6 User Activity Matters: An Activity Theory …
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which are just cards.” (D1), “It is funny [to play] with the dice, with the concept of
randomness, rather than just picking a card.” (D2)
However, regarding the presentation of the Activity Design Cards, the text description on the card was perceived by the design experts as redundant. Both design experts
and participants with non-design backgrounds went directly to look at the images of
activity-centered design examples illustrated on the cards. Suggestions were made
by design experts that the question part should be clear and easy to read, the relevant
ACD examples can be separated from the design questions and moved to the back
of the cards.
Regarding the potential usage of the toolkit, all design experts indicated that if they
would use the tool in their real design process, they would use it mainly in the early
design ideation and concept development stage where they just started exploring a
specific problem with the need to generate as many ideas as possible. For example,
D3 indicated that the toolkit can be helpful to “induce new direction in the stage when
you feel depleted, focused on some areas where you have neglected previously.”
6.6 Conclusion and Future Work
This paper makes two contributions to the topic of design for sustainable behavior and
circular consumption. First, it reviews relevant AT-based design and sustainability
literature, and explores how to use an activity theoretical lens in product and service
design to facilitate people’s sustainable activities. Second, based on the theoretical
exploration, it presents the development and evaluation of an activity-centered design
toolkit prototype, which aims to help design practitioners to better frame and develop
ideas in their early design ideation stage to solve sustainability problems in users’
dynamic activity systems.
Overall, the result of the evaluation indicated that participants used the toolkit as
an interactive approach to take different aspects of user activity into design considerations. It worked as an entry point which allowed participants to engage with complex
sustainability issues within users’ activity systems. However, since the ACD toolkit
is in its early concept development stage, the prototype is not yet ready to be applied
in actual sustainable design practices. Rather, it is an illustration of how AT concepts
can be translated for and used by design practitioners with no prior knowledge of AT.
According to the feedback collected from the participants, several usability problems
need to be addressed. The most common suggestion is to reduce the redundant text
descriptions and adjust the layout of the Activity Design Cards.
For the next iteration, we plan to first solve the identified usability problems, and
then further evaluate the design vocabulary and questions extracted from AT with
researchers and design practitioners. Following that, the revised sustainable ACD
toolkit prototype will be tested in other design case study settings.
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which are just cards.” (D1), “It is funny [to play] with the dice, with the concept of
randomness, rather than just picking a card.” (D2)
However, regarding the presentation of the Activity Design Cards, the text description on the card was perceived by the design experts as redundant. Both design experts
and participants with non-design backgrounds went directly to look at the images of
activity-centered design examples illustrated on the cards. Suggestions were made
by design experts that the question part should be clear and easy to read, the relevant
ACD examples can be separated from the design questions and moved to the back
of the cards.
Regarding the potential usage of the toolkit, all design experts indicated that if they
would use the tool in their real design process, they would use it mainly in the early
design ideation and concept development stage where they just started exploring a
specific problem with the need to generate as many ideas as possible. For example,
D3 indicated that the toolkit can be helpful to “induce new direction in the stage when
you feel depleted, focused on some areas where you have neglected previously.”
6.6 Conclusion and Future Work
This paper makes two contributions to the topic of design for sustainable behavior and
circular consumption. First, it reviews relevant AT-based design and sustainability
literature, and explores how to use an activity theoretical lens in product and service
design to facilitate people’s sustainable activities. Second, based on the theoretical
exploration, it presents the development and evaluation of an activity-centered design
toolkit prototype, which aims to help design practitioners to better frame and develop
ideas in their early design ideation stage to solve sustainability problems in users’
dynamic activity systems.
Overall, the result of the evaluation indicated that participants used the toolkit as
an interactive approach to take different aspects of user activity into design considerations. It worked as an entry point which allowed participants to engage with complex
sustainability issues within users’ activity systems. However, since the ACD toolkit
is in its early concept development stage, the prototype is not yet ready to be applied
in actual sustainable design practices. Rather, it is an illustration of how AT concepts
can be translated for and used by design practitioners with no prior knowledge of AT.
According to the feedback collected from the participants, several usability problems
need to be addressed. The most common suggestion is to reduce the redundant text
descriptions and adjust the layout of the Activity Design Cards.
For the next iteration, we plan to first solve the identified usability problems, and
then further evaluate the design vocabulary and questions extracted from AT with
researchers and design practitioners. Following that, the revised sustainable ACD
toolkit prototype will be tested in other design case study settings.