Towards practice-oriented design for sustainability: the compatibility with selected design fields

Abstract

Design scholars are currently exploring the potential role of design in fostering sustainable consumption. The social practice has been put forward as a relevant unit of analysis for capturing the dynamics of consumption, and, as a possible unit of intervention for design. This article sets out to explore the extent to which existing design resources may come to use in the development of practice-oriented design. To do that, it takes social practice theory as a starting point, and outlines some implications for design. Based on that, their compatibility with key principles and approaches from the design fields concerned with environmental issues and the relationships between humans and technologies is discussed, and tensions and promising resources are identified. By doing that, the aim is to contribute to the ongoing inquiry into what practice-oriented design may be, and more specifically, to discussions on the characteristics of design and innovation activities that may help foster transitions in less environmentally impacting directions.

Keywords::

• sustainable consumption
• social practice theory
• design for sustainability
• human-centred design
• service design
• transitions management

1. Introduction

Reducing the negative environmental effects of the interplay between people, products, services and systems has traditionally not been much of a concern to design scholars. Over the last decade, however, researchers coming from different backgrounds have become aware of the potential relevance of their expertise. To understand what kind of challenge it may be to foster sustainable consumption, scholars draw on conceptualisations of technology use and everyday life activities from the behavioural and social sciences. As reflected in the ‘design for sustainable behaviour’ heading of this special issue, much design research into the opportunities for reducing the environmental impacts of consumption draws on psychology. Due to the emphasis of such theories on individuals and micro-level dynamics at best opening up for incremental change, their inability to capture developments in the relationship between humans, technologies and environments over time and the systemic dynamics, for example associated with rebound effects (cf., Shove et al. 2007; Scott, Bakker, and Quist 2012; Pettersen, Boks, and Tukker 2013), this article picks up another theoretical perspective. In line with others (e.g. Hielscher, Fisher, and Cooper 2007; Kuijer and de Jong 2012; Scott, Bakker, and Quist 2012; Kuijer, de Jong, and van Eijk 2013; Kuijer 2014), it draws on social practice theory, introduced to design by e.g. Shove et al. (2007); Ingram, Shove, and Watson (2007) and Julier (2007).

Social practice theory represents a sociological stream of research on consumption, put forward as a way of framing ordinary everyday activity that constitutes a middle course alternative to approaches that emphasise the role of individual agency or structure (Spaargaren 2003). In the context of design, it is, for example valued for its emphasis on the changing nature of normality (Shove 2003), and for a systemic perspective which opens up for critically examining what is taken for granted and imagining support for a development that takes substantially less impacting directions (e.g. Kuijer, de Jong, and van Eijk 2013). Still, however, research into what practice-oriented design may entail is in its infancy. Scholars are currently examining what the implications of a practice orientation may be for design, and beginning to assemble and develop tools and approaches for taking the social practice as unit of intervention.

While practice theory may provide designers and researchers with an understanding of consumption dynamics and the role of designs in creating stability and change, it is not equipped with methods for studying practices or fostering change in new directions. Design fields may hold relevant tools for doing so, but are notoriously eclectic as tools from different academic disciplines are borrowed and combined, and different understandings co-exist (Friedman 2003; Shove et al. 2007). This matters because worldviews have practical implications for the theoretical and methodological aspects of knowledge production (Guba and Lincoln 1994; Shove 2011). In generative work, perspectives on the world and processes of framing and problem-setting are thought to influence the outcomes (Schön 1993).

The starting point here is that when looking for resources for practice-oriented design, it is important to pay attention to the worldviews and understandings they represent. The goal of this article is to contribute to the development of practice-oriented design by clarifying what a practice orientation may entail, and by discussing the extent to which existing design principles and approaches may be compatible with and provide resources for it. This may help build an understanding of the premises and opportunities for design to help foster less environmentally impacting practices, and aid the development of practice-oriented design directly. Second, it may form a background against which to discuss the preconditions for design contribution, in terms of the extent to which fostering practice development in sustainable directions is a design challenge, and in what situations there may be space and incentives for design to contribute.

To this end, the article takes the form of a literature review. It first reviews the literature on social practice theory to identify tenets relevant to questions about consumption dynamics and the potential role of design in fostering change. This is done by concentrating on what social practice theory has to say about the role of material elements, humans and the relationship between them in everyday activities, about what creates stability and change and finally, about innovation and interventions. From that, key implications for analytical and generative design work are drawn out. This does in turn form the background for a revisit to the design fields concerned with environmental issues and the relationship between humans and technology, namely design for sustainability and human-centred design. Central principles and approaches from the literature in those fields are introduced and assessed for their compatibility with social practice theory. The tensions that exist and the resources they may have in stock for the development of practice-oriented design are discussed and an overview of them is presented. The extent to which supplementary resources from other fields are needed is discussed.

The article is structured as follows. In Section 2 a review of social practice theory is provided, and some implications for design are derived. In Section 3, the literature from design for sustainability and human-centred design is introduced. Central principles and approaches are drawn out and discussed with regard to tensions and possible resources for practice-oriented design. Section 4 sketches out what practice-oriented design for sustainability may entail by presenting an overview of the findings and elaborating on the extent to which supplementary resources are needed. Section 5 concludes and raises questions for future research.

2. Social practice theory and design implications

2.1 Social practice theory

This section starts by introducing some main relevant social practice theory perspectives. An overview has previously been presented in a review of different theoretical perspectives on the role of technology in transforming consumption (Pettersen, Boks, and Tukker 2013).

2.1.1 Components, entity and performance

Social practice theory takes the social practice as unit of analysis. Reckwitz (2002) describes it as a routinised behaviour type consisting of elements that are connected to one another, which cannot be reduced to any of them. The elements include ‘forms of bodily activities, mental activities, things and their use, background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how and notions of competence, states of emotion and motivational knowledge’ (Reckwitz 2002, 249). Pantzar and Shove (2010) sort these into the overlapping categories ‘material’, ‘image’ and ‘skill’. ‘Material’ refers to things and body parts, the second to mental activities, especially ‘image’ and symbolic meaning, and the third, ‘skill’, to bodily knowledge or competence.

When a practice is social, it means that it is ‘a “type” of behaving and understanding appearing at different locales and at different points of time, carried out by different body/minds’ (Reckwitz 2002, 250). Individuals act as ‘carriers’ of practice, and thus of behaviour patterns and ‘routinized ways of understanding, knowing how and desiring’ (Reckwitz 2002, 250).

Schatzki (1996) distinguishes between practice as a coordinated entity, and practice as the performance of an action, and sees it as a coordinated entity that must be performed to exist (Warde 2005). Practices have development trajectories and emerge, persist and decay or die out (Warde 2005; Shove et al. 2007; Shove 2014). These are unstable as they depend on the repeated integration of elements, on performances in which they are sustained and transformed by practitioners. Pantzar and Shove (2010) add that practice elements too have a history and development trajectory and may travel between and be part of many different practices where they are integrated and transformed, with links being made, sustained and broken. As carriers of practice, practitioners have their own career within each practice (Warde 2005; Shove et al. 2007).

2.1.2 Stability and change

An important feature of practices is how they are routinised, but also dynamic. On the one hand, they represent inertia with understandings, procedures and goals guiding what is done and performance often neither being ‘fully conscious nor reflective’ (Warde 2005, 140). On the other, the social structure taken to lie in the routine, in repetition over time, breaks and shifts in ‘everyday crises of routines’ (Reckwitz 2002, 255). Pantzar and Shove (2010, 450) distinguish between three different states, reflecting the making, reproduction and breaking of links between practice elements. The first is the proto-practice, where links have not yet been formed. The second is the practice, where links are made and sustained as the practice is enacted. Finally, there is the ex-practice, for which the links no longer are made.

Practices are further performed differently by practitioners in different situations, and internally differentiated along many dimensions (Warde 2005). Conventions may be contested, understandings, competence and engagement levels vary, and people adapt, improvise and experiment according to their own situation (Warde 2005). Different practices relate to and influence each other, and may form systems with different characteristics (Warde 2005; Pantzar and Shove 2010).

2.1.3 Innovation and interventions

Regarding the effect of production on consumption, Warde (2005, 141) holds that it ‘is mediated through the nexus of practices’. Innovation is not done by producers alone, but is a ‘collective accomplishment’ and on-going process (Pantzar and Shove 2010, 457). Different actors may promote and make a proto-practice available. For a new practice to emerge, however, the components must be integrated in practice by practitioners. As pointed out by Kimbell (2012, 131), design may be conceptualised as ‘a situated, contingent set of practices carried by professional designers and those who engage with designs’.

The ways in which technology influences what is done are captured by the actor–network theory script concept (Akrich 1992). A script is the ‘vision of (or prediction about) the world’ innovators inscribe into what they make. Akrich (1992, 208) argues that ‘like a film script, technical objects define a framework of action together with the actors and the space in which they are supposed to act.’ The script includes decisions on the distribution of competence between the technology and humans, as in what should be delegated to the machine or left up to the human. Technologies can to some extent prescribe the reactions of users, but their ‘obduracy’ or ‘plasticity’ is established in the meeting with users, in the process of ‘description’ (Akrich 1992). While a design invites some and counteracts other actions and interpretations, its users can, as documented in studies on processes of appropriation and domestication (Silverstone and Haddon 1996), follow the inscriptions, but also ignore or counteract them. From a practice theoretical point of view, Shove et al. (2003; Shove et al. 2007) argue that objects script and are domesticated by practices, and that processes of domestication and scripting are never ending, with each round of enactment changing the conditions for the next.

2.2 Implications for the development of practice-oriented design

Having introduced some relevant features of social practice theory, we may summarise some main issues relevant to understanding the potential role of design in fostering less environmentally impacting practices (Table 1), and show how the social practice may serve as a unit of analysis and intervention (Table 2). This may work as a starting point for scrutinising the compatibility of social practice theory with different possibly relevant design fields, and their relevance for the further development of practice-oriented design.

Table 1 Overview of social practice theory principles relevant to the development of practice-oriented design.

	Dimension
Principles	Practice composition, practice as entity and performance	•Practices are social: they are ‘types’ of behaving and understanding that appear in different places (Reckwitz 2002)
		•Practices consist of different elements: materials, skills and images (Pantzar and Shove 2010)
		•Practices are performed: elements are integrated in bodily performances
		•Practices are internally differentiated, but guided by shared conventions or standards (Warde 2005)
		•Practices have trajectories of development, from emergence to decay (Warde 2005; Shove et al. 2007; Shove 2014)
		•Individuals – carriers of practice – are recruited to practices, have careers within them and abandon them (Reckwitz 2002; Warde 2005)
	Stability and change	•Practices are routinised but dynamic (Warde 2005)
		•Practices relate to and influence each other, and form complexes or systems of practice (Pantzar and Shove 2010; Watson 2012)
	Innovation and the role of the material	•Practices are moving targets: change is not made once and for all
		•Innovation is accomplished collectively (Warde 2005; Pantzar and Shove 2010)
		•The role of designers and interventions is indirect: change may be enabled and promoted, but what matters is the integration and transformation of elements in practice (Warde 2005; Pantzar and Shove 2010)
		•Value, needs and wants emerge from practice (Warde 2005)
		•Design and innovation are also (complexes or systems of) practices (e.g., Kimbell 2012)

Table 2 A framework for taking the social practice as unit of analysis and intervention (developed from Pettersen 2013).

Social practice as
Unit of analysis	Issues to study to map the characteristics and dynamics of the practice, including	•Service concept•Practice composition
	• environmentally relevant aspects	•Practice performance
	• what creates inertia, stability and windows of opportunity	•Relation to other practices
	• what may be relevant targets or intervention points	•Career of practice and practitioner
Unit of intervention	Issues to targetInspiration for generative work	•Circulation of elements•Practice composition and performance
		•Relationship between practices
		•Career of practice and practitioner•Internal differentiation, niche developments•Cultural variation•Historical variation

A first point is the scope. Neither technologies nor humans or the interaction between them is placed at centre stage (e.g. Shove et al. 2007). Rather, the practice is only material ingredients, but also skills and meaning. To capture practice characteristics and dynamics, it is further necessary to study how the ingredients come together as the practice is enacted, how the practice relates to other practices that constitute everyday life and how it changes over time. This may provide insights as to what creates inertia and resistance against change, and what could be possible windows of opportunity for it (Pettersen 2013).

Insights into how and to what extents practices are internally differentiated and what niches exist today, how they were performed at other moments in time and how they are enacted in other cultural contexts, may provide inspiration and ideas for alternative, less resource-intensive ways of doing (Matsuhashi, Kuijer, and de Jong 2009; Kuijer and de Jong 2012; Kuijer 2014).

Furthermore, it is an important point that practice theory represents a relational ontology. Agency is seen as distributed, or situated in relations and interactions, with the role of single actors being secondary (Geels 2010). This means that value, ‘needs’ or for that sake, resulting resource use levels are seen as co-created and emerging from practice, and not as properties of things or humans. The role of design and designers is thus indirect, and innovation is carried out collectively (Shove et al. 2007; Pantzar and Shove 2010). Innovation does not belong exclusively to design and innovation processes, but continues as practitioners make the integration of practice elements happen, and practices are reproduced and change (Pantzar and Shove 2010).

Practices are thus also moving targets. No single actor is in charge of the processes of change, and consumption cannot be changed or made sustainable for good (Shove, Pantzar, and Watson 2012). Rather than to reach some desired end state, the challenge might be to develop open scripts that allow for diversity but support change in less resource-intensive directions (e.g. Scott, Bakker, and Quist 2012; Kuijer 2014).

Considering the above – the characteristics of practices and their lifecycles or how they emerge, persist and die out (Pantzar and Shove 2010; Shove, Pantzar, and Watson 2012), practice theory presents certain handles or dynamics to work with in order to foster change in sustainable directions. From a governance perspective, Shove, Pantzar, and Watson (2012) suggest that it may be possible to target four issues. The first is to influence ‘the range of elements in circulation’ (146). The second is the relationship between different practices. The third issue is ‘the careers and trajectories of practices and those who carry them’. The fourth and final one is ‘the circuits of reproduction’. Based on Pantzar and Shove (2010), Shove, Pantzar, and Watson (2012) and Pettersen (2013), without intending to be exhaustive and keeping in mind that fostering change not only may be about introducing something new but also about disrupting what exists (cf., Pierce 2012), a number of targets for design may be pointed out:

• The circulation and promotion of practice elements and links: Addresses what practice ingredients and element links are and how they are made available and promoted, e.g. by policy-makers, firms, civil society organisations and practitioners (Pantzar and Shove 2010).

• The composition and performance of practice: Addresses how practice elements actually relate and are integrated in bodily performances (cf., Pantzar and Shove 2010), and what steps or procedures they involve.

• How different practices relate: Addresses the relationship between different practices, how they are bundled together and compete, depend on or influence each other in everyday life, or form complexes or systems in society (Watson 2012).

• How the careers of practice and practitioners develop over time: Addresses the lifecycles of practices and practitioners, including processes of recruitment, reproduction and defection (Pantzar and Shove 2010; Shove, Pantzar, and Watson 2012).

The different options overlap, and change may happen in incremental or radical ways, always co-created but never once and for all. Existing elements may be replaced, links cut and practices disrupted, or new elements and links be introduced and new proto-practices proposed and integrated into practices (e.g. Pantzar and Shove 2010).

In summary, taking the social practice as a unit of analysis may help designers and others understand the dynamics of consumption, by pointing their attention to the composition, performance and development of practices in space and time. This may in turn give insight into what creates inertia and resistance against change, and form opportunities for it. Such insight may in turn form a starting point for taking practice as a unit of intervention, and aid the identification of relevant targets or intervention points. In addition, studies of the variation in current and past performances may serve as inspiration for generative exercises.

3. Design for sustainability and human-centred design: tensions and resources

While practice theory provides a relevant theoretical framing for studying the dynamics of consumption and identifying intervention points, it does not provide tools and approaches for gathering information and developing and implementing interventions. This section therefore turns to selected design fields, to see what resources they have in stock for the development of practice-oriented design for sustainability. It concentrates on principles and approaches from the design fields concerned with sustainability and the relationships between humans and technology – design for sustainability and human-centred design, to discuss what can be used and to what extent there is a need for supplementary resources.

3.1 Design for sustainability

3.1.1 Principles

Ecodesign or design for sustainability is the design field primarily concerned with environmental issues. Coming from a technical background, it has traditionally not paid much attention on the specificities of the interplay between humans and technology, but comes equipped with tools and approaches for mapping environmental impacts, prioritising efforts, specifying goals and outlining strategies for innovation at different levels.

In ecodesign, the lifecycle perspective or following a product from raw materials extraction to end of life is central to the mapping of environmental impacts and prioritisation of efforts: ‘Ecodesign considers environmental aspects at all stages of the product development process, striving for products which make the lowest possible environmental impact throughout the product life cycle. In the end, ecodesign should lead to more sustainable production and consumption’ (Brezet and van Hemel 1997, 37). To do that, it is necessary to define system boundaries and specify a functional unit, meaning the quantified performance of the product system (UNEP 2009). It details the function of the system, and includes a user scenario specifying the frequency, place and time of use, as well as a lifespan. For frequently used energy consuming products, the use phase has often ended up towering above the other lifecycle stages (e.g. Brezet and van Hemel, 1997). The logical next step has then been to try and reduce its size relative to the other phases.

With the practice as unit of analysis, the system boundaries are broadened and consumption no longer only a question about product use. This makes it necessary to attend to the impacts of the practice as a whole, and opens up for changing the ambition from (only) reducing the impact of products and services over their lifecycle to making (clusters of) practices less resource intensive. The differences do, however, go deeper. As pointed out by Brynjarsdóttir et al. (2012) in the context of persuasive technology, the clearly specified scope required to make predictions and calculations implies that as some issues appear sharp and in focus, others disappear out of sight. Design for sustainability does not question expected service levels or take the details in what is actually done and why into account. The same goes for differences between different practitioners, and changes in performance over time.

Aiming to foster a development in sustainable directions, it is still necessary to understand where improvements can be made, and whether or not savings have been made. Seeing service levels as social constructs and value as emerging in practice does, however, make it difficult to define a functional unit. Together with the blurring of system boundaries, reflecting how practices may overlap and intersect, and changes in one practice lead to changes in another, this makes it difficult to assess what changes have actually taken place. It is, however, possible to supplement mainstream estimate assessments with studies of the variation that the involved practice elements open up for, and to look into the relative size of the environmental impacts from different perspectives. The use phase may represent the largest negative environmental impact over a product lifecycle, but the relative contribution of different products and practices to household consumption levels may at the same time vary from insignificant to considerable.

Given an ambition to create change through innovation, different goals and innovation strategies exist, reflecting different impact reduction potentials. Efficiency-oriented strategies target the relationship between resource input and resulting service and efficiency improvements, in order to reduce the resource use per functional unit. As part of research on how to improve the ‘energy efficiency of users’, Elias, Dekoninck, and Culley (2009, 1–2) introduce a methodology for quantifying user-related losses, or the energy used ‘over and above the optimal use of a product’. These are defined relatively to the desired outcome of the user, as in boiling water for four cups of tea. User-related losses such as users overfilling their water kettle are then taken to come on top of a base case scenario which consists of a theoretical minimum value, which refers to the energy that given laws of physics must be used for a product to deliver its function, and intrinsic losses, which are consequences of the product design and construction. Quantifying them makes it possible to compare the energy potentially saved with the energy needed to implement measures promoting energy-efficient use (Elias, Dekoninck, and Culley 2009).

Such ambitions are hence based on the belief that demand can be anticipated and inefficient use countered by design. This generates some friction with the practice theory view that what is done is constantly changing, and guided by and reproducing but also transforming shared ideas about what is desired, appropriate and not. Such a perspective implies that attempts at controlling and optimising service delivery may break down as time goes by (e.g. Scott, Bakker, and Quist 2012).

In sustainable consumption and production literature, the rate of change thought needed is often referred to in terms of ‘factor X’ efficiency improvements. It is frequently pointed out that transitions to sustainable production and consumption will require radical change in some areas, in the range of factor 2–20, given the growth rate of emerging economies, the increasing size of the world's population and the rising environmental pressure levels associated with that (UNEP, 2009). Such estimates are made taking what are considered the needs of future generations into account, and are based on the premise that environmental pressures are directly related to the size of the population and the materials and energy it takes to produce each consumption ‘unit’ (UNEP 2009, 28). They say something about the unsustainability of the current situation and the size of the challenge at hand, and are often linked to different innovation levels, ranging from benchmarking – copying or improving competitors’ products, via redesign and functional innovation – to system innovation (UNEP 2009). Radical innovation necessarily requires more time and bigger investments than incremental innovation does. Again, however, such calculations and approaches are based on the belief that demand can be anticipated and do not question the existence of consumption categories and expectations, but rather the efficiency with which they are fuelled and met.

Sufficiency goals do on the other hand open up for questioning the types and levels of consumption, to, for example improve quality of life per unit of expenditure (Tukker et al. 2010). This is relevant from a practice-oriented perspective, as it opens up for the redefinition of conventions and the questioning of the existence of products and practices.

3.1.2 Approaches

Ecodesign or design for sustainability comes equipped with tools and approaches that reflect the different levels of innovation. They do, however, not place much emphasis on consumption. Many are based on redesign, take single products as the starting point and primarily represent opportunities for incremental impact reductions over the product lifecycle.

While a practice orientation does not exclude interventions that target the environmental impact of single products, and hence of single practice ingredients, such approaches are not necessarily apt for realising the full innovation potential of a practice orientation. On the other hand, experience shows that technical efficiency improvement efforts not necessarily pan out in reduced demand, but are associated with rising standards and rebound effects (e.g. Wilhite 2008). Social practice theory provides insights that could contribute to realising the potential for technically oriented improvement strategies to actually lead to impact reductions, through an understanding of how to orchestrate more holistic interventions.

The product service systems (PSSs) concept refers to a group of instruments considered to bear with them potential for more radical change. According to Tukker and Tischner (2006), PSSs are a specific type of value proposition that a business (network) offers to or co-produces with its clients. They define them as consisting of ‘a mix of tangible products and intangible services designed and combined so that they jointly are capable of fulfilling final customer needs’ (Tukker and Tischner 2006, 1552). They argue that PSSs rest on two pillars, the first to start out focusing on the functionality or satisfaction the user is after and not the product, and the second to develop the business system providing it without taking existing structures, routines and firm situations for granted. Tukker (2004) distinguishes between product-oriented, function-oriented and result-oriented services. For the first category, services are added to product sales-based business models. For the second, product ownership shifts to the provider, which makes it available in new ways, and sometimes to a number of users. For result-oriented services, the client and provider agree on a specific result, and not on products. The environmental improvement potential is then the greatest.

While PSSs potentially could open up for greater impact reductions than what is the case for product-oriented strategies, the environmental performance of service systems does in line with what is the case for products, depend on how they are designed and actually used (Jelsma and Knot 2002; Tukker and Tischner 2006). Products that are part of services may be used less carefully and have a shorter lifetime than individually owned ones (Tukker 2014). In addition, central questions and challenges relate to consumer acceptance, as in how to make services attractive enough to justify a move away from individually owned products, and business interest and transformation, as in how the transition from individual ownership-based business models to PSS can be managed and make business sense (Tukker and Tischner 2006; Tukker 2014).

As for the above-mentioned technically oriented strategies, a cross-pollination of design and social practice theory might be useful for addressing some of the challenges faced within the PSS field, and make a relevant starting point for practice-oriented design for sustainability. The PSS field is criticised for not having a shared ontology and shared models for representation (Vasantha et al. 2012). The insight into the dynamics of consumption and the guidance on what kind of data to gather and analyse that practice theory provides might make PSS developers better equipped to face challenges such as making environmental impact reductions come about, and finding opportunities for replacing individual product ownership with the tools for co-creation of attractive value.

3.2 Human-centred design

3.2.1 Principles

In contrast to what is the case in ecodesign and design for sustainability, human-centred design comes equipped with behavioural and social sciences tools and methods adapted to aid the development of products for specific groups of users (Lawson 1997). This is relevant given the practice theory interest in empirical studies of why and how people do what they do (Warde 2005), but lack of approaches for actually doing so and developing the means for future practice in a design context.

Human-centred design is defined as ‘an approach to interactive systems development that aims to make systems usable and useful by focusing on the use of the system and applying human factors/ergonomics and usability knowledge and techniques’ (ISO 9241-210 2010, 2), but may be described as an umbrella term covering many different approaches (Sanders and Stappers 2008; Steen 2011). Steen (2011) for example points out participatory design, ethnography, lead-user innovation, contextual design, codesign and empathic design. According to the ISO standard (ISO 9241-210 2010, 5), they share some underlying principles and activities, which here may be discussed in the light of practice theory. (1) The design is based upon an explicit understanding of users, tasks and environments; (2) users are involved throughout design and development; (3) the design is driven and refined by user-centred evaluation; (4) the process is iterative; (5) the design addresses the whole user experience and (6) the design team includes multidisciplinary skills and perspectives. The activities include understanding and specifying the use context, specifying the user requirements, producing design solutions and finally, evaluating the design (ISO 9241-210 2010).

Human-centred design sees it as an important design task to identify and cater to needs, as constructing systems based on ‘an inappropriate or incomplete understanding of user needs is one of the major sources of systems failure’ (ISO 9241-210 2010, 5). While social practice theory acknowledges the importance of empirical studies of what happens in specific moments and places, it also highlights the relevance of understanding developments over time. Needs are seen as emerging and disappearing through the performance and transformation of practices, and products as configuring rather than meeting them (Shove et al. 2007).

Human-centred design considers user involvement a key source of knowledge about the use context, tasks and future situations of use (ISO 9241-210 2010). As commented by Redström (2006), users are defined in relation to the designs being developed, but as they do not yet exist there cannot be users. He criticises the attempts at designing use and user experience by creating a tight fit between object and user, pointing to how this reduces the opportunities for alternative interpretations and improvisation. In line with the script concept (Akrich 1992), he argues that intended use always will differ from the actual use of a final design, and that the problem is not the knowledge that user-centred approaches generate, but what designers think it is about and how they use it (Redström 2006). As formulated by Ehn (2008, 93), ‘strategies and tactics of design for use must also be open for appropriation or appreciation in use, after a project is finished, and consider this appropriation as a potential, specific kind of design.’ This resonates with the view that change will always happen, and that a sustainable development depends on practices that follow less resource-intensive trajectories.

The uncertainty about user requirements and actual use is of course acknowledged also in human-centred design, and reasons why processes are iterative and rely on user evaluations. When feedback from users is a critical source of information, it is because it is thought to help minimise the risk that the final system will not meet needs (ISO 9241-210 2010). Iterations are also meant to ‘progressively eliminate uncertainty’ (ISO 9241-210 2010, 5) as descriptions, specifications and prototypes are revised and refined in response to new information. In practice theory it is, however, considered impossible to fully understand users and situations of use, to eliminate uncertainty and predict behavioural responses.

The standard describes experience as ‘a consequence of the presentation, functionality, system performance, interactive behaviour, and assistive capabilities of an interactive system, both hardware and software’, and, of ‘the user's prior experiences, attitudes, skills, habits and personality’ (ISO 9241-210 2010). While the definition goes beyond ‘ease of use’, it emphasises the experiences of individual users (Shove et al. 2007). A practice orientation places complexes of which individuals merely are components and carriers at centre stage, while emotions, for example are seen as shared and belonging to the practice.

The human-centred design emphasis on making teams sufficiently diverse is seemingly relevant also to practice-oriented design for sustainability, related to the many different concerns and the needs for different kinds of data and analyses, as well as the broadened scope and relational quality of practices which open up questions about who to involve in order to be able to make change.

3.2.2 Approaches

When it comes to approaches, building an understanding of how practices are performed, how they develop and identifying targets for intervention, may require access to new kinds of data (e.g. Shove, Pantzar, and Watson 2012). Shove and Watson (2006), for example argue that a study of practices now and over time requires an eclectic, pragmatic approach, ‘large scale data sets, statistics on the use of time, money and energy, market research, and detailed qualitative exploration of situated practice’. Gaining access to routinised, practical knowledge may require disruption or de-routinising of practice, as suggested by Kuijer, de Jong, and van Eijk (2013), the creation of ‘everyday crises of routines’ (Reckwitz 2002, 255).

In the largely academic practice-oriented design studies conducted so far, evidence can be found of the use of adapted human-centred design approaches. A number of authors combine a practice orientation with co-design or co-creation (Jégou, Joëlle, and Wallenborn 2009; Matsuhashi, Kuijer, and de Jong 2009; Scott, Bakker, and Quist 2012). ‘Users’ are then seen as experts on their own experiences, and hold a larger role in knowledge, idea and concept development than in classical human-centred design (HCD) (Sanders and Stappers 2008). What is made, not said and done, is emphasised. Co-creation thus resonates with the view that innovation is collectively accomplished (Pantzar and Shove 2010), and that the role of design is to enable change (Scott, Bakker, and Quist 2012).

In the studies conducted so far, practitioner involvement has generated insight into what is normal and taken for granted (Hielscher, Fisher, and Cooper 2007; Kuijer and de Jong 2012; Scott, Bakker, and Quist 2012), related to how practices are routinised and knowledge practical and embodied. It has allowed for exploring and experimenting with novel ways of doing (e.g. Kuijer and de Jong 2012; Scott, Bakker, and Quist 2012; Kuijer, de Jong, and van Eijk 2013), and, given the social character of practices (and transitions), been a means for achieving group level change (e.g. Scott, Bakker, and Quist 2012). Interestingly, to explore opportunities for future bathing practices, Kuijer, de Jong, and van Eijk (2013) develop what they call a ‘Generative Improv Performances’ approach, in which improvisation actors engage with and perform using lo-fi prototypes in a laboratory setting. This is based on the idea that translation of practice theory to prescriptive design methods requires an emphasis on bodily performance, crises of routines and the generation of a variety of performances. The authors argue that improvisation actors are trained to improvise and make use of real and imaginary requisites, but comment that this has its limitations, for example when targeting practices for which the actors do not have specialist skills and experiences to draw on.

The ambition to support radical innovation by deviating from what is normal, and the inspiration that past ways of doing and other cultures represent, hints to the relevance of involving individuals possessing different kinds of expertise, that represent niche developments, possess specialist skills or carry practices from other cultural contexts. Involving future ‘users’ or practitioners may, however, not be enough. As societal and environmental issues are at stake and practices consist of ranges of elements produced by different actors, including products, infrastructures and physical environments, it may be relevant to bring more diverse actor groups together in generative work, experiments and assessments of future practice. To do that, however, there may be more to learn from governance approaches such as transitions management.

That said, another issue making human-centred design approaches relevant is the central place material elements such as markers, post-its, sketches, mock-ups and prototypes hold, for example as ‘representations’ of what is designed (Ehn 2008). In the context of practice-oriented design, this is relevant as the rigidity of products and environments makes it hard to deviate radically from existing routines (Scott, Bakker, and Quist 2012; Kuijer, de Jong, and van Eijk 2013). The introduction of new kinds of tools and environments may help de-routinise practices, as in how probes (e.g. Gaver, Dunne, and Pacenti 1999) are means for ‘generating disorder’ (Hielscher, Fisher, and Cooper 2007), enable experiments with new bodily performances, for example through the use of ‘trigger products’ or low-fidelity prototypes (Kuijer and de Jong 2012; Kuijer, de Jong, and van Eijk 2013), or foster actual transitions in practice.

Within human-centred design, and especially participatory design, concerns have been raised about power and agency issues. Calls are made for reflexivity and attention to the political side of design, including issues such as who is involved to represent whom (Beck 2002; McHardy et al. 2010; Steen 2011). Steen (2011) points out two tensions as ‘inherent in HCD’. One is the tension between designers’ and researchers’ own ideas and knowledge and those of the involved ‘users’. The other is the tension between understanding the past or present and designing for the future. Steen sees critical reflection on own practices, methods and project involvement as means for coping with the tensions and complying with the HCD ambitions of openness, joint learning and creation. This is relevant also here, for example with regard to whose ideas about sustainability to build on. Involvement levels and the distribution of power and agency between designers and practitioners do, however, necessarily vary with the characteristics of the project. Working with a local community or expert group, delegation of higher levels of power and agency to practitioners may be more relevant than in generic development work.

Importantly, however, a practice orientation grants practitioners a central role in innovation, and does not privilege designers. Ambitions to create a tight fit between intent and effect are seen as futile. Attention, therefore, shifts to opportunities for opening up for (sustainable) diversity, and approaches that allow processes of innovation for and in practice to converge. This stands in contrast to traditional models of new product development which rarely attend to what happens after launch (Ingram, Shove, and Watson 2007), and where firms rather pick up on the opportunities that emerge as practices and ‘needs’ change. A practice orientation does, however, also open up opportunities for incrementally changed business practices, such as segmentation based on practice types rather than user groups (Korkman 2006).

4. Towards practice-oriented design for sustainability

Shove et al. (2007) suggest that a practice orientation potentially could unite different design research fields within one framework. Here, it has been argued that when seeking to combine insights and approaches from different fields, it is important to attend to the underlying understandings they represent, and assess their compatibility. So far, the extent to which principles and approaches from design for sustainability and human-centred design may be compatible with practice theory and offer resources for the development of practice-oriented design for sustainability has been discussed. The first may contribute to the mapping of impacts, prioritisation of efforts and with possibly relevant goals and approaches, and the second with approaches for mapping the characteristics and development of practices, and generating ideas and concepts for transitions in practice, with and for future practitioners and other actors. The discussion is summarised in Table 3.

Table 3 Design for sustainability and human-centred design revisited. Overview of tensions and potentially relevant resources for the development of practice-oriented design for sustainability (developed from Pettersen 2013).

Design field	Resources for practice-oriented design	Tensions
Design for sustainability	•Tools and approaches for the identification of (variation in) environmental impacts, their source and relative size, in turn enabling prioritisation of efforts	•Technology- and product lifecycle-oriented•Little attention to the relationship between humans and the built environment
	•Sustainability goal typologies•Innovation level typologies	•Static understanding of needs and wants, the belief that demand can be extrapolated from the past
	•Tools and approaches for product- and system-level improvement and innovation	•Performance assessments require the specification of system boundaries, functional units and user scenarios, and issues outside of the system boundaries disappear out of sight (Shove 2003; Brynjarsdóttir et al. 2012). Here, they include systemic effects, what conventions are, how they have formed and what practices mean to people
		•The emphasis on expert knowledge and technological prescription makes systems susceptible to breakdown (Brynjarsdóttir et al. 2012; Scott, Bakker, and Quist 2012)
Human-centred design	•Tools and approaches for mapping current and envisioning future situations of ‘use’	•Centred on ‘users’ •Little attention to environmental sustainability
	•Emphasis on ‘user’ involvement, potentially useful in this context for generating insight/understanding and ideas, exploring novel ways of doing and/or achieving group-level change•Emphasis on iterative processes, evaluation and testing	•Static understandings of needs and wants•A focus on uncertainty reduction and optimisation of the fit between product, user and context of use•Sometimes limited attention to role of time and situational issues
	•Emphasis on multi-disciplinary collaboration
	•The use of material representations, potentially useful for de-routinising existing practices, experimenting with new bodily performances or fostering transitions
	•Emphasis on reflexivity and issues of politics, power and agency in some (critical) participatory design literature

Potentially relevant resources are not necessarily limited to the two sub-fields visited above, but may for example also be found in the more application-oriented fields, from interaction design or human–computer interaction (HCI) in which there is also some evidence of practice theory being picked up (e.g. Pierce et al. 2013), to service or systems design. To capture the link between human activity and the systems level, there may be opportunities in linking up with the more systemic approaches to design, such as the mentioned PSS field, and, as Scott, Bakker, and Quist (2012) argue, service design. According to Kimbell (2011), service designers emphasise the enabling role of products, see services as temporal and situated and value as co-created in practice, and seek to understand the experiences of different stakeholders (Vargo and Lusch 2008; Kimbell 2011).

Where design fields traditionally have focused on the design of products, services or systems, practice-oriented design also requires attention to skills and meaning, and how they are integrated with material elements. Practices are complexes of heterogeneous elements that are developed, promoted and circulated by many different actors, and as they are integrated in practice, performances are guided by shared ideas regarding how things ought to be done and why. Sustainability is also not a question about reaching an end state, but about supporting change in less resource-intensive directions (Shove, Pantzar, and Watson 2012). Coupled with the point that no single actor is in charge of this development, this hints to the relevance of multi-actor approaches (e.g. Mazé, Gregory, and Redström 2011; Shove, Pantzar, and Watson 2012; Doyle and Davies 2013). The same goes for the relational quality of practice and the role of shared practical understanding and local experimentation and improvisation, which point to the importance of allowing for practical experiments and fostering social learning when exploring opportunities for and trying to foster change. While designers may be a relevant group to introduce practice theory to not only due to their attention to the relationships between people, products, services and systems, but also due to the ability and willingness to deal with so-called wicked problems (Rittel and Weber 1973; Mazé, Gregory, and Redström 2011), practice-oriented design does not necessarily privilege designers.

System innovation theory and transitions management have been described more in depth elsewhere (Pettersen, Boks, and Tukker 2013). As also suggested by others, however (Shove, Pantzar, and Watson 2012; Doyle and Davies 2013), transitions management approaches may be relevant starting points for establishing arenas in which practitioners and other relevant interest groups can come together to engage in experimentation and social learning, for weakening or disrupting existing practices, re-routinising changed ones and recruiting practitioners for new practices. This may happen as small experiments allowing for collective exploration of possible practices (e.g. Scott, Bakker, and Quist 2012), or as part of larger-scale initiatives involving broader ranges of actors such as governments, firms, NGOs and civil-society organisations, in addition to ‘ordinary’ practitioners. Approaches could include backcasting (cf., Doyle and Davies 2013), ‘a normative approach to foresight using desirable or alternative futures’ (Quist, Thissen, and Vergragt 2011, 883).

5. Conclusion

The ways in which issues are framed and understood matter to what is created (e.g. Schön 1993; Shove 2014). Design scholars interested in the potential role of design and designers in fostering a sustainable everyday life are currently exploring the value of coupling design and social practice theory. Work is ongoing to develop tools and approaches for taking the social practice as unit of analysis and intervention. When doing that by combining resources from different fields, it is important to be aware of what worldviews they represent, what they reveal and conceal, can and cannot do. This article has contributed to the development of practice-oriented design by systematically discussing key principles and approaches from selected design fields in the light of social practice theory. It has clarified the potential characteristics of practice-oriented design as compared to other design approaches, and aided the identification of resources for it while highlighting the tensions that do exist.

More specifically, the article has introduced certain implications for design from social practice theory, focusing on what the relational understanding of everyday life means for the potential role of designers and designs in supporting a shift in sustainable directions. Products, services and producers are indirectly implicated in creating stability and change, innovation is collectively accomplished and processes of change never end (Pantzar and Shove 2010). Further, in line with other research on what practice-oriented design may entail, it has argued that social practice theory may provide heuristics or guidance for taking the social practice as unit of analysis and intervention. Studies of the service concept, composition and performance of practices, their relation to other practices and how the careers of practices and practitioners develop over time may reveal what creates resistance and form points of leverage for change, and aid the identification of intervention points. Specific attention to variation within and between cultures and over time may inspire generative work (e.g. Kuijer and de Jong 2012). Intervention development may aim for change at different levels, and target the circulation and promotion of elements and links, the composition and performance of practices, their relation to other practices or the career of practice and practitioners (Pantzar and Shove 2010; Shove, Pantzar, and Watson 2012; Pettersen 2013).

While suggesting what to look for and why, practice theory has little to say about how to develop practice-oriented interventions. The article has, therefore, turned to the design fields concerned with environmental issues and the design with and for human ‘users’, while pointing to other potentially relevant ones such as HCI, PSS and service design. It has done so to identify possible resources for changing current design practices or establishing new practice-oriented ones, and, discuss tensions between social practice theory and the underlying understandings of the selected design fields. It has argued that design for sustainability may help map impacts, prioritise efforts, set goals and inspire and inform the design of interventions. Tensions do, however, exist, between the emphasis on prediction, optimisation and control, and how social practice theory nuances and questions what is taken for granted and brings complexity back into the picture, holding future developments and the effects of interventions to be unpredictable (Shove 2014). Human-centred design offers approaches potentially useful for mapping the characteristics and development of practices and generating new ideas and concepts, while emphasising iterations and the use of material representations. While the critical strand of the field promotes reflexivity, tensions for example concern issues of scope and the notion of ‘users’, dominant understandings of needs, the traditional lack of emphasis on time and situational dynamics and the emphasis on creating a fit between product, ‘user’ and context. Furthermore, the article has stressed that while designers may be a relevant group to engage in the development of practice-oriented interventions, innovation is by nature collective, and intervention involves many different practices. Coupled with the social, embodied and multifaceted character of practice and the relevance of experimentation and social learning to processes of change, this points to the potential relevance of concerted action and multi-actor approaches.

In turn, the exploration undertaken here opens up questions for further research, especially related to the view that design itself is a practice or complex or system of practices (DiSalvo, Redström, and Watson 2013; Kuijer 2014). For the future, relevant questions concern how to move from the proto-practice (Pantzar and Shove 2010) explored in academia, and study how and to what extent existing design practices can be altered or practice-oriented ones be established and practitioners recruited for them. Furthermore, changes to the conditions upon which design and development work are contingent may be needed to open up for change in new directions. Another question is therefore what conditions could allow practice-oriented design initiatives to thrive, also beyond the scope of single firms and in processes of governance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

The article draws on Pettersen (^a2013).