How often do you wash your hair? design as disordering: everyday routines, human object theories, probes and sustainablity

New objects can create disorder in our lives particularly when we try to appropriate and make sense of newly developed products that do not fit our routines. Ultimately, through exploring objects' affordances, our relationship to them develops into a routinised practice we no longer reflect on them. Hair care is universal and (often) an ‘ordinary’ part of our daily routines. Our cleanliness routines consume resources and therefore are implicated in the issue of environmental sustainability. However, routines are complex and difficult to change when they are set in a culture of individual consumer choice. The disorder inherent in the process of appropriation raises the possibility that design might deliberately create a useful ‘disorder’ in routinised practices to facilitate sustainable strategies in everyday life. The paper proposes an approach of investigating routinised practices in relation to deliberately creating disorder in everyday routines and practice theory. Further, it outlines a pilot study that uses the designled method of 'probes' and considers its potentials in generating disorder. It identifies creative disorder in the process of designers developing the probes, participants interacting with them to finally designers receiving the results. Thinking about the process in terms of disorder is seen to be valuable in facilitating, applying and developing probes, not only to inspire the designer but also to sensitise the designer to private and intimate areas of everyday life such as hair care.