manner. For example, information about proper
battery disposal could be made available near or at
the end of the battery life.
2. Put opportunities in the environment. Resources for and information about sustainable phone
actions should be made available where they
will be most useful or most easily accessible. It
is important to consider how to integrate opportunities for sustainable interactions in ways that
leverage users’ everyday routines to lower the
effort necessary to engage in such interactions and
increase the likelihood of serendipitous opportunities for sustainable action.
3. Develop novel alternatives to disposal. To
avoid the unnecessary discarding of functional
devices and lessen the need for the production of
new devices, it is important to find novel alternatives that facilitate the reappropriation of phones
or their components to extend their lifetime and
transition them into other roles to which they are
suited. It is of value here too to consider how both
design in the environment and design of the phone
could support and encourage reappropriation.
4. Create reasons for keeping. The value and
purpose of a device may change over time. In order
to foster a longer lifespan, another challenge is to
create reasons for users to keep a phone. Perhaps
designs that foster a stronger personal connection to the phone or create long use will enable an
aging device with declining value to continue to
offer benefit to users. It may also be worthwhile to
consider ways to design phones that “get broken in”
over time, such that users actually derive explicit
benefits from maintaining a phone for a longer
period.
5. Support upgrading and extension. Along
with opportunities for reuse and reappropriation,
phones and their environments should offer novel
and valuable ways of upgrading and extending the
phones to reduce the need for complete replacement. This requires consideration of how to design
a phone that can be easily stripped and reconfig-ured. For example, adding new hardware should
become as simple as changing the skin of the
phone and plug-and-play capabilities on a desktop
computer.
Mobile phones present a particular challenge for
sustainability because of their increasing ubiquity
and frequent replacement. In considering how
interaction design can play a role in reversing the
tide of mobile phone e-waste, examining the problem through the lens of situated sustainability may
open possibilities for solutions that go beyond our
devices.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS Elaine M. Huang is a
researcher in the Social Media Research Lab at
Motorola Labs. She recently completed a Humboldt
Fellowship in the media computing group at RWTH
Aachen University, where she began research on
e-waste and sustainability. She received her Ph.D.
in computer science with a focus in HCI from the Georgia Institute
of Technology. She can be reached at www.elainehuang.com.
Khai N. Truong is an assistant professor in the
University of Toronto’s Department of Computer
Science. His research lies at the intersection of
human computer interaction and ubiquitous computing, and focuses on usability and acceptance
issues surrounding automated capture and context-aware applications. He received his Ph.D. in computer science
from the Georgia Institute of Technology. For more information visit
www.cs.toronto.edu/~khai.
DOI 10.1145/1340961.1340966
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