in short

Design challenge

This course existed out of an midterm exam about the understanding of several behavior change theories. Furthermore, these theories were applied through a behavior change design challenge centered around protection behaviors in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Within the current situation of the COVID-19 virus, it is of utmost importance that people take responsibility for protecting others in their environment. In order to do this, various protecting behaviors can be performed by people within the Dutch society. An example of this is wearing face masks. However, it can be seen that within public contexts, where it is advised to wear face masks, but not obliged, people have difficulties taking their responsibility and putting on face masks correctly.
This way, ‘visitors of public situations’ who are not wearing face masks endanger their social environment, and are putting others around them at risk of getting COVID-19. That is why it is so important that the behavior regarding protecting others through wearing face masks in public contexts has to be changed in a positive and autonomous manner. This to, on the one
hand taking the individual’s autonomy into account, and on the other hand to emphasize the societal benefit of adhering to this behavior collectively. Next to individual gains which can be made for supermarket visitors (being protected yourself, and
protecting relevant others around you, lowering the risk of COVID-19 spread), additional societal benefits from increase in empowerment (empowered awareness, competence, self-efficacy and relatedness), and in social integration (creating collective behavior) are a decrease in the high healthcare costs and burden on healthcare staff in society. Other involved stakeholders are also thoroughly discussed in the project report.
Lastly, this design rationale allowed us to explore our interest in designing for relatedness and internalisation of motivation - autonomy, and supported our learning goals of designing for and evaluating concepts with a behavior change intent. 
 

Therefore, we investigate how to design for the behavior of protecting others around you against COVID-19, in a supermarket environment, through wearing a face mask and how this can be influenced.