Systemic Sustainable HCI: Integrating Collaborative Modeling into a Design Process to Address Rebound Effects

The introduction of a new product or service into society can have detrimental effects on the environment due to changes in usage and practices. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) designers need practical methods to address it. In this paper, we explore whether systemic modeling could help designers understand and mitigate these rebound effects. Drawing on systemic design and system dynamics, we prototyped a collaborative modeling methodology that ten professional designers applied to a case study in two workshops. We share insights on their adoption of the methodology and their feedback on its usefulness, usability, and feasibility. Our results indicate that designers find the systemic modeling approach relevant and useful for addressing rebound effects. Influence diagrams can help structure design ideas and identify unaddressed points, while dynamic modeling can help compare design strategies. Based on these findings, we propose a framework for integrating this approach into a design process.