Targeting Sustainable Products at a Broad Consumer Group with Interaction Design

Wiebke Poerschke, Author
Jodi Forlizzi, Advisor
In today’s consumer world, products marketed as green, sustainable, or organic have significantly increased in number. Yet consumers still often fail to align their growing environmental awareness with informed purchase decisions about sustainable products. Why is the abundance of products leading to confusion rather than increased consumption? Why do sustainable products often not appeal to the broader consumer mass? Today, designers and marketers target sustainable products to the consumer group of eco-aficionados, which has special goals and interests compared to the broader consumer mass. While marketers understand how to introduce and place a product into a market, they often are not dealing with the needs and desires of users. In contrast, designers can have a huge impact on how products are made, enabling users to successfully accomplish their goals in an easy and pleasurable way. I argue that design rather than marketing is the right field to approach the challenge of pushing sustainability into the mainstream. This means sustainable products first need to be designed differently, before they can be marketed to a different consumer group. Designers must change their design approach to fit the worldview of the new conscious consumer, but still work within the realm of consumer products. Three design frameworks are used to identify important factors to consider when changing the mindset of designing traditional products towards sustainability. I conclude with design implications that can assist designers in reforming their approach towards sustainable design for a broad market.

Poerschke_Essay

Mindful Materialism – Master project

Connecting consumers to the luxury products they care about.

Mindful Materialism is a series of high end retail tools that assist luxury product consumers in making sustainable product purchase decisions.It supports information gathering and decision-making, and eventually forms a deeper understanding and appreciation of material objects.

iMix

Designing a fun DJ application for the iPhone.

Duration: 4 weeks
Basic Interaction, Shelley Evenson, 2007
Team of 4

Overview
The challenge was to design an application for the iPhone that will allow iPhone users to become DJs.

Activities

• Generative User Research
• Interface and interaction development
• Interface design

Key Concepts and Innovation

• For the everyday user
• Native iPhone application
• Easy to use and fun

onveloop

Video messaging for people in long distance relationships.

Duration: 5 weeks
Basic Interaction, Shelley Evenson, 2007
Team of 5

Overview
Enable easy creation of video to enhance communication in established personal relationships by emphasizing message quality within specific contexts.

Activities

• Explorative Research
• Generative Research
• Evaluative Research
• Used Think-Aloud method for evaluative research
• Interface design
• Video Sketch composition

Key Concepts and Innovation

• Unique and simple way to communicate in a personal and intimate way
• Simplifies video messaging in such a way that everybody is able to use it

HindSight

The stories behind what’s in front of you.

Duration: 4 weeks
Grad Studio I, Dan Boyarski, 2007
Team of 4

Overview
HindSight is a concept for experiencing the sixth floor of the Mattress Factory in the future, without the collector’s (Barbara Luderowski and Michael Olyjnik) presence. This concept requires the space to stay as it is and for the sixth floor to be added as a permanent exhibition. Our intention is to preserve the experience by allowing visitors to navigate the space in any order and presenting them with Barbara and Michael’s stories. These stories bring the collection together, and their stories of pursuit are the core behind what has been acquired.

Wearing wirelessly connected glasses and headphones, a visitor can see and hear stories about the artifacts in front of them. We outline a proposal of this experience and the technologies that are capable of bringing this concept to fruition.

Activities

• Concept development
• Interface and remote development
• Video sketch (in Adobe Premiere)

Download: hindsight concept (PDF)

Markit

Markit—A smart shopping helper.

Duration: 4 months
Grad Studio II, Shelley Evenson, 2008
Team of 4

Overview
Studio Project, team of 5, given topic was learning in context. Target was the concept development for a chosen context in regards of learning in context. My team chose the topic ‘grocery shopping’. We went through the complete design process, starting with defining our target audience, conducting exploratory research, generative research, and evaluative research. Used technologies and methods included user shadowing, interviews, journals, paper prototyping and testing.

Wireframes

Activities

• Concept development
• Scenario and use case development
• User shadowing
• Paper prototypes
• Testing in usability labs
• Final design and mockups
• Photography for video sketch
• Editing and building the video sketch in Adobe Premiere