​​​​​​​As part of my Bachelor of Design (Honours) with Design Factory Melbourne, a compulsory unit completed was Methods of Design Research. This was where I was taught how to conduct academic research, prepare and write literature reviews, as well as code and triangulate data sources. With this research, it leant to improving my design skills by understanding the process of collecting and formalising data, subsequently producing infographics that eased the understanding of this information. What was produced from this unit was a report that could be fleshed out into a journal article if there was sufficient time to collect and analyse the data.
With Swinburne’s new commitment to the one.5 degree internal manifesto, which ties into Swinburne’s signatory agreement with UN Sustainable Development Goals, it aims to make wicked climate change problems and sustainability core to all design units taught. For this unit’s research brief, we were tasked with investigating plastic waste. With the introduction of the Victoria’s new recycling policy in February 2020, my research focused on the attitude-behaviour gap within the state’s population. Specifically investigating; how might we evolve existing consumer behaviour to become more active within a new circular recycling economy for Victorians?
With such a short timeframe, there was no ethical clearance which lead to a limited interviewee pool. This was also compounded by the COVID-19 initial breakout and lockdown. With these limitations in mind, I was able to find that Victorians have a narrow gap between their attitudes and behaviours, and that subsequently, a design strategy would need to be implemented to reduce the amount of negative behaviours currently in practice.  
Full Report
Sample pages from the full report

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