ABSTRACT

In order to promote sustainability, there is a need for attentiveness and responsible action towards the environment, which requires changes in perspectives at the levels of both production and use. This chapter provides an introduction to mindful design and its potential to promote sustainability. Based on an analysis of the concepts of mindfulness and mindful design, the chapter proposes that mindfulness offers a pertinent means of creating openness to new perspectives, that this can be embedded within design and that, through its use, mindful design offers the potential to instil such attitudes in the user to promote sustainable behaviour. The chapter offers a number of examples in support of this proposition, and to consider the ethical stance embedded in mindful design and its relation to the production and use of mindful design.