An ethnographic study of packaging-free purchasing: Designing an
interactive system to support sustainable social practices
Amon Rapp
1, Alessandra Marino
1, Rossana Simeoni
2, Federica Cena
11University of Torino, Torino, Italy
2TIM, Torino, Italy
Abstract. Consumption practices show a strong presence of crystallized social understandings, organizing rules and permanent ways of acting that prevent individuals from changing towards more sustainable habits. Over the years, human-computer interaction research tried to help people engage in sustainable lifestyles promoting the health of the Earth. However, by favoring an individualistic and rationalistic approach to design, these attempts often lacked of a deep understanding of how individuals are intertwined with social dynamics and organizational structures that might determine their actions. In this article, we aim at exploring novel solutions to support people’s sustainable habits, by focusing on their everyday purchases. Using an ethnographic method grounded in the social practices approach, we analyze the value that individuals ascribe to activities and objects that seem already addressed to sustainable consumption: the packaging-free purchasing practices. Starting from the insights gathered from this research, and leveraging the
opportunities opened by the 3D printing technology, we design an interactive system with the aim to break the old buying routines and support the reuse of containers.
Keywords: behavior change; social practices; sustainable consumption; ethnography; human-computer interaction.
Amon Rapp: contact author. University of Torino, Computer Science Department – C.so Svizzera, 185, Torino, Italy.
Email: [email protected] Mobile phone: +39 3462142386
1. Introduction
The everyday purchasing practices have brought the contemporary Western world to face a large environmental crisis in terms of sustainability. Routinized buying activities lead to quickly transform objects into waste, reinforcing the “throw-away culture”. Despite this common trend, new packaging-free purchasing practices seem to currently spread in our society. Such practices aim to reduce waste and promote the reuse of containers. The inertia of the everyday mundane activities, nonetheless, confines these new phenomena to a marginal role. Moreover, the individuals who try to change their daily routines in such a sustainable way are often fickle and neglectful (due to oversight, forgetfulness, nuisance). How could HCI help people that buy in the unpackaged stores adhere to their sustainable habits? How could HCI promote these practices in contexts that are still anchored to the old buying activities?
Starting from an ethnographic study of the packaging-free purchasing practices and leveraging the evolution of the 3D printing technology, we want to suggest new ways to support change towards sustainable consumption. In the following, we will describe the design process of an interactive system aimed at introducing breaks and shifts in the reproduction of the old buying practices. Based on the free activity and the emotional engagement that often a game frame can arouse, this interactive system aims to turn containers from meaningless shells into objects with an intrinsic value. In doing so, we want to help people reflect on their own routinized behaviors, in order to explore opportunities for change.
The primary contribution of this work is threefold: 1) it describes how people are engaged in packaging-free purchasing practices through an ethnographic study framed within the social practices approach; ii) it proposes a gamified interactive system
aimed at sustaining the container recycling, grounded in the ethnographic study’s results; iii) it outlines how design can make people reflect on their own practices.
The article is structured as follows. Section 2 describes the theoretical
background that informed our research. Section 3 presents the ethnographic study and its results. Section 4 outlines four user requirements together with the design process of the interactive system. Section 5 describes the system in its functionalities, while Section 6 returns to the field to discuss its relevance with social actors. Finally, Section 7 exposes the limitations of the study and Section 8 concludes the paper.
2. Theoretical approaches to consumption
The classical economic model, based on the idea of growth, encourages a mode of production and consumption focused on the continuous increase of goods. Artifacts are designed for their final obsolescence, according to "The Product Life Cycle" (PLC) (Grieves 2006): “So waste could be considered the final destination, the output, the cul de sac of matter that has left the society” (Winiwarter 2002, 44).
In recent years, the need for changing towards more sustainable lifestyles is spreading in political, media and cultural discourses, due to the risk of destruction of our planet’s ecosystem. Such lifestyles promote the reuse and recycling of materials curbing the overconsumption and reducing the waste production, since “the easiest (and the cheapest) way to handle waste is not to create it” (Barata 2002, 121). However, if this need seems fairly shared among the public opinion, much less clear it is the manner by which we can lead the change.
As a matter of fact, the diversity of disciplines devoted to the study of human behavior contributed to the fragmentation of knowledge about change (Brand 2010). By and large, theoretical approaches to consumption can be split into two groups:
2.1 Individualistic approaches
Individualistic approaches to consumption are mainly based on the presupposition that beliefs, values and attitudes are responsible for driving human behavior. They assume that behavior is essentially a linear and rational process (Hargreaves 2011). These approaches, mainly related to cognitive psychology (e.g. Ajzen 2001) and rational economy (e.g. Kirchgässner 2008), believe that it is sufficient to persuade individuals to obtain a substantial change in their lifestyles (Shove 2005). Behavior can be changed by education (Ekins 2003) or by force of political, moral and economic persuasion (Shove 2005). Shove (2010) calls this model the “ABC model” in which the social change depends on values and attitudes (A), which drive the kinds of behavior (B) that individuals choose (C) to adopt. Gradually, these kinds of models started including an increasing number of variables as determinants of behavior, such as past behavior, affective beliefs, and self-identity, reducing their predictive ability and their practical applications (Jackson 2005).
Moreover, individualistic accounts, by focusing on the rational component of action, do not seem able to explain the complexity of the consumption behavior change. Lifestyles often struggle with an underlying inertia, which continues to persist even after individuals have been properly informed and educated: this inertia is often the main factor that determines the resistance to adopt new sustainable behaviors (Brown 2001). It has also been shown that the link between environmental awareness and pro-environmental attitudes, on the one hand, and pro-environmental behavior, on the other hand, is generally rather weak (Brand 1997; Kollmuss and Agyeman 2002). People often do not rely on rational choices in their everyday activities, but on irrational methods, such as rules of thumb and heuristics (Tversky and Kahneman 1974; Thaler and Sustein 2008). Finally, much of the knowledge that individuals use to take
“choices” can be hardly formulated in a symbolic system, which characterizes the rational thinking (Collins 2001).
Therefore, it becomes difficult to argue that we can only rely on persuasive processes to promote change, persuading individuals one by one. From this point of view, the individualistic approaches oversimplify the factors that affect people’s
behavior. They also do not adequately consider the material dimension of everyday life, i.e. the fact that human behavior evolves with respect to technological systems that constantly change (Shove 2003), as well as to physical objects and “artifacts that make up large sections of our social ties” (Latour 1992).
The social practice approach might overcome some of these theoretical issues, by shifting the focus from the individuals to the social practices in which they are immersed.
2.2 Social practice approaches
Connecting to the works of Wittgenstein, Foucault, Lyotard, Bourdieu, Latour, Taylor and Giddens, and detecting a renewed interest in theories of practices, Reckwitz (2002) and Schatzki (1996, 2001a, 2001b) proposed a conceptual framework suitable for the analysis of “everyday social practices”. Although there is no an authoritative and unified ‘practice theory’ (Postill 2010), “practice accounts are joined in the belief that such phenomena as knowledge, meaning, human activity, science, power, language, social institutions and historical transformation occur within and are aspects of the field of practices” (Schatzki 2001a, 2). A practice “is a routinized type of behaviour which consists of several elements, interconnected to one another: forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, ‘things’ and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion and motivational knowledge” (Reckwitz 2002, 249).
Schatzki (2001b, 53) further specifies that a practice is made up of “a set of doings and sayings organized by a pool of understandings, a set of rules, and a
teleoaffective structure”. The teleoaffective structure is meant as orientations towards ends and how the things matter (Schatzki 2001b), linking together the actions of a practice within a specific context. In other words, it refers to the ends (teleo) and the emotional (affective) aspects of a situated practice. The definition of practice can be further expanded by considering the objects and technological devices involved in the practice itself (Latour 1992, 1993; Shove 2003), as well as the meanings that social actors ascribe to them (Reckwitz 2002).
Another distinction that can be made is between integrated and dispersed practices. The first ones are those most commonly understood and described as
practices, i.e. the “doing and saying” of a variety of actions in routinized performances in specific contexts, such as eating and cooking (Ganglbauer, Fitzpatrick, and Comber 2013). Dispersed practices, instead, commonly focus on a single type of action, such as caring or being polite, and may involve different “doings and sayings” in different domains, being both common to and transcend any particular integrated practice (Warde, 2005).
The concepts of routine, as “whatever is done habitually” (Giddens 1984, xxiii) and of habitus, as “systems of durable, transposable dispositions” (Bourdieu 1977, 72), are also strictly linked to that of practice. Social actors become carriers of a practice, not just mentally, reproducing ways of interpreting, knowing how and wanting (Reckwitz 2002), but also physically, in the form of patterns of postures and gestures (Bourdieu 1977, 87).
Given these premises, it would seem difficult, at first notice, to account for the very possibility of change on the basis of the everyday practice approach. However, on
a closer examination, practices are not closed in themselves. First, actions performed within a given practice are not always the same, and conventions are reworked as social actors reinvent their personal styles (Shove 2005), or seek to replace current rules with new ones (Warde 2005). Second, the variability of the contexts in which practices are performed opens spaces of uncertainty that might lead to change the practice itself. For example, in food crises (like the case of mad cow), an event might create uncertainty, leading to a shift towards alternative, and more sustainable, consumption practices (Brand 2010). Third, the interdependence that ties people together, in the form of mutual susceptibility, constantly modifies their routinized performances as they interact each other (Barnes 2001). Finally, different configurations of practice components, such as materials, objects, environments, and technological devices, may further provoke a change (Shove and Pantzar, 2005; Strengers, 2010). This change could be promoted by identifying critical moments at which sociotechnical trajectories might be nudged, if not ‘steered’ in another direction (Shove 2005).
3. Related Work
3.1 Sustainable HCI and social practices
Previous HCI research has shown an in-depth interest to sustainability in general (Blevis 2007; Blevis et al. 2007; Hanks et al. 2008; Huang et al. 2008) and reuse of objects or materials (Huh, Nathan, et al. 2010; Huh, Nam et al. 2010; Pierce 2011). HCI informed research mainly with behavioral, cognitive and persuasive approaches (Fogg 2003; De Kort et al. 2008; Arroyo et al. 2005; Lockton et al. 2009; Lee et al. 2011), giving importance to individualistic accounts. In a large review of “sustainable HCI”, DiSalvo, Sengers, and Brynjarsdóttir (2010) noted that about 45% of their corpus was focused on persuasion, and 45% of these works traced their theoretical rationale to Fogg’s theory of persuasive technology. For example, the Smart Garden Watering
Advisor (Pathmanathan, Pearce, Kjeldskov, and Smith 2011) relied on the idea of persuasion outlined by Fogg (2003), aiming to change gardeners’ watering habits by pushing tailored information. Thieme et al. (2012), instead, designed BinCam, a persuasive system addressed to change recycling habits by increasing users’ perceived behavioral control (i.e. whether or not a person feels able to perform the behavior) (Ajzen 1991). Kuznestov and Paulos (2010) tried to motivate reduction in water use by showing individual and average water consumption. While Kim and Paulos (2010) promoted behavioral changes by increasing the user’s knowledge about the indoor air quality. Brynjarsdóttir et al. (2012) noted that such persuasive technologies rest on the assumption that users are rational actors that seek to optimize an activity on the basis of what they know. These approaches also frame “users” as individuals, bracketing the social and cultural contexts in which they live (Brynjarsdóttir et al. 2012).
Recently, nonetheless, HCI started shifting attention from “persuasive” and individualistic accounts to other factors that may impact on sustainable behavior. Pierce et al. (2013) introduced the social practice theory in a TOCHI special issue, highlighting that a practice-theoretic approach to HCI may direct us to look beyond isolated
interactions between humans and computers. They claimed that we must seriously consider forms of materiality other than computers or interactive technology.
On the empirical level, Ganglbauer, Fitzpatrick, and Comber (2013) took a practice lens to investigate everyday domestic practices around food waste, discovering that it is the unintended result of multiple moments of consumption dispersed in space and time. Then, they drew a series of design suggestions to avoid food waste, like making its costs more evident. Kuijer, De Jong, and Van Eijk (2013), instead, proposed that practice-oriented design approaches should involve bodily performance, create crises of routines and generate a variety of performances. This approach entailed a stage
in the form of a lab environment with rough prototypes, a scene directed by a set of loose constraints, and improvisation actors as players. It was applied to an empirical study on bathing practices, showing that it can generate rich narratives of possible futures that strongly deviate from the current routines. Kuijer and De Jong (2012) also investigated the thermal comfort through the social practice theories, revealing that there are opportunities for design in (re-)introducing person heating as an addition to increasingly dominant space heating.
On the theoretical level, Kuuti and Bannon (2014) proposed a research program where the ultimate objective is to understand the dynamics of the transformation and emergence of practices triggered by new technologies. Entwistle, Rasmussen,
Verdezoto, Brewer, and Andersen (2015) further introduced the Contextual Wheel of Practice, a framework that lays out four specific elements that are important for understanding practices: 1) Societal Structure includes legislation, or broadly accepted social norms; 2) Infrastructure, which refers to the aspects of the physical environment that shape behavior; 3) Near Materiality, which refers to the close physical environment or technologies that are under individual control; 4) The Individual, which encompasses personal values.
These works well exemplify the current attempts in defining methodological and practical tools to support the “turn to practice in HCI” (Kuuti and Bannon 2014).
3.2 Games and gamification in sustainable HCI
Another way for supporting sustainable consumption that has been explored in HCI is connected to the employment of games and gamification. Games have been commonly exploited by HCI researchers to influence user behavior in sustainable contexts: for example, to support the formation of healthy food habits (Orij, Vassileva, and Mandryk
2012), and sustainable behaviors (Antle et al. 2011) or to reduce energy consumptions (Bang, Gustafsson, and Katzeff 2007). Also gamification, defined as “the use of game design elements in non-game contexts” (Deterding et al. 2011), is employed in the design of interactive systems to enhance user engagement and motivations (Rapp, Cena, Gena, Marcengo, and Console, 2016) or to trigger processes of behavior change (Rapp 2017a, 2017b). Recently, HCI researchers have provided successful examples of gamified systems (Seaborn and Fels, 2015). Hamari et al. (2014), in a large review of empirical works, highlight how gamification has positive effects on user motivation and engagement, as well as on her performances and participation.
Examples of these game-based approaches to behavior change are numerous. Power Agent is a mobile-based pervasive game designed to encourage teenagers and their families to reduce energy consumption in the home (Geelen et al. 2012). The player must persuade everyone in the household to conserve as much electricity as possible, combining forces with other peer agents in a team. Power Explorer, instead, is a pervasive action-oriented multiplayer game where the overall goal is to explore the household, learn about its electricity consuming devices and develop a positive attitude towards conserving electricity (Bang, Svahn, and Gustafsson 2009). Madeira et al. (2011) developed a serious game where the user is represented by an in-game avatar whose challenge is to bring her house to the best consumption level.
Energy Battle is another serious game aimed at encouraging home occupants to save energy (Geelen et al. 2012). By saving energy, players gain credits that can be used to buy building blocks addressed to create a nice construction. Brewer (2011), instead, proposed a dorm energy competition which took place in fall 2011. The competition attempts to foster changes in participants’ everyday energy use by increasing their energy literacy. Power House (Gustafsson, Katzeff, and Bang 2009) provides a virtual
home, where the goal is to follow one family member around the home, turning appliances on and off with clicks of a mouse (e.g., the dishwasher, lights). Brewer, Verdezoto, Holst, and Rasmussen (2015) introduced ShareBuddy, a casual mobile game that makes player progress on the basis of consumption reductions and shifts in
electricity use.
Björkskog et al. (2010), instead, developed EnergyLife, a gamified system for monitoring energy consumption, where awareness and consumption (saving) are expressed in scores. Berengueres, Alsuwairi, Zaki, and Ng (2013) created an affective avatar-based recycling bin that presents immediate, positive and affective feedback in the form of emoticons and sounds. MIRABEL (Gnauk, Dannecker and Hahmann, 2012) is an energy-management system that employs gamification elements, such as points and leaderboards, instead of monetary rewards, to motivate customers to use the system. EcoIsland (Liu, Alexandrova, and Nakajima 2011) presents sustainable use data in the form of a virtual island with avatars representing family members, risking to be sunk if they do not comply with sustainable behaviors. All these examples show how games, or gamified elements, can be used to support sustainable behaviors, somehow diverting from the classical “persuasive” approach.
3.3 Designing a “gameful” system informed by the social practice approach
As we have seen, previous work emphasizes how social practices theory might inform the design of sustainable behavior change systems. This approach stresses a variety of concepts that might be helpful in rethinking the bulk buying activities.
First, it recommends to consider the meanings and the routinized behaviors embedded in a given practice in order to promote change, as well as the “material culture” made up of bodies, objects and devices. Second, it suggests to look at the
teleoaffective structure of a practice, to explore whether its explicit ends are paired with its emotional aspects. Third, it highlights that dispersed practices might produce a change in the integrated ones. Finally, it points to the “power” of new technology in introducing “crises” in a given practice.
If social practice approach might help design go beyond the individualistic take on behavior change, games and gamified techniques might overcome the exclusive focus on rationality, which characterizes the persuasive accounts. To this aim, HCI research explored how games and gamified elements can be exploited to promote a “ludic” behavior change. Results showed that they may have a positive impact on user motivation and engagement, actually promoting sustainable habits in a variety of domain, from energy saving to recycling. However, no previous work linked the social practices theory to the gamification domain. Actually, gamification can be considered as a dispersed practice, and thus usefully employed to modify the integrated practice of buying. Starting from these premises, we attempted to design a gameful interactive system grounded in the social practice approach.
3. Packaging-free purchasing practices: an ethnographic study
Since few years now, new consumption practices have been spreading in the Western world: the packaging-free purchasing practices. The way they work is simple: goods are purchased unpacked and placed in a container (e.g. bottles, bags) that the customer buys only once. Then, the container is reused over time. Nowadays, we can buy a wide range of everyday products in the unpackaged stores, such as detergents, soaps, cosmetics, and beverages, as well as pasta, flour, rice, cereals, legumes, and biscuits.
Such practices are currently growing. For example, in New Zealand a major part of consumers reuse containers for liquid products regularly, and 10-15% of them
constantly reuse bags for dry products (Wrap 2007). In Europe, European Community’s regulations have urged Member States to consider prevention as the first issue in the chain of waste management. In particular, the EU Directive 2008/98/EC, which has been implemented by Member States in December 2010, required them to adopt a national plan for waste prevention. Among the highlights of prevention policies, EU promoted the use of dispensers and equipment for unpackaged products (water, milk, detergents) (Cavallo et al. 2007).
In Italy, a point of excellence in the field of prevention is the region of
Piemonte, which has been subsidizing a unpackaged detergent project since 2006. The project was initially joined by three stores, reaching forty stores by 2008. Many
supermarkets joined the initiative as well: in 2008 172,071 liters of detergents were sold by reusing 101,847 bottles. This led to a reduction of 6.1 tons of plastic and 3.4 tons of cardboard, saving 25.6 million liters of water, 262.75 MW/h of electricity, with an emission of 17 tons of carbon dioxide less into the atmosphere (Città di Torino, 2008). As the evidence of the Italian case shows, there is no doubt that the most obvious advantages of the unpackaged shopping are i) a decrease in the production of waste and plastics, ii) a lower level of carbon dioxide emissions, and iii) a decline in transport costs. This type of trade promotes a local market distribution. Even because of these public aids, the unpackaged purchasing practices seem to currently spread in different businesses.
There are different types of unpackaged stores: shops rooted in the territory, as well as small, independent and family-owned stores, which sell traditional bulk products (e.g. vegetables, spices); ecological points, i.e. dedicated “bulk areas” within
supermarkets (both in small and in large ones); newly open stores fully devoted to the packaging-free purchasing, offering products (e.g. oil) impossible to find elsewhere.
However, a Wrap research (2007) conducted over groups of bulk stores in countries like US, UK, Australia and New Zealand found out that the dosing systems present in the majority of such stores have more appeal on old generation rather than young one. To attract new customers, this research suggests that we should design creative systems that are easy to use, look stylish and offer a ‘different’ shopping experience to attract the younger generation (Wrap, 2007).
3.1 Method and participants
Starting from the everyday practices approach to investigate the free-packaging
consumption activities entails the adoption of inspection methods that are able to bring to light the nexus of doings and sayings that Schatzki (1996) sees as constitutive of practices. The aim of our research was to collect useful data to envision an interactive system that could sustain the packaging-free purchasing practices. However, we had to first understand how these practices work. Therefore, we chose to conduct an
ethnographic research, composed of natural observation and contextual interviews. Social practice approach helped us define our research questions and focus on specific aspects to be observed in the field, as well as to be investigated through the interviews. In particular, we wanted to find answers to the following questions:
do social actors adhere to the packaging-free purchasing practices’ ends and objectives?
Are social actors able to daily perform such practices?
Are there obstacles that make resistance to change and prevent the spread of these practices on a larger scale?
Our initial hypothesis was that, if there was something making resistance to change, this could be ascribed to the role of crystallized habits.
To explore this hypothesis, we split the fieldwork into two distinct parts. The first part was devoted to observation with the main purpose of bringing out permanent routines, whose social actors often have little awareness. The ethnographer’s gaze, by not taking anything for granted, makes strange what is familiar, revealing what is usually hidden (Hopwood 2010). The second part was devoted to contextual interviews, based on the assumption that social actors are able to reflect on their performances and to account for them when stimulated (Giddens, 1984): this could expand the
investigation to times and spaces not directly observable, such as the domestic environments.
The case selection was carried out by the first and the second author to account for the diversity of the situations in which the bulk consumption practices might take place. To define relevant dimensions to be accounted in our sample selection, we carried out a preliminary investigation of the package-free activities existing in the largest city of Northwest Italy, by personally or virtually (through their websites) visiting more than 20 stores. As a results, we selected the following dimensions to be considered: i) the size of sales (small vs. large stores and supermarkets); ii) the local roots (established vs. newly opened stores); iii) the type of products sold (traditional products, e.g. vegetables, spices vs. new bulk products, e.g. detergents, cosmetics, pasta, beer, oil, cereals); iv) the range of products sold (stores that sell only packaging-free products vs. stores with a marked space for the packaging-free sale).
To embrace the heterogeneity of the phenomenon under investigation and to account for all the dimensions found, we then focused on the following store types: i) established large supermarkets (1) and family-run supermarkets (2) with a dedicated area to the bulk sale, selling new bulk products; ii) established stores (3) with traditional unpackaged products (two stores entirely dedicated to the packaging-free sale, one with
only a limited area dedicated to the bulk sale); iii) newly opened shops (4) entirely devoted to the sale of new packaging-free products (2 small and 2 large). In total, then, we selected 10 cases for observation. Such cases were chosen following a purposeful sampling method (Patton, 1990). They were selected after a preliminary telephone interview with the store owners (or managers of the bulk selling area), investigating the weekly average number of customers, the philosophy (motivations, goals, etc,) lying under the selling activity, the kinds and number of goods sold, etc.
We attempted to canalize the research focus sufficiently to gather the necessary data in the limited time available for the fieldwork (Millen, 2010). To this aim, social practice theory gave us a great support by suggesting aspects to be investigated. We focused the observation on the embodied habitus, i.e. the routinized gestures of the individuals, and the role played by the objects within these practices (especially the containers). In many cases, the researcher demanded accountability for certain observed acts to the encountered social actors (e.g. customers), through brief informal interviews. The observation time lasted a full day for each individual case, for a total of 10 days and 70 hours. During these days, we observed tens of customers buying in these stores. Observational data were in the form of field notes, manually collected by the second author. In the evening, immediately after the observation phase, the first and the second author carefully reviewed the notes.
Since we spent a limited time within the stores, we tried to fill this gap with contextual interviews to key informants. We have to keep in mind that, as Pierce et al. (2010) noticed, people’s descriptions of their practices may differ from their actual, daily consumption practices. However, a significant effort was spent to confront the ethnographic notes with the data gathered during the interviews.
The key informants to be formally interviewed have been identified in the store owners as well as in the regular customers. For each observed case, at least one key informant per type has been selected. Contextual interviews have been carried out within the stores, with the aim of investigating participants’ routines and the performances of the other social actors with which they usually come in contact.
For the store owner type we interviewed the responsible of the store (or of the bulk area within the store), by asking: i) how the sale is usually performed in the store; ii) the typical purchasing routines of their customers; iii) barriers that customers may encounter in purchasing the bulk products; iv) promotional strategies they use to make visible their selling activity.
With regard to the regular customer type, we chose typical cases of regular customers (Patton 1990), since typicality is important to increase the generalizability of the findings in a qualitative study (Gobo 2008). Their typicality was defined on the basis of the store owners’ recounts, who identified the characteristics of their typical customers: e.g. average age and consumption habits. Such cases were selected with the cooperation of store owners, considered as key informants: they identified those customers that better exemplified their regular clientele. We interviewed customers respecting the following inclusion criteria: i) they have been buying in a bulk shop for at least three months and ii) they were buying bulk products at least two times a month. We asked them: i) why and how they usually buy bulk products; ii) kinds of bulk products they prefer and wish to be available in the future; iii) barriers encountered during the buying process and usage of bulk products; iv) how the seller performs the selling routines.
Interviews were semi-structured. We left participants free to explore topics not foreseen in the initial list of questions, and, if necessary, we prompted them to clarify their recounts with examples.
Table 1. Sample of the first and second study.
Store Names Store Type Store owners Customers (ethnography )
Customers (return to the field)
Traditional bulk stores
CiboBiologico Established store Marco Anna B. //
CiboSano Established store Luigi Sara //
Buono e Pulito Established store Daria Carlo //
Restore Family run supermarket Piero Gianmarco //
Bebeb Family run supermarket Alberto Marzia //
New unpackaged sales activities
Carion Large supermarket Carla Luca //
La sfusa Newly opened store Diego Anna C. Anna, Giovanni, Giulia
Sfusi di nuovo Newly opened store Enrico Paolo Elena, Gaia, Marco BioNegozio Newly opened store Franco Elena Giulio, Stefano La cosa vera Newly opened store Marta Mauro Elisa, Federico
A total of 20 formal interviews were conducted by the first and the second author with 10 store owners (females=3; average age=37,1; SD=12,4) and 10 regular customers (females=5; average age=35,1; SD=11,2). Half of the participants owned a smartphone and were open to technology: they all regularly used applications and
mobile internet access on their phone. The other half used their mobile phone mainly to call and text, with a scarce use of internet connection. All participants were relatively affluent. Half of the customers interviewed had a bachelor’s degree, two a master’s degree, and three a high school diploma. Three store owners had a bachelor’s degree, one a master’s degree, three a high school diploma, and three a middle school diploma. Table 1 gives a snapshot of the participants involved in the ethnographic research, as well as in the subsequent study.
Participants were not compensated for their participation. Each participant signed up an informed consent. Each interview lasted about 60 minutes and was audio recorded. Along with these “formal” interviews, as we have said above, we also asked to different customers to account for their buying performances through brief
“informal” interviews.
We transcribed the recordings of the interviews and analyzed them together with the data coming from the observation sessions (which also included the transcriptions of the informal interviews). We carried out a bottom-up analysis. Data were coded
independently by the first and the second author who generated initial open codes: data were broken down by taking apart sentences and by labeling them with a name. The outcomes were then compared for consistency of text segmentation and code
application (MacQueen et al. 2008). All inconsistencies were discussed and resolved. Then, codes defined were structured and analyzed by means of affinity diagrams (Beyer et al. 1992), allowing us to order and group them. Names of both participants and stores were changed due to privacy reasons. Sentences coming from the formal interviews are always ascribed to a name, while those pertaining to informal conversations are ascribed to generic “customers”.
3.2 Findings
The data collected through observation show that the visited contexts can be split into two distinct groups. The first group brings together the three stores selling traditional unpackaged products, as well as the two small family-run supermarkets. In these cases, the shared understandings, i.e. the abilities underlying the individuals’ actions, hark back to old practice skills, such as those performed in the street markets, or in the spice bazaars. They mainly pertain to the skills of recognizing (for customers) and dosing (for merchants) the right amount of product necessary to meet consumption needs. Although products are sold without packages, they are for the most part placed in paper or plastic disposable bags. Therefore, almost no abilities related to the reuse / recycling of the containers are shared among such practitioners. We call this group “traditional bulk stores”.
The second group of cases (the large supermarket and the four newly opened shops), instead, has a different configuration. We call them “new unpackaged sales activities”. Here, the customer uses the bulk dispenser, exhibiting a skill that allows her to take the place of the seller. Moreover, customers recognize what types of containers are more suitable for certain products, and what steps are needed for their proper maintenance, starting from the washing and sterilization process. We will now explore four main themes that emerged from the analysis of the collected data: rules governing the buying practices; ends for buying bulk products; objects, bodies, and technology; containers.
3.2.1 Rules governing the purchasing practices
In all the traditional bulk stores there is a set of rules, in the form of more or less explicit formulations that should direct the people’s performances. Marco, a store owner, explains that: “We discount 50 cent to customers who carry their bag or
container from home, but it happens rarely”. In one of these stores, such rules are
codified in a visible information plaque. In the others, instead, the discount is rapidly explained at the beginning of the selling activity. However, through observation we discovered that such explanation is not systematically given, and often new customers buy products without being advised of “the rules of the game”.
Moreover, rules are not interpreted as strict, but rather as an option, an opportunity to save some money. Gianmarco, for example, reports that “To tell the
truth, I rarely take a container with me, when it happens I’m happy because I save something”. During the fieldwork, we encountered only three customers bringing their
own containers from home. All the store owners confirmed that their customers do not value the opportunity of reusing a container; rather they are attracted by the possibility of selecting the right amount of product according to their momentary needs.
The second group of cases, instead, has a different configuration of rules. First, the norms governing these contexts are explicit, and appear to be more cogent: Marta, a store owner, reports that “The customer can buy a container from us or bring it from
home: it is sufficient that she respects certain standards of hygiene. But not for all the products. We need that the soap containers, for example, have the list of ingredients printed on their labels. So, she has to buy them from us”. Such rules are shared by all
the shops belonging to this group. Moreover, customers of these stores are carefully instructed by the shopkeeper. We observed nineteen new customers at their first purchase: the store owners always explained the rules governing the different kinds of products and containers, specifying the amount of saving that the customer could gain, and giving advises on how to adapt and keep clean the packages. Furthermore, such stores have clear information plaques about how the recycling process works positioned at the entrance, or next to the product dispensers.
Despite all these well-defined norms, store owners note, when interviewed, that the recycling practice is scarcely adopted. Franco, for example, expresses a concern shared by the majority of the shopkeepers (4 out of 5): “Yes, many of my customers
remember to bring the container the first few times, but then the distraction prevails. They are discontinuous. So, they often have to buy it again although this drives up the price of the product”. The remaining store owner, Carla, although hoping that things
will quickly change, confirms that the majority of her customers struggle to afford the recycling practice. This was also confirmed by ethnographic observation.
Obviously, there is a core of regulars, which strictly respect the rules. Paolo is one of them: “Even if I don’t always remember to bring a container with me, when it
happens I prefer to delay shopping. Avoiding the waste is more than an
extemporaneous choice for me. The environment really needs that we all strive to make it more livable”. This type of clientele is characterized not only by a complete adhesion
to the bulk stores’ policy, but also by a lifestyle that wants to be sustainable in all its moments. Paolo, for example, has stopped eating meat four years ago, due to the
environmental impact that cattle farming has on the planet. He does kerbside collection. He tried to limit the use of pollutant transportation means favoring the use of bicycle. For him, the new rules of the sustainable practices have been already naturalized, becoming taken-for-granted common sense and habitual. However, these people are only a small minority, as confirmed by the interviews and the observation.
Therefore, on the one hand, in the traditional bulk stores the purchasing rules are not explicitly formulated, and customers do not follow precise instructions when buying. On the other hand, in the new unpackaged sales activities norms are clearly exposed, explained, and enacted, even if only a minor quota of costumers is capable of complying with them over time.
3.2.2 Ends for buying bulk products
In traditional bulk stores, customers do not have the goal of recycling and reusing containers: instead, they want to save money, or avoid the food waste. This attitude is confirmed by all the regular customers we interviewed: Carlo, for example, reports that “what is important for me is that I can avoid food wasting… reusing the containers is
something that I rarely do”. In these contexts, social actors do focus on environmental awareness but they interpret this concept in the sense of attention to the origin of products and to the naturalness of the production process. “What really matters for me
is the quality of the food. Here I can find local goods that I know to be natural and without additives”, Sara says, expressing an opinion that is shared by the totality of the
interviewees. Therefore, customers focus more on the goods’ quality, and on their own health as well, rather than on the environmental sustainability of the planet, as well exemplified by Marzia, who says that “the most important thing is that here I can buy
healthy food, from producers that are close to me”.
In the new unpackaged sales activities, instead, well-defined rules go with an explicit thematization of ends, oriented to support sustainable consumption. Here, the individual's health, as well as savings, take a back seat. The main goal seems to support and promote activities that can change society in a more sustainable direction.
Most customers (4 out of 5) explicitly adopt the philosophy of reusing materials and of sustaining environmental sustainability, but have difficulties in maintaining it in all the aspects of their daily life, as emerged from the interviews. Anna C., a regular customer, for example, struggles to maintain a constant behavior in bulk stores,
can tell you that I bring back the container more or less 50% of the time. Often it’s still dirty when I’m about to go out for shopping and I’ve absolutely no desire to wash it before leaving. So then it ends up that I’ve more containers than I need and I have to throw them away". Luca, however, has some justifications for the lack of consistency in
his performances: “Sometimes I think that even if I forget it, it makes no difference. It is
true that I’m here since I believe that change has to come from us first, but maybe we are too few: maybe I, like all of us, do not have the perseverance to really change things ... and then I say to myself ‘patience, I’ll do it when I remember it!’”. These
individuals are halfway between explicitly adhering to a new sustainable lifestyle and relapsing towards poor eco-friendly habits.
Although sustainable goals are explicitly claimed by customers, reuse is not supported by feelings that go in the same direction. During the interviews, customers express a lack of both emotional engagement and enjoyment in carrying out the
recycling practice. This is emphasized by three regular customers, as well as by most of the customers informally inquired. If asked about the reasons of their forgetfulness, most of them respond that the cleanup and transportation of containers are annoying and boring activities. Elena, for example, says: "For me, it's rather annoying to carry
around various containers, since I come here after work. So today I’ll buy it again and patience!".
To summarize, in the traditional bulk stores what is valued is the convenience of the product, its healthiness, and its origin. Instead, in the new unpackaged sales
activities individuals are keen on recycling and sustaining the planet. However, such intentions are often prevented by forgetfulness and laziness, showing how these practices lack of engagement and enjoyment.
3.2.3 Objects, bodies and technology
In traditional bulk stores, we observed that objects and artifacts recall the spaces of the market, or the ancient sites of bulk sale of spices and vegetables: big baskets in which the products are stacked; shelves full of jars containing herbal teas; spartan furnishings, mostly made of wood, which remind of the village shops or bazaars. These objects refer to past and tradition, to return to authenticity, recalling the neighborhood store, where the customer-vendor relationship is based on trust and familiarity. During observation, the shopkeepers’ and customers’ habitus came to light, leading once again to the typical gestures that can be observed in the street markets: using shovels to pick up products and put them into the bag; waiting to be served; calling the attention of the merchant through gestural communication patterns.
Among the various objects that are placed in these stores, technological devices seem to play a marginal role, as emerged during the interviews: "I use the phone only to
call ... As for the computer and Internet, I use them as an account book and to write email. The rest doesn’t interest me and I honestly don’t even have time to do other things with them" Alberto says, “Bebeb” store owner. The meanings ascribed to
technological objects by the shopkeepers, as well as by their regular customers, refer to other and more ancient tools: the letter, the typewriter, the ledger and the phone,
intended only in the sense of a means of voice communication. As a result, four (out of 5) of the interviewed customers use their mobile phone mainly for calling and texting, whereas all the store owners do not use any technological device during their selling activity. While customers report a scarce or moderate use of social media and Social Network Sites (SNS), most of the store owners do not use them at all.
Conversely, the objects positioned in the new unpackaged sales activities entail different meanings. The materials structuring these spaces consist mainly of plastics and metals. Products are contained within modern dispensers, which are strongly
emphasized by design. Objects and materials, therefore, refer to a contemporary vision of reality, opening to the future rather than looking at the past. However, the
ethnographic observation confirms that past habits play a role in slowing the change even in these contexts. They occur primarily in gestural automatisms: lapses and
blunders, which show sedimentations that are primarily coded in the body. We observed that many customers are in search for a container ready for use, by exploring the shelves of the store through eyes and hands movements. When they are asked to give an account for their actions, people seem to realize their forgetfulness: "Yes it’s true, I should bring
the container from home, but I forgot this time too!", says one customer of Bebeb.
Regarding to the technological objects placed in these contexts, instead, we can see how they are used in their more advanced features. Customers constantly use Social Networks Sites (SNS), whereas vendors are continuously connected to Internet, as emerged from the interviews: “I usually use Facebook and Twitter to promote events
that I organize in my shop” Diego says, a store owner. One of his customer, instead,
says that “the first time, I stumbled into this shop by chance, while I was looking for a
grocery store on my iPhone. It was a surprise, I didn’t know that there were places like this”. Anna C. adds that “I publicized this store among my friends on Facebook, I think that everyone should know the existence of stores of this kind”.
Therefore, if customers and vendors of the first group are reluctant to use technology, all the participants of the new unpackaged sales activities show to actively, and massively, use technology, social media and Social Network Sites. For vendors, the use of technological devices is linked to an innovation-oriented vision of the market and
to the goal of expanding the sales. For customers, social networks are used to promote their sustainable values among like-minded friends.
3.2.4 Containers
In the traditional bulk stores, containers go completely unnoticed. They have the status of almost non-existent objects, mere instruments of transportation for the bulk product. Then, it is no wonder to discover, during the interviews, that the container is simply thrown away once the product is finished or transferred to another container: “As soon
as I get home I empty the products into a jar and throw the bag away” says Anna B.
This attitude is also confirmed by most of the store owners (4 out of 5) who emphasize the “transparency” of the packages: “we mostly use plastic bags, like this one, as you
see they are normal plastic bags that you can buy everywhere” Luigi notes, owner of
the CiboSano.
However, a devaluation of the container seems also to be present in the new unpackaged sales activities. Containers, here, have been associated with the same meanings usually ascribed to the packages in the traditional purchasing practices: interchangeable, useless per se, and functional only in relation to the transportation of the product. Mauro, for example, says that “Unfortunately, I happen to mix up the
bottles of on tap beer that I buy here with the other unused bottles that I have at home. Honestly, sometimes I find myself throwing them away without thinking, because I don’t know where to keep them anymore”. Since containers are only considered on the basis
of their functionality, these objects are vulnerable to being replaced by any other one with the same characteristics.
This attitude is strengthened by the fact that the containers are usually
that they don’t have personality, I mean, the packages of the common goods at least have a brand, something that makes them different from the others”. Similarly in all the
stores, containers seem to get value and meaning solely on the basis of what they contain from time to time. This idea is shared by all the customers we interviewed.
So, if customers often throw the container away when they get home, vendors pile up the containers on shelves, or keep them hidden from view. Although it has a fundamental role in the rules, ends and knowledge explicitly shared by social actors, the container actually disappears from their view, gaining the same anonymity it has in the traditional bulk stores.
4. From fieldwork to design
From the data collected during the field study, it emerges that the reuse of containers is hindered by the sedimented habitus referring to previous purchasing practices, and by the little, if not nonexistent, value associated with the container itself. It is also clear that only the actors in the second group share knowledge and purposes aiming at
safeguarding the health of the planet. Here, there is a push for changing towards more sustainable lifestyles. This opportunity, although not completely actualized, makes possible an intervention to support and encourage what is still in a germinal phase. Such opportunity, however, does not appear in the traditional bulk stores, strongly anchored to past routines.
We have then identified in the new unpackaged sales activities a fertile ground for a technological intervention aimed at supporting the bulk buying practices. In these contexts, we do not have to push individuals towards a total change of their daily routines. We only have to remove the obstacles to change. Moreover, it is possible to leverage the people’s predisposition to use social networks and devices, to create new technological configurations that might lead to a change in their daily performances.
From the findings outlined above, we define four user requirements.
4.1 User requirements
1. Change the teleoaffective structure of the purchasing practice.
Customers of the new unpackaged sales activities find the practice of reusing containers annoying, boring and burdensome. Here we witness a complete decoupling of the two parts that compose the teleoaffective structure of a practice, namely the teleological and the affective structure. Though customers are aware of the need of their
pro-environmental behavior, emotions connected with recycling are negatively framed. This requirement proposes to change the frame (Giddens 1984; Goffman 1974) commonly associated with the purchasing practices to motivate people to change their habits. As we have seen in the Related Work Section, HCI has often used games to promote sustainable behaviors (e.g. Gnauk et al. 2012; Berengueres et al. 2013). Here, we suggest to intersect the packaging-free purchasing practices with the game ones, by employing gamification techniques.
Since the rules of games are always taken freely by their participants (Caillois 1962), they can make the recycling norms appear in a fun and enjoyable perspective. Washing containers, carrying them out, remembering to bring them back could become rules no longer perceived as difficult to abide by, when inserted in a new interpretive framework created by games.
However, in the classical definition of game given by Huizinga (1949), games are understood inherently as separate from the activities of ordinary life. From this perspective, serious games represent somehow integrated social practices, which could be perceived as disconnected from the current purchasing practices. Gamification, instead, does not require the development of a full-fledged game, but it is based on the insertion of game elements in an existing context (Rapp, 2014). It can be seen as a
dispersed practice, occurring in and being part of a variety of everyday integrated ones, moving their ends and emotions towards a greater enjoyment.
2. Make the containers personally valuable.
Customers of the new unpackaged sales activities perceive the containers employed in the purchasing practices as meaningless. Store owners do not value the containers as well, by keeping them hidden. The current meanings ascribed to them are those of anonymity and standardization. As a consequence, containers are easily discharged after the first use.
This requirement proposes to transform the meanings associated with containers, increasing their perceived value and thus the user’s attachment to them. We primarily suggest to change their symbolism (Verbeek 2005). As noticed by Odom et al. (2009), symbolism can engender a high strength of attachment when it arises from
augmentation that reflects back on its owner in a personal way. Therefore, letting the users free to personalize their own containers could fix a durable relationship between people and things.
HCI explored the role of personalization to sustain pro-environmental behavior, claiming, for instance, that providing different feedback to differently motivated individuals can increase the effectiveness of technological interventions (He, Greenberg, and Huang 2010). MatkaHupi targets behavior change towards more sustainable mobility through personalized challenges that are tailored according to individual behavior (Jylhä et al. 2013). On this vein, Hsieh et al. (2014) claimed that advances in sensor technologies, analytics, and informatics may enable personalized behavior change technologies to adapt interventions to users’ unique motivations, personalities, or preferences.
Instead of employing tailored “persuasive” messages and features, this
requirement proposes to leverage the user’s creativity and proactivity, in order to make each container unique. By reflecting the user’s individuality, this process may increase her attachment to the container. This might point to consider other technologies than those for sensing behavior, like 3D printing, which might allow users to express their creativity. Through the 3D printing technology, we can transfer meanings usually connected with important objects to containers (e.g. a childhood drawing, a precious gift). Within HCI, Brereton (2013) emphasized that we need to consider the qualities of objects and the ways in which they become habituated into life, to define successful design strategies. Vaisutis et al. (2014) further stressed the need of considering the emotions and memories attached to objects, when designing technology. The new meanings elicited by the 3D printing technology and the emotional bond that they could establish might then imply the preservation of objects over time, increasing the
likelihood of their continued reuse.
3. Exploit the aesthetic qualities of containers.
Customers of the new unpackaged sales activities consider containers only on the basis of their functionality. From this perspective, containers are vulnerable to being replaced by other objects with the same functional characteristics. As a result, customers do not preserve their containers, but easily substitute them when they do not want to carry out their maintenance.
This requirement proposes to change the aesthetic quality of the container, considering it also for its aesthetic appearance. HCI research has explored the properties of aesthetics for supporting sustainable behaviors. Bartram, Rodgers, and Muise (2010), for instance, found that aesthetic factors are important in designing visualizations for
sustainable living: they thus developed the Ambient Canvas, an awareness visualization that aims to implicitly communicate information of energy consumption through a unique, aesthetically pleasing installation (Bartram et al., 2010). Heller and Borchers (2012) designed PowerSocket a simple and pleasurable ambient visualization of consumed power at the level of a single outlet. Nielsen et al. (2015) proposed to augment household appliances with aesthetic features, such as ambient light as peripheral feedback in symbolic sculptures, to promote their use.
This requirement suggests to give users the opportunity of selecting their own containers on the basis of their aesthetic qualities. Valuing products’ aesthetics by publicly exposing them and providing a great variety of different choices could support users in finding what they like the most.
4. Leverage the user’s positive attitude towards social networking features.
Technology is widely integrated in the new unpackaged sales activities. Both customers and store vendors show to extensively use SNSs to promote their activities and to express their values.
HCI research pointed to how to use social networking for sustainable HCI. Fernandez et al. (2016) proposed to engage people with climate change by using social media as a medium. Piccolo et al. (2014) noted that engaging people in changing behavior towards energy consumption goes beyond intrinsic motivation. Competition and public rewards, as well as debate elements that might build a collective knowledge, are important to establish and promote new social norms. By studying the social
dynamics within the Foodsharing Facebook group, Ganglbauer et al. (2014) noted how Facebook may have a central importance for establishing cultural change and new social patterns oriented towards sustainability. Comber et al. (2013), instead, found mixed
results in the evaluation of BinCam, a system that exploits the peer social pressure to avoid food waste: they found that some people did not engage with social features, while for others social challenges did increase participation.
This requirement suggests to use social networking features to support the packaging-free purchasing practices. By enhancing the interaction among users and the public visibility of their daily routines, social networking features could engage people in the reuse of containers and in the promotion of eco-friendly attitudes. Moreover, visibility could push people to better adhere to the rules embedded in the bulk buying practices.
4.2 Design process
We started to envision an interactive system that could change the meanings ascribed to the objects involved in the package-free purchasing practices. Table 2 provides a
snapshot of the structure of our research, from the ethnographic study to the return to the field.
As a first step, we created a set of Personas (Cooper 1999; Pruitt et al. 2006), as basis for the scenario building phase (Carroll 2000; Borglund et al. 2007), in order to test different configurations of the elements involved in the packaging-free purchasing practices. Five Personas were created, representing 3 regular customers and 2 store owners, based on the data collected during the field research. To build them, we drew inspiration from the participants we interviewed during the study.
Among the customers we defined: Chiara, 25 years old, student of architecture with strong eco-friendly convictions and a lifestyle under the sign of sustainability; Michele, 38 years old, freelance, occasionally gets involved in practices related to sustainability, without being particularly convinced; Silvia, 42 years old, wants a more livable world, thinking of her son Luca, 6 years old. Among the vendors: Paolo, 40
years old, strongly believes that new eco-businesses can lead to a change in the world; Simone, 35 years old, has opened his store mainly looking at the possible economic return in the short term.
Table 2. Structure of the research. Design
Phase
Objectives Method Findings
Ethnography To understand how the package-free purchasing practices can be enacted in different forms 10 stores observed 20 participants interviewed
i) Customers find the practice of reusing containers annoying and burdensome; ii) they perceive the containers employed in the purchasing practices as meaningless; iii) they consider containers only on the basis of their functionality; iv) customers and store vendors of newly opened bulk stores extensively use social network features and technology
Requirement s
To tie the system’s design to the ethnographic study’s findings
4 user requirements i) Change the teleoaffective structure of the purchasing practice; ii) Make the containers personally valuable; iii) Exploit the aesthetic qualities of containers; iv) Leverage the user’s positive attitude towards social networking features Personas and preliminary scenarios To experiment different possibilities to satisfy the requirements through design 5 Personas defined 2 everyday life scenarios and 2 future scenarios defined
Initial scenarios were found unsatisfactory because they were still tied to the “persuasive” approaches of change. However, they were useful for excluding some design hypotheses
Design of the system
To define an interactive system capable of making the users reframe their purchasing practices
4 main features defined
1 application for the customers and 1 application for the store owners plus a 3D printer
i) Gamification. The system rewards users for their sustainable performances, by allowing them to create new gadgets; ii) Customization. Containers can be customized and gadgets can be created and printed; iii) Exposition. Users can expose their creations and explore the aesthetic qualities of the other users’ creations; iv) Social exposure. The system encourages customers to publicize their sustainable performances on their SNS. Return to the field To gather users’ reflections and feedback on the defined solution 2 present scenarios and 2 future scenarios to describe our system’s usage
i) Customers reflect on the reasons of their routines; ii) the game frame supports the users’ enjoyment; iii) the 3D printing process slows down the consumption practices; iv) Sharing and public exposition support the formation of a sense of
10 customers and 4 store owners interviewed
commonality
As an example, we report the summary that describes Chiara.
Chiara is a 25-year-old student of architecture. She is quite wealthy. She has an active “online” life, regularly using social networking sites, like Facebook and Twitter, where she shares her opinions and values with like-minded friends. She has been engaged with Paolo for three years, with whom actually she lives together. She has an eco-friendly lifestyle that impacts on almost every choices of her daily life. She tries to use her bicycle as well as public means of transportation as much as she can. She is also health-conscious and pays great attention to what she eats, preferring products coming from local farmers. Her goals are related to the improvement of the
sustainability of the planet: she is actively engaged in recycling waste and in saving as much energy as she can. She dreams to leave in a cleaner world, where everyone contributes to the preservation of nature. Actually what she values the most is precisely the nature, and the animals that live within it. However, she encounters some
difficulties in adhering to the package-free purchasing practices, as she often finds the maintenance of the containers burdensome and annoying.
On the basis of such Personas, initial scenarios were constructed. We created everyday life scenarios in which the current lives of our Personas were represented, as well as future scenarios where new hypothetical technological services to support the practices of reuse of containers were experimented. Initially, we were not satisfied of the future scenarios produced, since they were still subtly linked to the “persuasive” approach to behavior change. For example, the relied on some kinds of “eco-feedback”. Nevertheless, they allowed us to explore and exclude different possibilities.
By focusing more on the findings outlined above, we then decided to change the current interpretation of the rules for the reuse of containers. We looked for a solution capable of introducing a small “crisis” into the users’ daily routines. Then, we thought of an interactive system able to differently frame the buying practice. Personas were used to reason on how the system could satisfy users with different needs. As a result we designed a system with the following features:
- It exploits gamification techniques by inserting game elements in the purchasing practices, exploiting meaningful rewards (Requirement 1) - It introduces the 3D printing technology to deprive the containers of
their current anonymity, allowing store owners to personalize them, as well as customers to further customize them through the creations of gadgets (Requirement 2).
- It allows users to publicly expose their creations in a showcase that values their aesthetic qualities (Requirement 3).
- It introduces some social features that allow customers to publicize their eco-friendly attitudes promoting the package-free purchasing practices among their friends (Requirement 4).
In the following we will return on each of these points by illustrating in details the functionalities of the system, highlighting how the defined requirements are connected with the system’s features.
5. An interactive system to support the packaging-free purchasing practices
The system we designed is based on: i) gamification of experience; ii) personalization of containers and gadget creation; iii) exposition of users’ creations; iv) social exposure.
i) Gamification of experience. The system has been designed as a service based on the logic of game, encouraging the execution and the exposure of eco-friendly
performances. It does not consist in a full-fledged game, but simply exploits some game elements, like rewards, to change how recycling is framed. Each virtuous (sustainable) performance will gain a different reward. The weight of a performance will be higher or lower in relation to the difficulty of standing out against consolidated, non-sustainable habits. What the system rewards is the ability to break old consolidated routines: routines that make people fail to reuse containers (e.g. not washing the container); routines that make people buy always the same products (e.g. the system encourages the incremental purchase of new products); promotion of new habits (e.g. the invitation of new people in unpackaged networks). Once the customer has completed a sufficient amount of sustainable performances and promotional activities, the system will offer her, as a reward, the opportunity to create her own gadgets and to access to the 3D printing service (Requirement 1).
ii) Customization. Container customization is central in supporting the practice of reuse. This functionality makes store owners able to create containers (e.g. boxes, bottles) that might reflect the style of their store. Moreover it enables customers to shape personal gadgets for their containers. These might mirror their identity and abilities (e.g. caps, plastic labels, spouts save dose, drip collars, dispensers for detergent or coffee, bag clips). All these personalized objects will be created by a 3D printer1
(Requirement 2).
ii) Exposition. This functionality allows users to expose their creations and to find the gadgets that they like the most. It is thought as a showcase that can make emerge the aesthetic qualities of the objects, exploiting the users’ willingness of showing in public the product of their creativity (Requirement 3).
1 Ideally, a 3D printer should be present in each of the packaging-free store, but the printer
iv) Social exposure. The system also encourages customers to publicize their sustainable performances (e.g. the frequency and the kind of unpackaged products purchased), rewarding their sharing on the social networks to which they belong (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Google+). In this way, the system aims to structure a shared shopping experience, by creating users’ communities that could actively promote a “right way” to purchase (Requirement 4).
Fig. 1. Wireframes of the customer’s mobile application: the profile (a), the catalog (b) and the create gadgets (c) sections.
The Reward system consists of two applications, a web application for store owners and a mobile application for customers, plus a 3D printer.
In the following we will outlines the two applications’ features.
Customers’ mobile application has three main features: create gadgets,
catalog, personal profile (see Figure 1).
Create gadgets. Once they reached a certain quota of sustainable actions, the
system rewards its customers (Requirement 1) by giving them the opportunity of designing their own gadgets to be applied to the containers, living a fun experience of customization (Requirement 2). The create gadgets feature, the core of the application,
