Designing features that influence decisions about sustainable products

Engineers make continuous effort to improve the sustainability of products, such as using sophisticated manufacturing approaches, conducting rigorous sustainability analysis, and including materials that decrease environmental impact. However, thoughtful sustainability efforts are sometimes hidden from customers, which are wasted sales features if customers do not know or value them. As green marketing messages are not always trusted, another approach is to communicate sustainability to the customer through the product’s visible features. This research proposes and tests a newly-created design technique that helps product designers communicate sustainability in the products they design and, in turn, helps customers to think about sustainability during purchase decisions. Three empirical studies, with designers and potential customers as subjects, are conducted. Study 1 in Chapter 3 proposes and tests a new design technique that uses psychological priming to help designers generate product features that communicate sustainability to the customer, termed as sustainability-triggering, or ST features. Priming is a psychological experimental technique that uses an artifact, exposure, or experience to stimulate cognitive accessibility of specific mental content. Here, priming is used prior to a design task. The author investigates primes of sensory-andsustainability-heightening activities, and compares these to existing primes and a control condition. The test primes are proven to be comparatively more effective in helping designers generate product features that communicate sustainability, as judged by both experts and customers.