Strategies to promote sustainable behaviour in relation to water use : ideas and classifications

The design of products, services and spaces can influence what we think and do, and there is the potential for using design to promote sustainable behaviours. Most examples of behaviour change interventions have as setting Western and developed countries. Environmental damage affects people in diverse parts of the globe, and recently severe droughts caused water shortage in the most populous areas in Brazil. This paper reports on workshops conducted with Brazilian students as a way to foster the generation of ideas and development of strategies to promote sustainable behaviours regarding water use, and therefore reduce consumption and waste. The ideas proposed during these workshops were classified according to established models of design for behaviour change and sustainable behaviour, indicating the categories of the most frequent suggestions. Results demonstrated how the idea generation sessions were capable of producing interesting solutions to reduce consumption that could help to tackle the problem of water shortage. However, the short duration of these exercises meant that suggestions were limited in terms of scope and evaluation of impact. This paper indicates that design for behaviour change should be incorporated into regular curricula in Brazil in order to make future professionals and practitioners more familiar with these techniques and therefore more able to tackle their local and global environmental challenges.