Creating sustainable innovation through design for behaviour change

As part of our work with the Behavioural Design Lab, Dr Kristina Niedderer and Dr James Mackrill from the Universities of Wolverhampton and Warwick introduce a new Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project that needs your involvement.

Designing for behaviour change is a powerful way to tackle some of the biggest problems in the world around us. It’s already being used to encourage us to do things like recycle more, heat our homes more efficiently and exercise more frequently.

The aim is to improve how design research is made available to businesses and other potential users.

Because it spans so many different fields and problems it’s a challenge to create a coherent understanding of the practices and approaches involved. This is particularly relevant to small and medium-size businesses that may be doing interesting things in this area, potentially without realising the concepts and theories that underpin them.

As a result, a new Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project is being run by a team of design researchers and behavioural scientists from the Universities of Wolverhampton, Warwick, Lancaster, Loughborough, Twente, Delft, and the Royal College of Art.

The project seeks to develop a better understanding of how SMEs and public sector organisations currently access information about design for behaviour change and put it into practice. The aim is to improve how design research is made available to businesses and other potential users.

We intend to:

1. Investigate the level of current understanding, looking at the needs and gaps concerning sustainable innovation by public and private service providers, and how to address them more effectively.
2. Conduct a series of focus groups that explore the understanding, challenges and opportunities of adopting and implementing design for behaviour change strategies.

If you would like to be involved we invite you to first complete a brief 10-15 minute survey (22 questions).

The survey explores the concept of design for behaviour change and innovation within SMEs and public service providers. We will ask you briefly about your organisation, its position on innovation and behaviour change, and how you currently access relevant research. Following on from this, participants of the survey can also volunteer to participate in one of the two follow-up focus groups.

To get involved please follow this link: surveymonkey.com/s/sustainableinnovation

We see this project as laying the foundations of a targeted framework for sustainable innovation through design for behaviour change. More information on the research team and the project it can be found at: behaviourchange.eu