Mindful Design as a Driver for Social Behaviour Change
Kristina Niedderer · 2013
Design for behaviour change is an approach, which seeks to change behaviour to encourage desirable human practices. The term emerged in the mid-2000's, but work leading to its development started well before then under the preface of emotion design and persuasive design. The currently most prominent application of design for behaviour change is in design for sustainability. Other approaches include crime prevention or health. Although there is an emerging recognition of the social potential of design, design for social behaviour change has remained ignored and under-researched. This paper reviews the recent interest in social behaviour change and social innovation in relation to current design approaches. It situates and develops the approach of mindful design against this background and argues that mindfulness is a key mechanism of designing for behaviour change, especially in social contexts. It proposes that the benefit of mindful design is its ability to shift the focus from an external locus of control to internal locus control. The latter enables conscious decision making and commitment in the individual as an essential basis for attitude change and for lasting behaviour change.