustainable design. Within design, there should be clear explanations that apply neutral and objective viewpoints to the users regarding new ideas. The rights and wrongs9 should also be identified clearly, so that the users could receive correct information rapidly and properly.
5.4.8 Designing mutual influence (Do’s -5)
In addition, behaviour of other participants in this field can be influential as well. Through the usage of the information from the outside, the design of the service platforms can show to the users that there are many people participating and they shall feel safe to give it a try. The participation of people from other fields can, on the one hand, let newbie users feel they are part of them, and change their will imperceptibly. On the other hand, the number of participants or any other eloquent and valuable information for reference can be adopted to convince more effectively the users who have been familiar with it.
5.4.9 Design to encourage their behaviour – Incentives (Do’s -6)
Almost everyone is fond of encouragement. Apart from promoting and introducing, after the users participate in an activity, an adequate encouragement is necessary to be given. Therefore, the content of design should consider practical feedback, such as awards, upgrades, and praises, or virtual feedback, such as value of experience or scores. This sort of positive feedback will enhance
9 For example, the expression form of high food mile and low food mile
the users’ experience, and make them feel that they are doing the right things and are able to keep doing the same.
5.4.10 Designing to make changes without changing lifestyle (Do’s -7)
Last but not the least, even though the goal is to make environmental protection an activity for the whole civilians, it should start with the current life of people, and change people’s behaviour and attitudes on the premise not to change largely the living style. It is owing to the fact that to most people, the activity of environmental protection is not as easy as a leisure activity or an easy task. From getting to understand the concept, actively participating in the activity, and eventually turning into a follower, the whole process could not be done without lots of effort. The designers ought to take this principle as a fundamental reference. They also have to consider the extent that different users can accept, and let such behaviour naturally fit into a daily routine, in that the users will establish good behaviour and correct values.
Chapter 6 Conclusion
6.1 Achievements
The basic research question is that exploring how persuasive technology and social influence phenomenon mediate users in the genre of sustainable service design. The studies were successful in exposing some of the individual values, influential factors as well as uncovering aspects of the physical, emotional experiences we were interested in.
As stated in chapter 1, the primary goal of this research has been the elaboration of the current situation regarding environmental issues, the brief introduction of the food mileage concept and the recent development of the sustainable design. A review of these theories in chapter 2 reveals that persuasive technology, psychology of persuasion and social cognitive theory have been applied to exploring social phenomenon and developing platform to influence behaviour for the better. Using the mixed-fidelity prototype designed based on the approaches from the theoretical framework the user testing result presented in chapter 4 helped us to extract seven key challenges when designing for persuasive sustainable design.
Through this study, we applied design approaches based on persuasive technology and the psychology of persuasion regarding behaviour change as a research tool to investigate the users’
responses and how they are affected in the iterative user testing. Through the human-centred design process, the involvement of the users enables us to obtain the real context of the influencing factors and their preliminary ideas toward sustainable design. Yet this study is only the primary discussion, and provides basic suggestions to design projects that focus on changing people’s attitudes. In the future, there can be further studies on the practical fields or implement of the activities that closer to the real use scenarios.
Moreover, adopting human-centred design in the research/design process can assure that the outcome may be suitable for its intended purpose in the context in which it will take place. The involvement of the users also assists in managing users’ expectations and can make the overall process more efficient and effective.