Lovable sustainability : from residential solar PV systems to eco-feedback designs

Traditional research in sustainable product design strongly emphasizes the material and energy domains and aims to reduce resource consumption and waste production in the manufacturing process and at the end of the product lifecycle. Less attention has been paid to products' environmental impact in the use phase and market adoption of sustainable products, which are also important components of sustainability and are heavily influenced by how users perceive products and how they use them. This points to an opportunity to apply user-centered design strategies to the realm of design for environmental sustainability. This thesis investigates the relationship between sustainable products and their users. The overarching goal is to gain knowledge of how to design lovable sustainable products, which are desirable and have strong emotional connections with users, to increase product adoption and to encourage sustainable product use.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Bao, Qifang.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Maria C. Yang.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/121844

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/121844