Design has long been regarded as an effective tool to create and foster individual and societal changes. When design meets the opportunity to transform people’s behaviour and habits, only focusing on the change aspect might be insufficient, the retention aspect also can have a crucial role to play in guiding people’s sustainable lifestyles. This paper aims to fill this knowledge gap by shifting the lens from design for sustainable change to design for sustainable retention. In order to understand the role that the design of artefacts can play in retaining individuals’ desired behaviour through context change transitions, first, we briefly summarize insights from the literature published in the design for sustainable behaviour (DfSB) field. Following that, astronauts’ Earth-bound food consumption on the International Space Station (ISS) is taken as an explorative case study. By analysing the case study results through an activity analytical approach, we find that the effects of change do not always necessarily interfere with the effects of retention. Rather, they are compatible entities that can mutually affect the development of new behaviour and habits. We argue that design to facilitate change is not the only path that leads to users’ sustainable behaviour, retaining people’s existing ecologically desired behaviour can also open up windows of opportunity to embed sustainable design interventions in people’s daily activities. This paper concludes with a call for further explorations of design opportunities and challenges for retaining people’s existing ecologically desired behaviour.

Context change is regarded as an opportunity to intervene people's daily doings towards a sustainable direction. Looking at this opportunity from a product and service design perspective, in order to introduce design interventions, the question of how people actually transit their behavioural routines when they are undergoing context change. As the first step to approach this question, in the paper we present the use of activity theory as a theoretical lens to systematically describe and analyze the process and outcomes that context change has in influencing people's daily doings. First, we report in detail on how we construct an activity based analytical approach to analyze the transition and development process when people are undergoing context change. Then, we illustrate the practical use of our model in a case study for understanding the influences that context change has in South-East Asian exchange students' food consumption activities. In the end, we summarize our findings and reflections in terms of the holistic and in-depth insights the activity perspective can provide.

On-pack date and storage labeling is one of the direct information carriers used by the food industry to communicate product shelf-life attributes to consumers. However, it is also one of the major factors that contribute to consumer food waste issues. This study aims to systematically understand the existing tensions within the current date and storage labeling system and explore the potential opportunities for design to intervene. First, we conducted a literature review to identify tensions that the consumer encounters in their food edibility assessment system and summarize the corresponding proposal for actions. 12 tensions and 16 proposals for action were identified and further framed according to a conceptual model developed in this study. Following this, the literature findings were refined and grounded in co-creation sessions in consumer workshops and industry practitioner interviews to develop specific labeling-related design implications. The findings indicate the importance of investigating the role that date and storage labeling play from a system level. Furthermore, we suggest that the conceptual model developed in this study can be used not only as a framework that guides researchers to identify and analyze labeling-related food waste problems that each individual consumer encounters, but also as a guideline that assists packaging design practitioners in exploring potential design opportunities to solve the problem from a system perspective.

Recent developments in eco-design have shown a growing interest in incorporating user perspectives in sustainable product and service design. However, users’ needs and behavior are not static, but under a dynamic transition process. Design purely informed by user needs thus may lead to environmental and social sustainability issues. In this paper, we approach this sustainable design challenge from an activity theoretical perspective. First, we conducted a literature review on the use of activity theory (AT) in sustainable design-related studies. Based on the literature insights, we translated the abstract AT concepts into more descriptive and practical design implications. Following that, we developed an activity-centered design (ACD) toolkit prototype to support design practitioners in integrating users’ dynamic activities with specific sustainable design goals in the early-stage design ideation process. Finally, we evaluated the practical use of the toolkit with both design experts and participants without a design background in a case study. Results indicated that the ACD toolkit prototype allowed participants to engage with complex sustainability issues while taking multiple aspects of users’ activity into account. It also offered an interactive way for designers to better develop early-stage design ideas to solve sustainability-related problems from a product and service design perspective.