Behavioral Change through Interaction Design: Minimizing individuals’ environmental impact in their daily life
Typ
Examensarbete för masterexamen
Program
Publicerad
2019
Författare
MIKLIN, HANNAH
RÖHSS, DANIELLA
Modellbyggare
Tidskriftstitel
ISSN
Volymtitel
Utgivare
Sammanfattning
Living an environmentally sustainable lifestyle is an important factor for the well-being and future
of the planet. Making a change towards a lifestyle more bene cial to the environment is critical
in order to slow down the consequences of the negative trend. Making a drastic change in
one’s daily life can be dif cult. Motivational systems, such as persuasive user interfaces, supporting
communities, and helping relationships, could engage and support people in making lifestyle
changes. This could lead to a behavior change that favours the environment. The use of computers
as persuasive technologies to change behaviors and attitudes was coined by B. J Fogg as
Captology. This thesis explores how persuasive design principles can be used to motivate, support
and raise awareness of individuals’ environmental footprint in the design of an eco-feedback
carbon footprint calculator.
Several areas were researched, and behavior change theories and persuasive design principles
were proven to be valuable for the project aim. A preliminary study was carried out to explore
existing research and solutions in the context, and an expert within the eld of sustainability was
consulted to provide guidance and support in the project. To understand the needs of potential
users in the context, a questionnaire was distributed and answered by respondents. As part of
an iterative design process, theoretical knowledge and user insights were transformed into prototypes
and were thereafter validated in a realistic setting.
The nal result of this master’s thesis is a concept and prototype of a smartphone application
called EcoHero. EcoHero utilizes principles of persuasive design, persuasion guidelines and behavior
change theories and provides users with their daily carbon footprint summary, through
calculations of their purchases and transportation routines. Together with EcoHero, 5 suggested
features for designing persuasive technology related to behavior change were identi ed.
The result of this project can be seen as an example of how to implement persuasive design
principles in parallel with behavior change theories when designing eco-feedback applications.
To fully understand the impact of the identi ed insights, the long term use aspect should be explored
in future work.
Beskrivning
Ämne/nyckelord
interaction design , behavioral change , sustainability , self-tracking , carbon footprint , persuasive design , persuasive technology