We often hear that design has an impact on the world and changes it.
But the reality is not so simple. Society operates according to established rules, even with obvious flaws and countless stakeholders, and the problems faced are deeply rooted in people’s everyday behaviour, and the solutions are far away.
But, change is not impossible. By setting the right goals, the right incentives and building a positive environment, we can create more human well-being through design.
To use an analogy from The Elephant and the Elephant Rider, the emotional side of man is like an elephant, and the rational side is the elephant rider. But the elephant rider’s control over the elephant is unstable. This shows that people often think, and act separately and simply do not agree.
The elephant has the power of action but does not know the goal. Often the long-term benefits are forgone for the sake of immediate gain.
Elephant riders are far-sighted and look to the future. But often over-analyse and give too many options to make decisions.
In our 2021 courses and projects, we explore:
How can we change people’s buying behaviour to reduce the use and recycling of plastic products?
How can we change the way people manage knowledge to achieve overall organisational improvement?
How can we change people’s energy use habits to meet regional carbon targets?
How can people’s vaccination behaviour be changed to help increase vaccination rates?
All projects can be found to be engaged in one type of behavioural change, and indeed in the commercial and public sectors, behavioural change is also a focus of design. Whether it is a huge social issue or the arrangement of product details, the end user is the individual, and the experience and feelings of the individual fundamentally determine the viability of the product and are the root of how all services operate.
This often leaves the designer at a loss for words and a starting point. According to human behaviour, there are three core aspects of behaviour change: rational, emotional and contextual.
Plastics
Environmental sustainability, climate change has moved away from being a simple scientific issue and become a complex social issue, encompassing politics, economics and technology, that reaches into all human activities on the planet. But in contrast, its effects are hardly perceptible in everyday life.
We have chosen plastic as the subject of our study. In fact, plastic is not useless. Its use is the basis for modern industrial development and in many ways, it is irreplaceable, for example, plastic packaging allows food to be kept longer, thus reducing the amount of food wasted. What we need to do is not to reject all plastic use, but to limit it to a reasonable amount and help it to be reused.
We have also looked at people’s behaviour. People generally have a concept of environmental sustainability and can talk about the serious consequences of not making changes, but they are at a loss as to what changes they should make in their daily lives.
We want to reduce the use of single-use plastic products or recycle durable plastic products.
We have responded to this general state of overwhelming people by proposing the following design goals
1. to simplify solutions that can be done simply in everyday life
2. to make the scheme a habit and ultimately build an environment that reduces the use of single-use plastics
The design of the solution was not as easy as it might have been to make it more acceptable and simpler to apply in the real world, so we set a more tangible goal: to reduce the number of non-essential plastic wrapped products purchased per shopping trip, and only one per shopping trip. It doesn’t take a lot of learning, it doesn’t require a huge change, but in fact, according to our initial research, if everyone shops at least 2–3 times a week, the amount that can be achieved each time is quite significant over time.
Energy
In the Design Future Unit of MA Service Design at the University of the Arts London, School of Communication London, we are working with Southwark Council to explore the future of the borough, a future free from carbon emissions, to find out more opportunities for energy & buildings, transport, biodiversity and consumption.
Southwark is located on London’s South Bank. The council has declared a state of climate emergency and has decided to be carbon neutral by but councils can only control 14% of carbon emissions (Climate emergency.), which means that popular support and behavioural change will be needed We have adopted a speculative design approach.
We took a speculative design approach, using systematic scanning and design research to investigate the current state of energy in the UK and Southwark, but unusually this time we tried not to solve the problem but to ask the question
Our question was
What if people have a sustainable mindset, and sensible energy use…
Review the 3 main elements of behaviour change: rational, emotional and contextual. The environment is a major influence on behavioural change, as people turn a behaviour into a habit and become very conscious of the changes around them, while unknowingly copying the behaviour of others.
We want to envisage a future environment to help people get a glimpse of a possible future.
So, we envisage a future community that is energy self-sufficient (which of course is not the most energy efficient way). Everyone is very energy conscious, and most people live consciously according to a quota of energy and exchange it for more. By presenting a surreal ‘future’, it illustrates the importance of energy in our lives and in doing so raises awareness of the need for change in energy use and clean energy.
To be continue
