| Summary: | Thesis (MTech (Industrial Design))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2009 === Demand Side Management (DSM) within a South African context requires a transdisciplinary
approach to comprehend electricity consumption. Current research suggests a technical
determinism, whereby design teams fail to acknowledged social factors and cultural
influences when conceptualising DSM artefacts. The result of which, is that artefacts fail to
be adopted by the market, and consumer behaviour and electricity consumption remains
unchanged. The thesis aims to demonstrate the hypothesis, that semiotics and ethnology
may affect sustainable residential electricity management in South Africa. The ubiquitous
literature on electricity management is administered by means of the theoretical lens, Sociotechnical
Theory. Mixed method instrument obtain fieldwork data from three of the eleven
official South African languages: Afrikaans, English and IsiXhosa.
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