Co-Creating Sustainable Thermal Adaptation in Place: A Card-Based Toolkit for Localized Comfort Interventions.

Adaptive behavior plays a critical role in how individuals navigate discomfort, influencing their ability to respond to environmental challenges. Addressing thermal discomfort which is a pressing concern in the context of climate adaptation and sustainable living. It requires designers and developers to move beyond traditional Graphical User Interface (GUI) solutions, embracing interactive and physically engaging design approaches. This paper introduces D-FACT (Discomfort Card-Based Toolkit for Facilitating Adaptation), a participatory design tool developed to foster sustainable and inclusive adaptation strategies. Tested in four collaborative workshops with 40 participants, D-FACT enables both designers and non-designers to ideate solutions for adapting to thermal discomfort. Our findings demonstrate the toolkit’s effectiveness in nurturing creative, cooperative approaches that promote adaptive environments while advancing energy efficiency and environmental health. By integrating principles of sustainable design, the toolkit encourages diverse and inclusive participation, resulting in conceptual designs that address localized challenges in thermal adaptation. This work contributes to the discourse on computing and sustainability, offering practical methods for embedding participatory design into efforts to create resilient, equitable, and resource-efficient spaces.