Design Thinking Methodology to Achieve Household Engagement in Urban Water Sustainability in the City of Huelva (Andalusia)

Abstract

To advance to water sensitive cities (WSC) it will be necessary to achieve the commitment of the citizens, involving them in this transition. Citizen participation is considered essential, and one of the possible approaches to achieve this is through Design Thinking (DT), a human-centered methodology that allows creating a framework to develop the hydrosocial contract. The Suez group proposed the challenge of collecting initiatives to achieve more efficient use of urban water in homes, by conducting a pilot in one of its investee companies, Aguas de Huelva. Our research proposal, selected by the Suez group, to achieve greater engagement of households regarding efficient water use, was to develop a web-based prototype applying DT methodologies, which would allow us to generate new messages and meanings regarding water, producing an innovation of meaning that would enable tracking the progress of the results. This article describes the approved framework to carry out the pilot experience in the homes of the city of Huelva in Andalusia, Spain.