About us

about us

where it came from:

		In 2004 Debra Lilley embarked on three years of PhD research in the Department of Design and Technology at Loughborough University. Debra set out to explore how design could influence user behaviour to reduce the negative social and environmental impacts of products during use. This new field of enquiry, collectively known as ,"Design for Sustainable Behaviour" has, more recently, gained recognition in design research and is now under investigation by a small yet growing number of researchers and practitioners. At that time, however, design-led research into behavioural change was fairly limited and any knowledge available resided across several disciplinary areas making it difficult to access. The majority of product examples identified in the literature were conceptual; few had entered mass production. Even fewer concepts provided information on the research and development processes undertaken, but focused only on the end result, which limited their usefulness from an educational perspective. In order to facilitate learning in, and raise awareness of, this new design field, a centralised resource was needed
In October 2007, Dr Debra Lilley and Dr Vicky Lofthouse were awarded funds by the Higher Education Academy Engineering Subject Centre to develop this web based tool to provide design-led approaches for behavioural change and demonstrate how to apply these approaches in practice through inspirational case studies. The resulting resource has been used by a wide-range of researchers, academics and practitioners in the UK and internationally and is now offered as a resource for Industrial Design students at Loughborough University.

associated publications and events:

Bhamra T A, Lilley D and Tang T (2011) Design for Sustainable Behaviour: Using products to change consumer behaviour, The Design Journal (Forthcoming)

Lilley. D and Lofthouse. V. A (2010) Teaching Ethics for Design for Sustainable Behaviour: A Pilot Study, Design and Technology Education: an International Journal, Vol. 15, No.2, June 2010, pp. 55-68

Lilley. D (2009) Design for sustainable behaviour: strategies and perceptions, Design Studies, Vol. 30, No. 6, pp. 704-720

Lilley, D. and Lofthouse, V. (2009) Sustainable design education – considering design for behavioural change, Engineering Education: Journal of the Higher Education Academy Engineering Subject Centre, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 29-41.

Lofthouse. V. A and Lilley. D (2009) Teaching Ethics in Design: A Review of Current Practice, In: International Conference on Engineering Design, ICED’09, 24^th-27^th August 2009, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

Bhamra T A, Lilley D and Tang T (2008) 'Sustainable Use: Changing Consumer Behaviour through Design', In: Sustainable Innovation 08 Future Products, Technologies and Industries, 27th - 28th October 2008, Malmö, Sweden.

Bhamra T A, Lilley D and Tang T (2008) 'Sustainable Use: Changing consumer behaviour through product design', In: Changing the Change, July 2008, Turin Italy

Lilley. D (2007) Design for Behavioural Change: Reducing the Social Impacts of Product Use through Design, Doctoral Thesis, Department of Design and Technology, Loughborough University, UK

Lilley. D, Bhamra. T and Lofthouse. V (2006) ‘Towards Sustainable Use: An Exploration of Designing for Behavioural Change’ In: Feijls. L, Kyffin. S and Young. B (2006) ‘Design and Semantics of Form and Movement DeSForM 2006’, 26^th – 27^th October 2006, Evoluon, Eindhoven.

Lilley. D, Lofthouse. V A, and Bhamra. T (2005) ‘Towards Instinctive Sustainable Product Use’ in: 2nd International Conference, Sustainability Creating the Culture, 2^nd - 4^th November 2005, Aberdeen Conference Centre, Aberdeen.

Lilley. D, Lofthouse. V A, and Bhamra. T (2005) 'Investigating Product Driven Sustainable Use' in: Sustainable Innovation 05, Global 'state of the art' in sustainable product/service development and design, 10th International Conference, 24^th – 25^th October 2005. Farnham Castle International Briefing and Conference Centre, UK, pp. 191-199.

The 10th Sustainable Design Network seminar: 'Design I Behaviour', Wednesday 12th April 2006, Design Council, London, UK. This event explored how design can influence sustainable behaviour. Follow this link for more information and to view the presentations and findings of the activities.

The 13th Sustainable Design Network seminar 'Design I Behaviour: Making it Happen!', Friday 17th October 2008, Engineering Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (engCETL), Loughborough University, UK. This event followed on from the original Design I Behaviour workshop by exploring how design can influence behaviour and the ethical implications of designing products to encourage more sustainable use. Follow this link for more information and to view the presentations.

This content was updated: 15/07/2011