ariyan davoodian

Industrial design has played an influential role in developing consumerist culture. Given the design’s potentialfor the growth of sustainable thinking, altering this direction is expected from design. Despite the increasingrecognition that mainstream design has unintended consequences, less attention is paid to consumer behavior as theunderlying cause of unsustainability, especially the impact of purchasing new products. By considering psychologyalongside design discipline, behavioral models provide a practical foundation to change behavior, and their use insustainable design is growing. Due to the narrow focus on purchasing, maintaining, and disposing of products, thisresearch aims to design a behavioral model in this area. In this regard, by studying literature in the field of psychology,behavioral components and ways to affect them were extracted, and known models for behavior change were reviewed.These findings were reanalyzed and utilized with sustainable design principles and evolutionary psychology to design amodel with design interventions to change consumption patterns. Designers can use this model to encourage sustainableconsumption. This is significant because the previous research only focused on reducing resource consumption andpromoting environmentally friendly behavior in their models.

The rapid expansion of consumerist lifestyle in the societies and nations worldwide seems to be one of the main causes of the present environmental, social and economic crisis in a global scale. As the profession of Industrial Design has had an active role in facilitating and promoting such a lifestyle, the correction or improvement of sustainability situation of the products is therefore one of its major concerns and agendas currently. The main focus of the researches concerning the product sustainability is mostly on the environmental impacts and economic issues. The lengthening of the product psychological lifetime could be one of the effective tools for the reduction of consumerism. Within this research, first, the different approaches for extending the product psychological lifetime are reviewed comparatively and categorized semantically. Next, as the outcome of a field study done on the case of house furniture of the youths living in Tehran through a qualitative research method, the factors affecting the length of psychological lifetime of such products are extracted. Because of the especial role of furniture in lifestyle as well as the importance of its subjective/psychological issues, this kind of products has been chosen for the case study. The required information for this qualitative case study is gathered by using the methods of interview and observation. The samples are chosen among the youths living independently in Tehran and agreeing to be interviewed in their houses. Meanwhile, their own furniture is being observed as well. The interview with the samples and the observation of their furniture have been continued until the theoretical saturation is reached. The obtained data are initially processed by using the methods of Initial Coding, Open Coding, In Vivo Coding and Pattern Coding. To draw the distribution graph of data derived from the coding process, as a base for the final Theoretical Coding, the data are then analyzed by using the method of Quantification Theory Type III. Within the Theoretical Coding of the data, the users’ expectations from their furniture and their furniture particulars, which could be remained stable or changed, are compared. Accordingly, the different types or patterns of their equilibrium and also the users’ expectations items and the products particulars involving with each pattern are drawn. To extend the psychological lifetime of such products, the results of this research reinforces, on one hand, the importance of the product adaptability with the user’s personal changes depending on the context. On the other hand, the results emphasize the necessity of stability of product from the viewpoint of the user’s permanent values in terms of contextual and temporal changes. Furthermore, to conclude the design tactics for extending the psychological lifetime of the furniture of the youths’ houses living in the city of Tehran, the implication of the findings of this research are firstly compared with the categorized approaches for extending the product psychological lifetime derived from the literature review. Then, the findings have been discussed from design viewpoints to be arranged into the main design issues including design guideline, design strategy, design/research tools and framework regarding the above mentioned subject and case.