Addressing sustainability challenges requires shifts in consumption patterns and lifestyles. Design for Sustainable Behavior (DfSB) aims to cultivate sustainable attitudes and behaviors through product-based interventions. However, there can be a disconnect between design strategy and its embodiment and sometimes conflicts between designers’ intent and users’ interpretation. This paper explores the role of metaphors in DfSB in terms of using metaphorical thinking during the design process and/or creating product metaphors in the final design. It begins by identifying barriers that prevent people from engaging in sustainable practices, such as human nature and ambiguity in design. It then examines the roles of metaphor in design and its key strengths in DfSB. Furthermore, the paper outlines three methods to generate metaphors in DfSB: (1) The source domain implies the target domain. (2) The source domain serves design goals and strategies. (3) Cross-domain mapping is based on embodied experience. In conclusion, the paper discusses potential issues surrounding its use in DfSB.@en

Within the scope of Design for Sustainable Behaviour, the connection between behavioural change strategies and design idea generation has received limited attention. This paper highlights metaphorical thinking in product design to stimulate sustainable behaviour. In particular, the current study proposes a metaphor-based design method to guide designers on how to associate product features with behavioural and experiential cues through metaphors. We next report two design cases to evaluate this method. In the end, the shortcomings of current research and future developments are also discussed.@en

Designing for pleasurable and engaging product experiences requires an understanding of how users will experience the product, sometimes at a very abstract level. This focus on user experiences, rather than on the formal qualities of the product, might cause difficulties for designers in the materialization of design ideas. Designers need to navigate through several choices, shaping and refining the product qualities in order to elicit the intended experience. To support this process, we propose a tool, the Experience Map, guiding designers in the progressive transformation of an ‘experiential vision’ into tangible formal qualities, considering all the opportunities perceived by the different senses. The paper presents the results of two studies in which we verified the potential of the Experience Map, first in a workshop with design students and second in four design cases with professional designers. The results show that the Experience Map can provide a good structure to organize creative thoughts and progressively decrease the level of abstraction, particularly to support novice designers. It stimulates greater confidence and awareness of design decisions, while allowing the exploration of several design directions in parallel. These benefits, together with the visually stimulating layout and its ability to foster awareness on design decisions, make the Experience Map an effective tool to support experience-driven design practice, especially in the early phases of the creative process and in the educational context.@en

Along with the rise of Experience Design, the term Experience Prototyping was coined to describe the practice of prototyping for an experience-driven design approach. However, limited resources are available to define what Experience Prototyping is, which approaches it entails, and its scopes within the product development process. To answer these questions, we first discuss the fundamental definition of Prototyping itself, proposing a model that can describe Experience Prototyping too. The model details the possible focuses that Experience Prototyping can take, aiming at fostering greater awareness on how to prototype for future experiences. Furthermore, we discuss the role of new emerging technologies in shaping the practices related to prototyping. As an example, we report one case in which we used virtual technologies to perform an Experience Prototyping activity at the early phases of design process. The aim of this paper is to contribute to both design research and design practice by providing significant knowledge to shed light on the multifaceted practice of Experience Prototyping and thus tackle the prototyping decisions with greater awareness.@en

Moving from conceptual design intentions to the materialization in product sensory qualities can be challenging. For Experience-driven designers this transition can be even more difficult, as they need to move from the abstract level of user experience to the concrete level of product features. In this paper, we suggest an approach to progressively deconstruct experiential visions and decrease the level of abstraction. We propose the use of a tool, namely the Experience Map, which describes five steps to develop a well-refined materialization and maintain a solid correlation with the initial intention. To investigate its value and challenge the approach in design practice, we set up four case studies. The analysis of designers’ attitudes towards the Experience Map gave insights on its ability to provide a structure for creative thoughts, while suiting different and subjective attitudes of designers. Moreover, the map supports the integration of several different elements and the exploration of alternative design directions to achieve the intended, holistic experience. Some limitations were also highlighted by the case studies, which are discussed in light of future work. @en