How design of products affects user behaviour and vice versa: the environmental implications

Most efforts to improve the environmental impact of a product focus on technological aspects. However, the biggest environmental impact, of most electronics, occurs during the Use phase. Industrial Design has developed a number of methodologies to study the way users behave with objects. This paper shows that studying user behaviour can be the first step in offering solutions to decrease a product´s environmental impact during the Use phase. The research began as field experiments of product use in users´ homes. Such experiments provided the evidence to suggest feasible solutions for the short term. The research was informed by theories of affordances, ontological design and scripts