Designing for Behaviour Change: Smart Phone Applications as Persuaders of Pro-environmental Behaviours

The purpose of design for sustainability, in a broad sense, is to reduce our negative impact on the environment, society, and the economy. To date, various approaches have been proposed to serve this purpose (1). These approaches commonly focus on the physical and technological qualities of sustainable products or services; for instance, reducing the amount of material used during manufacture, using recycled or recyclable materials, improving products’ resource efficiency, and so on. However, a product’s environmental impact also depends on user behaviour; researchers have found that the majority of the impact of an electronic product occurs during the use phase, and that this impact is largely determined by user behaviour (McCalley and Midden, 2002; Wood and Newborough, 2003). This finding illustrates that promoting sustainable consumption practices is critical for moving towards sustainability as well as for designing sustainable products (Stegall, 2006).