VISUALIZING GREEN: COMMUNICATING ENVIRONMENTAL FRIENDLINESS THROUGH PRODUCT DESIGN AND APPEARANCE
In our study: Communicating Environmental Friendliness through Product Design and Appearance (Hassi, Kumpula, Riuttanen, 2007) the aim was to define a set of product characteristics, or in other words visual cues that according to the consumers reflect environmental friendliness.
Based on the two-phase study, combining qualitative and quantitative methods we gathered a specific set of product characteristics and used it as alphabet in design language of environmental friendliness. In the study these visual attributes were implemented in to artifacts; resulting visual representations of examples of different kind of product concepts that based on this research reflect environmental friendliness. All together, we did create five concepts of which the first three were created following the research results and the last two were created with more flexible interpretation of the results.
Our research focuses on perceived environmental friendliness, thus we do not asses the real environmental performance of products at any point. The study focuses on product appearance and technological features, and their perceived – not actual – environmental friendliness.
As visual language can be used as a tool of strategic communication for sending specific encoded messages to the consumers the results of this study can be used to better transfer the message of a product’s environmental friendliness to consumers and thus offer an environmental product that supports the company’s environmental message expressed by other means of communication.
In my following posts, together with visualizations I will take you through the different product concepts we created that based on our study reflect environmentall friendliness.
