Lost & Found Stories: Exploring Ecological Storytelling

It is widely acknowledged that environmental issues are complicated – that the means we use to try and address them are knotted affairs made up of many, many complicated threads. Too often the response to this tangle is avoidance and denial. Arguably, unsustainable human behaviour patterns are a significant barrier to addressing environmental concerns. This thesis details a design research approach considers approaches for behaviour change through interaction design and personal storytelling. The aim throughout has been to uncover new opportunities that could potentially provoke: environmental awareness, motivation towards changed behaviours, citizen agency. Environmental researchers are continuously analysing and describing environmental problems. Dissemination of this information is often seen as the main means to not only prove and demonstrate the issues but also to provide evidence that might change our current unsustainable living patterns. Social Media, documentaries, and news reporting provide a plethora of images, scientific facts and statistics about the issues. These unfortunately are not always effective – rather than motivating people to act - they often provoke responses such as fear, shame and consequent inaction. Acknowledging that objective, rational evidence does not necessarily impact human behavior, this body of work looks to narrative and interactive approaches as a means to invite people to consider environmental problems on a more personalized level. A key goal of my work has been to create means for enhancing and appreciating people’s experiences with nature - to provide outlets for people to share and reconsider their relations with the environment. By engaging people with their own personal stories or memories related to nature, I have sought to explore means to merge people’s collective memory of nature. Digital strategies that are commonly used in digital marketing campaigns aimed towards consumer agendas have been co-opted and revamped for an alternate purpose; to provide means for people to consider and respond with more motivation towards care for the environment. To that end, an open-ended, generative citizen design research tool intended to widen the perception of the use of interactive platforms for pro-environmental research practices was developed.