UX ðŸ'š Earth Day: How can we motivate people to adopt sustainable behaviour?
Today is Earth Day! A good occasion for us to actively ask ourselves once again how we can design technologies in such a way that they have a positive impact on our environment and are ecologically sustainable.
Two quick ideas:
- Technologies should also remain accessible/usable for older end devices and poor internet connectionsThis avoids electronic waste and is also good for accessibility. This also includes the Right to Repair.
- We can give users the opportunity to make more environmentally friendly decisions or strive for more sustainable behaviour. Matthias Laschke's research topic pleasurable troublemakers offers a veritable treasure trove of inspiration and great products dedicated to sustainability. One of our personal favourites is the Shower calendar.
We will briefly go into this in more detail, as it is super interesting from a UX perspective:
The Shower Calendar is designed to help people monitor and reduce their own water consumption and thus live more sustainably, thereby helping to protect the environment. It is an interactive visualisation - the data comes from the current water consumption. Dr Laschke's website explains exactly how this works.
Self-determination theory can promote intrinsically motivated behaviour in UX design
The interesting thing is that the design of the calendar follows a humanistic perspective on motivational psychology - namely the approach of intrinsically rather than extrinsically motivated behaviour. This is achieved by making it possible to experience the three basic needs developed in Deci & Ryan's (1987, 2000) self-determination theory:
- Experience of competence: You feel competent and successful in pursuing goals (addresses self-efficacy)
- Experience of autonomyYou experience yourself as the originator of your own actions, you can determine what you do yourself and are not determined by others
- The Experience of social integrationYou feel integrated and connected to a social group.
Experience of competence, autonomy and social integration
Experience of competence
The experience of competence is conveyed through the immediate, direct feedback and the self-efficacy experienced as a result ("I can manage that"): If you shower for too long and therefore use too much water, this has a direct effect on the visualisation, giving you the opportunity to take countermeasures and change your behaviour in line with the goal you have set. The desire to change behaviour can also be stimulated. In this way, you perceive yourself as an active, acting being. The calendar thus supports the image of human beings that can be derived from self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000), which postulates that people "have a tendency to grow (psychologically)".
Experience of autonomy
The Experience autonomy and freedom of choice is achieved by the fact that the calendar does not directly regulate behaviour - in other words, it does not dictate what you have to do. It is your own, self-initiated Action necessary. The calendar gives me as a person through insight into my behaviour the possibility to change myself. Behind this lies the principle:"You can" instead of "you shall". It therefore gives people a choice: this starts with the fact that you have to decide for yourself whether to press the initial button so that the measurement starts at all or whether to leave it alone. According to self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1987), this aspect of freedom of choice can promote intrinsic motivation (cf. e.g. Dorsch - Lexikon der Psychologie, 17th ed., p. 1491. Verlag Hans Huber). The calendar does not provide any specific instructions on how to save water. It merely gives us feedback on our current and past water consumption. The design of the ambiguous feedback is also strongly emphasised. Laschke et al. (2011) call this "Ambient feedback". The feedback is therefore neither paternalistic, judgemental or obtrusively annoying, but rather happens "incidentally". You don't feel coerced, pressured or even controlled by the calendar feedback, which is also conducive to intrinsically motivated behaviour (see Dorsch - Lexikon der Psychologie, 17th edition, p. 1491. Verlag Hans Huber).
Social integration
The Social integration can be experienced through "gamification" approaches, i.e. the calendar invites you to compete with family members or flatmates who also use the calendar, for example. This also makes the calendar a topic of conversation, e.g. when eating together (cf. Laschke et al., 2011). This can have a positive effect on satisfying the basic need for belonging (Deci & Ryan, 1987). As a group, you can pursue a goal - namely to practise the sustainable use of water as a resource and enjoy shared successes.
Irrespective of the three factors, the visualisation of consumption does not aestheticise "misbehaviour". This is achieved, for example, by long showers (i.e. high consumption) leading to a less "pretty" - or more sparse - visualisation on the display: the dots representing the shower become smaller with high consumption. The design of the interactive graphic is therefore ultimately set up in such a way that the reduction in water consumption is aestheticised (or "rewarded") by having a colourful, rich pattern on the display at the end. "Good" behaviour is therefore aestheticised with a rich-looking display, while undesirable behaviour tends to result in a "sparse", less aesthetic/pretty display.
Evaluation of usefulness
A prototype of the calendar was also evaluated. It was tested in two households. Specifically, the participants mentioned that the calendar appealed to their ambition to change, which led to personal goal setting (Laschke et al., 2011). There were also positive reports about the motive for connection "[...] Beyond resulting feelings of achievement, competence and control due to the improvement, its "social features" (individualisation, persistence) led to communication and competition, and in the case of success, to feelings of popularity and acceptance." (Laschke et al. 2011).
Also important: making something abstract understandable and tangible
Water consumption is quite difficult to estimate. But this visualisation of daily water consumption when showering by means of immediate feedback on behaviour also makes the previously rather abstract Water consumption can be experienced and "grasped" by people. It is thus transformed from an abstract concept (difficult to estimate consumption) into something "concrete" that I as a person can see and thus understand over time. In this way, sustainable behaviour can be internalised and thus promoted.
What else can you think of to make technology more sustainable?
Literature
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1987). The support of autonomy and the control of behaviour. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53(6), 1024-1037. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.53.6.1024
Matthias Laschke, Marc Hassenzahl, Sarah Diefenbach, and Marius Tippkämper. 2011. with a little help from a friend: a shower calendar to save water. In CHI '11 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '11). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 633-646. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/1979742.1979659
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68-78. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68
Shower Calendar on the website of Dr Laschke. http://www.pleasurabletroublemakers.com/shower-calendar (here you can also see a demo video for visualisation)
Picture credits: Illustration in the article picture Event illustrations by Storyset
