Product design, affordances and resource efficiency

产品设计、可供性和资源效率

• 批准号: RGPIN-2014-04627
• 负责人: Shu, LH
• 金额: $ 1.97万
• 依托单位: University of Toronto
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2015-01-01 至 2016-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=587921
• 关键词: Product; design; affordances; resource; efficiency

Our long-term goal is to use design to increase environmentally conscious behavior (ECB) in individuals. Much engineering effort has led to more resource-efficient products. However, consumer behavior can easily offset anticipated gains intended by resource-saving modes and technologies. Therefore, in addition to creating more efficient products, designers should also develop products that encourage and enable users to behave in more resource-efficient ways. The short-term objectives are to determine and develop methods that 1) identify innovative principles relevant to ECB, 2) incorporate such principles into products using affordances, and 3) investigate the effectiveness of such affordances and other interventions. _____________ 1. Identify innovative principles from lead users and biological phenomena We will continue to identify novel insights by studying lead users in resource conservation. Lead users have needs in advance of, or more often or intensely than, the general population, and thereby offer insights beyond what can be obtained by studying average users. A significant challenge lies in continuing to identify different types of lead users who offer insights relevant to the mainstream population. We plan to consider expanded definitions of lead users and to simulate lead-user situations to extract further insights. Biological phenomena have long inspired ideas for sustainability, but less work exists that identify sustainable behaviors from biological analogies. My laboratory has spent over a decade developing, validating and refining a tool that identifies biological analogies to engineering problems. We will use this tool to search for relevant principles from biological phenomena. For example, organisms that must survive in extreme environments have been called “champion adaptors”, and can be considered a form of lead users. _____________ 2. Identify and incorporate affordances that support ECB While studying concepts that support ECB, we noted that product characteristics that enable ECB tend to be more accurately described as affordances than functions. Therefore, we became interested in affordances, and specifically how affordances can be used to design products that support ECB. Affordances have been described as possible ways of interacting with products. Affordance-based methods emphasize what users will think of doing with objects, not just as idealized notions of the functions that objects perform. As such, affordances enable designers to better understand product designs from the user’s perspective, which may lead to insights on how users can be guided to interact with the product in different ways. We aim to identify and incorporate affordances into products as interventions to support ECB. _____________ 3. Interventions, applications, situations and individual characteristics After researching, developing and discussing potential interventions for ECB, it is clear that different interventions work to different degrees for different applications and situations on different people. We aim to better understand the interaction between intervention type and application, situation, and individual characteristics. We plan to first explore the appropriateness and effect of interventions for different applications/situations, but expect that other relevant factors will emerge during our study. We will investigate whether interventions that are effective for certain applications are likely to be effective for different applications, and will evaluate interventions by testing them on participants. We intend that our findings will enable designers to select and combine interventions to maximize ECB participation. This has clear benefits for Canadians, who can hopefully lead in this global effort.

我们的长期目标是使用设计来增加个人的环保意识行为（ECB）。大量的工程努力已经导致了更节省资源的产品。然而，消费者行为很容易抵消资源节约模式和技术预期带来的收益。因此，除了创造更高效的产品外，设计师还应该开发鼓励并使用户能够以更节省资源的方式行事的产品。短期目标是确定和开发方法，1）确定与ECB相关的创新原则，2）将这些原则纳入使用启示的产品中，3）调查这些启示和其他干预措施的有效性。 _____________ 1. 从主要用户和生物现象中识别创新原则 我们将继续通过研究资源保护方面的主要用户来发现新的见解。领先用户的需求比一般人群更早，或更频繁或更强烈，从而提供了超越研究普通用户所能获得的洞察力。一个重大挑战在于继续确定提供与主流人口相关的见解的不同类型的主要用户。我们计划考虑扩大领先用户的定义，并模拟领先用户的情况，以提取进一步的见解。 长期以来，生物现象激发了可持续发展的想法，但从生物类比中识别可持续行为的工作却很少。我的实验室花了十多年的时间来开发、验证和改进一种工具，这种工具可以识别生物学与工程问题的类比。我们将使用这个工具从生物现象中寻找相关的原理。例如，必须在极端环境中生存的生物体被称为“冠军适应者”，可以被认为是一种领先使用者。 _____________ 2.识别并整合支持ECB的启示 在研究支持ECB的概念时，我们注意到，支持ECB的产品特征往往更准确地描述为可供性而不是功能。因此，我们开始对启示感兴趣，特别是如何使用启示来设计支持ECB的产品。示能被描述为与产品交互的可能方式。基于负担能力的方法强调用户将如何看待对象，而不仅仅是对象执行的功能的理想化概念。因此，可供性使设计师能够从用户的角度更好地理解产品设计，这可能导致对如何引导用户以不同方式与产品交互的见解。我们的目标是识别并将可供性纳入产品中，作为支持欧洲央行的干预措施。 _____________ 3.干预措施、应用、情况和个人特点 在研究、开发和讨论ECB的潜在干预措施后，很明显，不同的干预措施在不同的应用程序和不同的人身上的作用程度不同。我们的目标是更好地了解干预类型和应用程序，情况和个人特征之间的相互作用。 我们计划首先探索不同应用/情况下干预的适当性和效果，但预计在我们的研究过程中会出现其他相关因素。我们将调查对某些应用程序有效的干预措施是否可能对不同的应用程序有效，并将通过对参与者进行测试来评估干预措施。我们希望我们的研究结果能够使设计者选择和联合收割机干预措施，以最大限度地提高欧洲央行的参与度。这对加拿大人有明显的好处，他们有望在这一全球努力中发挥领导作用。