Prosumer Portal-System Design
Sustainable interventions to transform choices and foster a prosumer mindset.
The Prosumer Portal explores the act of fulfilling desires from multiple angles—materialistic, consumeristic, psychological, and spiritual—highlighting the impact of these choices on sustainability. Aiming to shift behaviors that often lead to waste, the project introduces interventions within the consumption ecosystem to encourage thoughtful, lasting choices. Through workshops and resources like Product Design Alchemy and The Choice Game, it fosters a prosumer mindset, promoting sustainable practices and empowering individuals to create what they consume, thereby supporting a future built on conscious, healthier choices.
To understand the System of an individual’s buying habits, research and study led us to come up with four factors that influence decisions on ways of acquiring a product - Interest, Immediacy, Cost and Complexity of making it.
We also discovered that, along with the current number of consumers in society, there is a small group of prosumers.
Consumers
Prosumers
Intent
Prosumer
/ Producer + Consumer, by Alvin Toffler in The third wave in 1980/
Prosumer is not just those involved in producing but also a conscious consumer. Conscious-consuming less and ensuring that what we consume is as sustainable as possible. (i.e. Makers)
The Prosumer Portal-
A world where sustainable choices help in creating kinder futures for our future generations and the planet.
How might we encourage children to be prosumers by fostering makers culture, make more informed and conscious choices?
How might we make personalized products using distributive manufacturing and repurposing it after the life cycle?
Interventions
A game crafted to prompt players to engage in debates and steps into different roles, encouraging exploration of alternative means of obtaining desired items beyond conventional purchasing, with a primary focus on conscious decision-making.
An inclusive framework for entrepreneurs, designers, & creators, fostering prosumer product design with a focus on presuming throughout its lifecycle. Shared under a Creative Commons license, encouraging collaboration. Few workshops were conducted for startups & designers.
A poster and zine aimed at promoting the maker culture while emphasizing that everyone is a maker in their everyday actions. It serves as an initiative to encourage people to nurture their curiosity and view making as a deliberate choice over buying.
A comprehensive guide that walks consumers through the process of identifying their desires and poses a series of questions to ensure a thorough consideration of whether they genuinely need or wish to make a purchase.
An initiative for Garba '23 at NID's girls' hostel, creating a platform for sharing clothes during the nine-day event. The required clothing for this occasion is typically one-time use, aimed at reducing the need to buy new clothes & accessories.
To partner with a nearby mobile repair shop and transform it into a collaborative workspace. This initiative serves as an experimental approach to assess its viability. In one such experiment, we endeavored to create a Bluetooth speaker.
The interventions targeted not only consumers but also makers.
Early interventions focused on designers, entrepreneurs, community members, and local store owners.
The aim was to make small changes in various parts of the system to propagate a mindset change.
Interventions- Education
A game crafted to prompt players to step into different roles, to debate and explore alternative methods of obtaining items, focusing on conscious decision-making.
Riverside School
Participatory game design to make children aware about their choices & how it affects the environment.
Ahmedabad
A game crafted to prompt players to step into different roles, to debate and explore alternative methods of obtaining items, focusing on conscious decision-making.
Interventions- Circularity
A designer’s framework for creating prosumer products, promoting collaboration among designers, creators and entrepreneurs. It focuses on prosumerism throughout the product lifecycle. Workshops were conducted for startups and designers.
Cool product has purpose, looks good, functions good.
Cool product keeps the earth cool.
Cool product brings the producer and user close.
Design for a bigger cause
Design a product that connects
Design for the production
Give full ownership
Design for Longevity
Design a community
Format of Product creation and thinking using fast prototyping & AI visualization tools for the workshop- The Product Alchemy
The product
Who is it for?
Stakeholders?
What is your product?
Production
How is it produced?
Intent
What is your intent for the product?
Business
What does your business look like?
Tested with designers during a design sprint and with NDBI entrepreneurs—SSIP grant holders—to encourage them to look beyond and consider the entire product ecosystem.
A game crafted to prompt players to step into different roles, to debate and explore alternative methods of obtaining items, focusing on conscious decision-making.
An initiative for Garba '23 at NID's girls' hostel, creating a platform for sharing clothes during the nine-day event. The required clothing for this occasion is typically one-time use, aimed at reducing the need to buy new clothes and accessories.
Tested with designers during a design sprint and with NDBI entrepreneurs—SSIP grant holders—to encourage them to look beyond and consider the entire product ecosystem.
Project by Aditi, Dinu, Kriti
