Abstract
This paper explores the challenges and opportunities of teaching Sustainable Interaction Design within higher education. Focusing on the integration of sustainability aspects into interaction design curricula, the paper examines the pedagogical approaches used to educate students as well as the students experience of having taken part in sustainability-related courses. Through a combination of interviews about student experiences, educator reflections, and analysis of students’ design projects, the study outlines key insights like the importance of students’ personal awareness and difficulty in moving from theory to practice. We consider how these insights can represent both challenges and opportunities and end by proposing new directions and adjustments for sustainability-related curricula in interaction design.
Keywords
Sustainable Interaction Design; Design Education for Sustainability; Students Perspective
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.242
Citation
Frich, J., Besana, N., Blevis, E., Bloomington, I.U., Spallazo, D., Qureshi, A., Häkkilä, J., Krogh, P.G.,and Petersen, M.G.(2025) Challenges and Opportunities of Teaching Sustainable Interaction Design, in Chang, C.-Y., and Hsu, Y. (eds.), IASDR 2025: Design Next, 02-05 December, Taiwan. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.242
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Track 12 - Design Education
Challenges and Opportunities of Teaching Sustainable Interaction Design
This paper explores the challenges and opportunities of teaching Sustainable Interaction Design within higher education. Focusing on the integration of sustainability aspects into interaction design curricula, the paper examines the pedagogical approaches used to educate students as well as the students experience of having taken part in sustainability-related courses. Through a combination of interviews about student experiences, educator reflections, and analysis of students’ design projects, the study outlines key insights like the importance of students’ personal awareness and difficulty in moving from theory to practice. We consider how these insights can represent both challenges and opportunities and end by proposing new directions and adjustments for sustainability-related curricula in interaction design.