Using design orienting scenarios to analyze the interaction between technology, behavior and environment in the sushouse project

Abstract

To date, most government-sponsored programs for sustainable development have been aimed at either technology and product development (EcoDesign, Cleaner Production, Sustainable Technology Development Program, Economy, Ecology and Technology Program51), or at changes in behavior and attitude (Perspectief Project, Eco Team Programme52). The combination, however, of changes in technologies, behavior, and in the organizational context, seem to be necessary for larger environmental improvements on the longer term because these changes require each other and may even reinforce other. Substantial environmental change can be achieved through system innovations or transitions that affect a system as a whole and that will always combine technological, behavioral and organizational changes (VROM et al., 2001). However, when considering system innovations or transitions, it is important to achieve a good understanding of how technology, behavior and environment may interact and may mutually influence each other. This understanding can be used to optimize and enhance the (environmental) benefits, to identify and prevent possible rebound effects, and to increase the congruence with societal needs. This paper presents a scenario-based approach to study the interactions between technology, behavior and environment within a framework of system innovations. A design-orienting scenario is a future image of a new system that fulfils a household function such as clothing. The presented approach pays specific attention to the organizational context in which the user uses the technologies because this context changes often radically in system innovations and affects both the technologies used and the user behavior. An example of a change in organizational context is a shift from selling products to selling services. The scenario approach is illustrated with examples from a case study on Clothing Care in the Netherlands. The scenario approach is based on a methodology that was developed in a EU-funded research project called 'Strategies towards the Sustainable Household (SusHouse)', and tested in nine case studies in five European countries about three household functions: Clothing Care, Nutrition and Shelter (Vergragt 2000; Green and Vergragt 2000: Quist et al., 2001). In the SusHouse project scenarios were developed to explore possible future ways of sustainable function fulfillment (Manzini and Jgou 2000), and to find ways to innovate in sustainable directions. We also report on the interactions that were revealed between the organizational context on the one hand, and the artifacts and users on the other hand, and present a classification of these interactions that can be used to study interactions of system innovations in a systematic way. In section 2 to 3 we explain how the scenarios were used to study interactions in the SusHouse project, in section 4 we present a classification of interactions before discussing conclusions in Section 5. © 2006 Springer.