Transition-oriented Futuring: Integrated Design for Decreased Consumption amongst Millennials

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the problem of overconsumption and opportunities to create alternative marketplaces that could ease the transition towards less, and different ways of consuming in everyday life. We argue that a more holistic view of the design context, multiple perspectives, and approaches, give more profound insights, explorations, and framings of the problem. Zygo, a future service for teens and young adults, based on the second-hand marketplace, illustrates our approach. Zygo challenges consumer lifestyles and provides a possibility for designing alternative practices around the use of everyday things. Repositioning the second-hand market as a scaffolding that supports and connects the youth in the transient, different and yet complementary phases of their lives, Zygo helps manage aspirations and needs of the youth, while raising awareness around consumption practices. Zygo is both an argument for an integrated design approach, drawing on service, system and interaction design, as well as social practice theory, and a designed proposal with the potential to promote transition design thinking.

Transition-oriented Futuring: Integrated Design for Decreased Consumption amongst Millennials