Introduction

The focus in this chapter is on how a sustainability approach can be merged with design thinking to develop socially responsible and environmentally sustainable products. Design thinking brings a human-centered approach to designing for sustainability by combining empathy for the people impacted by the service/product being designed with creativity in developing radical solutions, and rationality to analyze what is feasible in the given context. As such, design thinkers have the potential to slow down environmental and social degradations more so than economists, engineers, or even governmental agencies because they create products and services that incorporate empathy for the person-and-problem situation into product and service design. When designs inspire individual consumers/end users to change their behaviors and act in a more sustainable manner, environmental longevity and social benefit will be more likely to ensue (Young, 2010). Just one example of design thinking and sustainability being in disharmony is the single-use coffee capsules (such as Keurig K-cups). In 2013, Keurig Green Mountain produced 8.3 billion K-cups—enough to circle the Earth 10.5 times.¹ Although convenient, K-cups are not environmentally friendly.

In this chapter, design thinking is merged with design for sustainability insights to provide a means whereby consumers become inseparable partners in ensuring the longevity of our natural, social, and economic environments. There is a growing recognition and acknowledgement that designers and manufacturers are substantially responsible for many of the man-made stresses imposed on and throughout our planet as 80 percent of products are discarded after a single use and 99 percent of materials are discarded in the first six weeks of use (Shot in the Dark, 2000). Clearly, a sustainable perspective to design thinking approach is necessary if environmental and related social and economic issues are to be targeted and addressed effectively.

25.1 Design for “X”?

Assimilating sustainability into design thinking first requires a definition for sustainability. We describe it as a three-legged stool: the integration of environmental, economic, and social issues (Makower, 2014) or in the systemic viewpoint of biologist Barry Commoner (1971): “everything is connected to everything else.” An introduction to and evaluation of a range of design for “X” sustainable strategies establishes a foundation for further discussion. Over the years, numerous product design criteria have been introduced to manufacturers in varying degrees as a way of thinking about the impact of new products and services on the environment (see Table 25.1). Such design for “X” strategies focus on specific engineering/research and development (R&D) issues and typically view consumers passively—as opposed to partners—in the design criteria.

Sources:

^a McDonough & Braungart (2002)

^b Autodesk (2014)

^c Fiksel (2011)

^d White, St. Pierre, and Belletire (2013)

^e WRAP (2015)

As a means to evaluate more critically the various design for “X” strategies, Design for Sustainability (DfS) (also referred to as Design for Efficiency), Design for Effectiveness (DfEffv) and Design for Environment (DfEnv) are presented as the three overarching approaches that encompass most of these more specific design strategies.

1. Design for sustainability/efficiency. In 1992, McDonough and Braungart penned the Hannover Principles to insist on the rights of humanity and nature to co-exist; accepting responsibility for the consequences of design; creating safe objects of long-term value; and eliminating the concept of waste. A central tenet of sustainable design is eco-efficiency. As defined by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD, 2000), “eco-efficiency is achieved by the delivery of competitively priced goods and services that satisfy human needs and bring quality of life, while progressively reducing ecological impacts and resource intensity throughout the life cycle to a level at least in line with the Earth's estimated carrying capacity.” In short, it is concerned with creating more value with less impact.²

   Although eco-efficiency has become more prevalent in these and other firms' design strategies in the past 20 years, critics of eco-efficiency argue that design for sustainability/efficiency solutions are likely to result in short-term cost savings and efficiency gains with “low-hanging fruits.” Laszlo and Zhexembayeva (2011) describe this as “bolted-on” sustainability versus “embedded” sustainability. Bolted-on sustainability is sometimes seen as “green washing” when sustainability efforts are conducted primarily as marketing measures, whereas embedded sustainability is seen as developing a “green gestalt” within the company that drives the firm's strategy. Embedded sustainability embraces not just “less harm” but “zero harm” and seeks positive environmental benefits as core business activities (see Table 25.2).

   	Bolted-on Sustainability	Embedded Sustainability
   Goal	Pursue shareholder value.	Pursue sustainable value.
   Scope	Add symbolic wins at the margin.	Transform core business activities.
   Customer	Offer “green” and “socially responsible” products at premium prices or with diminished quality.	Offer “smarter” solutions with no trade-off in quality and no social or green premium.
   Value capture	Focus on risk mitigation and improved efficiency.	Reach across all levels of sustainable value creation.
   Value chain	Manage company's own activities.	Manage across the product or service life-cycle value chain.
   Relationship	Leverage transactional relationship. Stakeholder such as customers, employees, and suppliers are resources to be managed and sources of input.	Build transformative relationships. Co-develop solutions with all key stakeholders including NGOs and regulators to build system-level change.
   Competitor	Operate only in win–lose mode in which any gain is competitor's loss.	Add cooperation with competitors as potential source of gain.
   Organization	Create a “scapegoat” department of sustainability.	Make sustainability everyone's job.
   Competencies	Focus on data analysis, planning, and project management skills.	Add new competencies in design, inquiry, appreciation, and wholeness.
   Visibility	Make green and social responsibility highly visible and try to manage the resulting skepticism and confusion.	Make sustainability performance largely invisible but capable of aligning and motivating everyone.

   Source: Laszlo and Zhexembayeva (2011).

2. Design for effectiveness. Following on the embedded sustainability perspective, McDonough and Braungart (2002) introduced Design for Effectiveness. DfEffv argues that a product or service could meet criteria for eco-efficiency but not be eco-effective, which refers to not just minimizing a negative footprint, but also having a positive footprint through sustainable growth. For example, some opponents to electric vehicles (EVs) argue that the additional resources needed to manufacture the more expensive EV, the use of nonrenewable energy to power the vehicle and the disposal of toxic batteries does more harm to the environment than good. EVs may be eco-efficient but some critics doubt if they are eco-effective. Eco-effectiveness takes a cradle-to-cradle approach to the product/service life cycle where products are not taken to the ‘grave’ but are upcycled back into the system. In Cradle to Cradle³ design (also referred to as C2C, cradle 2 cradle, and regenerative design), at a product's end-of-life, all materials used in a product or service become either biological nutrients (organic materials) or technical nutrients (nontoxic inorganic or synthetic materials) (McDonough & Braungart, 2002); see Figure 25.1. By choosing to adopt fully the DFEffv approach for one line of its products, sport lifestyle company PUMA has designed the InCycle collection, a range of footwear and apparel that are specially labeled as being made from materials that are able to be relatively easily turned into both biological and technical nutrients at the end of their useful lives and where in-store bins make it convenient for consumers to return the used products.

   

   In sum, DfEffv's emphasis on regeneration from both technical and biological perspectives clearly presents new product and service developers with ambitious aims, a broad scope and multiple challenges spanning potentially long periods of time. The design for environment approach, discussed next, is seen as consistent with the DfEffv approach but the emphasis is on pursuing an integrated set of specific design means by which such system-wide and longer-term sustainability goals can be achieved.

3. Design for environment. This approach is “the systematic consideration of design performance with respect to environmental, health, safety, and sustainability objectives over the full product and process life cycle” (Fiksel, 2011, p. 6). DfEnv merges sustainability strategies with the new product development (NPD) process and takes into detailed consideration how the needs and expectations of stakeholders can be achieved in the most environmentally benign and socially and economically sustainable manner. Specifically, the design principles of DfEnv are embedded within four sustainability strategies (see Figure 25.2): design for dematerialization, design for detoxification, design for revalorization, and design for capital protection and renewal. As these approaches are important in establishing a sustainable innovation design thinking perspective, a quick summary of each is provided next.

   

4. Design for dematerialization focuses on the reduction of material, as well as the corresponding energy requirements, for a product and its associated processes throughout the life cycle. An example is when Procter & Gamble reduced the amount of water of their Tide laundry detergent by compacting two or three times as much cleaning power into the same amount of liquid detergent. This significantly reduced water content, package size, transportation weight, and shelf space.
5. Design for detoxification focuses on reducing or eliminating the toxic, hazardous, or otherwise harmful characteristics of a product and its associated processes, including waste streams that may adversely affect humans or the environment. For example, in 2013, Unilever started to use smaller, compressed aerosol cans for their Sure, Dove, and Vaseline brands. The new cans use on average 25 percent less aluminum and, due to the smaller size, reduce the overall carbon footprint of the product by an average of 25 percent per can.⁵
6. Design for revalorization focuses on recovering, recycling, or otherwise reusing the residual materials and energy that are generated at each stage of the product life cycle, thus eliminating waste and reducing virgin resource requirements. For example, European Union Member States are required to establish collection systems for end-of-life autos and ensure that all vehicles are transferred to authorized treatment facilities through a system of vehicle deregistration based on a certificate of destruction.⁶
7. Design for capital protection and renewal focuses on ensuring the safety, integrity, vitality, productivity, and continuity of the human, natural, and economic resources that are needed to sustain the product life cycle. Supporting both the continuity and renewal of natural resources, UK specialty paper manufacturer James Cropper PLC developed breakthrough processes for recycling cocoa husk waste into paper and for recycling both the paper and plastic components of disposable coffee cups.⁷

In the next section, the DfEnv approach is overlaid on the design thinking philosophy to demonstrate how the consumer can become a partner in designing for sustainability.

25.2 Design Thinking Integrated into Design for Sustainability

As exemplified in earlier chapters, there are several different approaches to design thinking—some with six stages (Stanford school⁸), five stages (IDEO⁹), or four stages (Liedtka & Ogilvie, 2011). Regardless of the approach, the general belief is that design thinking combines “empathy for the context of a problem, creativity in the generation of insights and solutions, and rationality in analyzing and fitting various solutions to the problem context” (Kelley & Kelley, 2013), by inviting the end user/consumer to be a part of the innovation process (Liedtka & Ogilvie, 2011).

Toward achieving an integration of design thinking with sustainability, we overlay the design thinking approach of Liedtka and Ogilvie (2011) with the design for environment framework of Fiksel (2011) expanded for further emphasis on social sustainability to develop a method for bringing human empathy into the design process for sustainable innovations. While Liedtka and Ogilvie's (2011) approach may appear simplistic with its four steps of What is, What if, What wows, and What works, it aligns solidly with the concepts of design for sustainability. When merging DTh with DfEnv, What is includes analysis methods such as sustainable life-cycle assessments; What if and What wows both include rules and guidelines, such as design for revalorization; and What works includes sustainability indicators and metrics (Figure 25.3). This is discussed in detail as design thinking for sustainability (DThfS).

What If?

All the sustainability information gathered in the What is stage is now utilized in the What if stage to create a definitive sustainable product/service design using brainstorming exercises. The What if stage includes sustainability brainstorming and concept development.

Sustainability Brainstorming

Taking the design criteria established in What is and setting a specific challenge for designers can help to break the creative boundaries often inadvertently imposed by profit-maximizing firms. We have found four brainstorming techniques useful to generate creative energy that encompass a DThfS perspective:

1. Sustainability Backcasting. Rather than forecasting from the present, starting with a desirable future end-point even decades away (such as a world without single-use coffee capsules) and then working backward to the present can be valuable to assess what policy measures and changes are need to happen over time to achieve the outcome (Robinson, 1982; Van de Kerkhof, Hisschemöller, & Spanjersberg, 2002). It draws attention to what humans should not do (e.g., landfill materials) as well as what humans should do (e.g., upcycle) to achieve that desirable future. Holmberg's (1998) work on long-term company strategy formulation provides a framework to follow:
   1. Identify a long-term sustainability future with a specific goal, such as a world without toothpaste tubes abandoned to landfills. Analyze the present situation.
   2. Develop a creative design for what the sustainable product/service might look like that can deliver this future and the structure of the firm that could deliver that offering.
   3. Using 5-to-10-year increments, identify and discuss the milestones that need to be achieved (e.g., 90 percent recycled and recyclable material used) to deliver the sustainable product/service.

2. Sustainability via emotionally durable attachment. Jonathan Chapman (2005) suggests that products should be designed for dependency where a consumer becomes emotionally attached to the products they own (termed emotional durability). When emotions to a product are durable, and empathy for the product is sustained from the point of purchase through continued delight and even surprise, consumption and waste are minimized as owners become reluctant to dispose of “prized” possessions.

   As a brainstorming exercise, select a product or service to be designed for emotionally durable attachment. Take the product of interest (e.g., a refillable ink pen) and using multiple participants work to build a multilayered narrative on how the product is to become an integral part of the consumer's life. In the narrative, specifically: (1) anticipate the aging process of the product (e.g., pen surface wear) and how it develops character over time, (2) deliberate on how the product can become more self-sustaining (e.g., ink not easily drying out), (3) consider what product attributes (e.g., unique engravings, unique stand) are needed for an emotional connection with the consumer, and (4) incorporate both the physical and emotional connections into the product design and reflect on how well the product can continue to delight the consumer over time.

3. Sustainability via Eternally Yours designs. Similar to “emotionally durable” products, the Netherland Design Institute developed the concept of “Eternally Yours” in 1997 to promote the design of products that increase their “psychological life span”: the time products are able to be perceived as worthy objects. Aimed squarely at early product waste simply due to boredom, perceived or actual technological obsolescence or irrepairability, products are designed to age in a dignified way (van Hinte, 1997). A sustainability brainstorming exercise to design products for a longer life (White et al., 2013, p. 16) is as follows:
   1. Taking the product under consideration (e.g., a wristwatch), envision how it might provide usage over a 100-year span. Develop a concept scenario and create a storyboard.
   2. Design a support system including services (e.g., upgrading) for this product's viability.
   3. Develop an advertising campaign to entice someone to buy such a long-lasting product.
   4. Considering your support and service system (e.g., for cleaning, repairing, upgrading), reanalyze and rediscuss your design and advertising campaigns.

4. Product-service replacement. A strategy for innovation that widens the scope for sustainable designs and their development is that of a product-service system (PSS), or the coordination of a set of products and services into a united offering (Goedkoop, van Halen, te Riele, & Rommens, 1999). The social, economic, and environmental impacts of a PSS approach become inherent as the viewpoint forces a shift from production and consumption as two separate entities to a systems perspective of a single closed-loop product life cycle (Mont, 2002). Further, the PSS approach forces more attention to the use phase of the P/SLC as opposed to the product design in R&D. A PSS therefore has the potential to reduce waste by creating alternative scenarios of product use, for example, sharing/renting/leasing schemes to consumers and producer take-back programs for refurbishment.

   As shown in Figure 25.6, there are three different approaches to a PSS, each of which has different sustainability implications. In a product-oriented PSS (PO-PSS), where a consumer owns the product (e.g., a home photocopier), the firm can provide additional services to assure the durability of the product. In a use-oriented PSS (UO-PSS), the service provider owns the product, making it easier for the product to be eventually refurbished and reused, and sells only the “function” to the customer through a service contract. In a results-oriented PSS, the customer buys only results and is not concerned how the firm delivers those results. Accordingly, the firm's own photocopiers could be run at off-peak times and ad hoc copy services provided as needed.

   

As a brainstorming exercise, direct the team to think beyond pure product offerings by designing a more-sustainable results oriented PSS:

1. Take the product under consideration, for example, a home music system, and envision how it might be designed as a pure service. The idea may be outlandish but that is acceptable in brainstorming exercises.
2. Design a support system for this service. What type of business model could be viable?
3. Considering the service life cycle, what resources are needed to provide the service in a sustainable manner? Relative to a pure product offering, what value-add would the consumer, the company, and the natural and social environments each receive by consumers subscribing to this service?

After sustainability brainstorming, concept development comes next in the design thinking for sustainability process.

Sustainability in Concept Development

In the design thinking for sustainability process, concept development involves reaching a consensus on a product/service concept that meets the requirements of a sustainable design brief.¹² Such briefs should effectively include the project description, the scope of the project, key assumptions about the product design, target users, expected outcome of the project, success metrics, project timeline, and resources needed (Liedtka & Ogilvie, 2011). For example, the brief for a recyclable and upcyclable office chair would give the project team a framework from which to begin, benchmarks by which they can measure progress (e.g., against Steelcase's 99 percent recyclable Think® chair), and a set of objectives to be realized—such as price point, available technology, and market segment (Brown & Wyatt, 2010). Sustainable design criteria, which describe the attributes, constraints, and user perceptions of the product /service to be designed, are also delineated during the concept development stage. These two documents, the design brief and the design criteria, are used as inputs to guide in the What wows stage of design thinking for sustainability. To ensure comprehensiveness, the nine guidelines from the Hannover Principles¹³ for sustainable design (DfS) and the seven principles of DfEnv (Fiksel, 2011) should be reflected in both concept development documents.

The United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) Design for Sustainability workbook (UNEP, 2005) advocates performing a life-cycle analysis (LCA) for sustainable concept development as a means to evaluate the impact of a product or service in its PLC. The analysis can be as simple as stakeholders spending an afternoon discussing their sustainability perspectives on each stage of the P/SLC or as sophisticated as complex software-driven analyses conducted over several weeks.¹⁴ Figure 25.7 shows UNEP's eight-spoke strategy wheel that parallels the stages in the PLC, where the process starts at product design review for new products and continues to end-of-life. While the product design should be developed from the perspective of each spoke, typically two to three of the spokes will arise as being more important than the others and there will be sustainability trade-offs at each step as well.

25.3 Conclusion

Table 25.3 provides a summary of the four design for sustainable innovation approaches examined in this chapter. The first three are sustainability approaches typically used by engineers in product/service development, while the fourth, the design thinking for sustainability (DTfS) approach as presented in this chapter draws on the strengths of the first three and, further, proactively includes the consumer as a co-development partner. Based on the premise that a lack of empathy in the use of the innovation can derail the sustainability goals of even the best designed product, a DThfS approach has much greater potential to have a significant impact by creating products and services that integrate empathy for the environment and society into product and service designs.

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