Ask the Expert

Although at times it can seem difficult to change just one person’s behavior, Professor Banny Banerjee, director of the Stanford Design Program says it is possible for design to induce large numbers of people to change their lifestyle, including deeply ingrained habits, to cause them to do better by the environment.

“Our behavior is deeply influenced by the norms and frameworks that surround us and design can be used to create systems and experiences that work with an underlying understanding of human behavior and cause people to fall into entirely new patterns of behavior,” says Banerjee, an associate professor of mechanical engineering.

Because behavior can be influenced—not just observed—it provides an important opportunity for tackling complex challenges such as sustainability.

That opportunity is perhaps best addressed with design. Uniquely trained to simultaneously consider human factors, technology and business factors, designers can help identify a behavioral goal (e.g. reduce energy use) and then work from that to employ the best systems, ideas, experiences, and technologies to enable alternate realities in the future.

With this outlook, Banerjee says he is excited to be one of the principal investigators in a new project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy in which he is working with other Stanford professors who have expertise in behavioral sciences, communications, human-computer interaction, and behavioral economics. The team aims to create interventions that influence behavior to bring about significant reductions in energy use.
 
Traditionally, society’s approach to curbing energy use has been to pursue more efficient technologies, and to implement regulations. These approaches appeal to people as rational decision makers. But what designers understand well is that people are “predictably irrational” and influenced by emotional as well as rational criteria, Banerjee says.

“It’s why many consumers buy designer clothes when more generic clothes that cost far less would function just as well.” he says. “It’s also why research shows that people are more motivated to avoid losing $10 than they are about gaining $15.”

Banerjee cites ethnographic research suggesting that consumers are not swayed to adopt solar power based on a rational comparison of dollars per watt, as much as on whether their neighbors have taken the plunge. Also, people do not have an intuitive understanding of energy like they do with time and money. It does not appear to be enough to flatly inform people of the facts of their energy usage. Instead emotional motivation, habits, and tiny choices that people make in their day-to-day lives without necessarily being conscious of them are important factors in how a crucial resource such as energy gets used.

In 2008 a group at Dartmouth created an energy usage monitoring and feedback system in which a virtual polar bear depicted on an ice floe would become imperiled by excessive energy consumption. Similarly, at Stanford last year, students in a design class created a game for kids, in which a tank of a shrimp would become cruddy and unhealthy if they used too much power in their home. Children are likely to be more engaged in saving a simulated creature than saving a few dollars on the electricity bill and their influence on their parents’ behavior is often underestimated, Banerjee says.

Now Stanford’s team is already on its way to designing new experiences as part of the energy department project.

“We are considering ideas that extend the idea of forging an emotional connection between consumers and sustainable living, using energy usage monitoring and feedback technology,” he says. “One idea is to anthropomorphize the home so that it seems like it has a personality and even a social life with other homes. The home’s emotional state, however, will be determined by how the owners maintain it and keep energy consumption in check. The home already enjoys a deeply emotional place in people’s lives, which we aim to leverage and allow people to form stronger ties with their homes through new behaviors.”

Another aspect the researchers are considering is having neighborhoods compete to reduce power usage. Banerjee says an interesting question is how social networks can affect and augment the experiences to make them more appealing and motivating.

Of course this kind of research in which design attempts to motivate sweeping behavioral change for a larger goal can be applied to a variety of other areas, including exercise, drug adherance, and financial responsibility. In addition to his energy work, Banerjee is also collaborating with Abby King, a Stanford professor of medicine and health policy and research, on how to inspire healthier lifestyles.

Projects such as these, which bring together researchers from such diverse fields, and other agents such as industrial partners and policy makers are extremely important in creating new approaches to a class of challenges that are beyond the scope of a single field. With this need to take “trans-disciplinary” approaches to complex challenges, work is underway to create a new “Design for Change Center” which will focus on issues of global sustainability, technology futures, and methods for bringing about rapid change.