A life-centric approach to service design emphasizes creating solutions that meet human needs while respecting the planet’s limited resources. By adopting life-centric practices, service designers can become advocates for sustainability. Thus, they can create solutions that are desirable, viable, and feasible, while promoting ecological balance and social equity.
Reflecting on our history is key to envisioning our future
Design thinking emerged as a framework for innovation and user-centered problem-solving, gaining prominence in the 1990s for its focus on desirability, viability, and feasibility. Too often all service design work happens without considering wider planetary and social impacts.
Design thinking is often used to create new things with only humans in mind, for a small part of the human spectrum, and mostly with profit and constant growth in mind. If we continue this path, we will inevitably create a snowball effect leading to undesirable futures. In these futures, planetary boundaries are bouncing out of the safe limits resulting to unwanted outcomes for our future selves.
Looking ahead, we are witnessing a shift where design addresses systemic issues with innovative, sustainable, and inclusive solutions. We call this shift the life-centric approach, a design philosophy where human needs, ecological balance, and ethical considerations are equally prioritized.
Within sustainable digitalisation, the life-centric approach emphasizes creating solutions that respect planetary boundaries, foster social equity, and encourage sustainable consumption. It leverages innovation to address complex global challenges such as climate change, resource scarcity, and digital overreach.
Building multidisciplinary teams for sustainable innovation
Many organizations recognize the planet’s future risks and understand the concept of futures visioning, but they often lack clarity on how to implement changes, such as reducing material and energy use. Service design can help organizations shift their thinking by creating new data-based sustainable concepts, business models, offerings, and services.
Naturally, no single designer can champion all aspects of sustainability. To drive impactful sustainability initiatives, it’s essential to build a team with diverse expertise. Key areas include circular economy strategies, enhancing energy efficiency, developing sustainable business models, measuring impact, and fostering ecosystem collaboration.
Designers can contribute their expertise in insight gathering, concept development, facilitation, and methodology. In addition, it is equally important to incorporate sustainability into all project briefs. By nudging toward sustainable behaviors, teams can design solutions that not only meet user needs but also promote environmentally responsible actions.
How to become an advocate for sustainability?
1. Planetary Concept Design
Planetary Concept Design focuses on integrating sustainability at every stage of the service lifecycle, ensuring solutions are environmentally responsible and resource-efficient. By embedding these principles into service design, businesses can create solutions that align with sustainability goals while delivering value to users and respecting planetary boundaries.
Example: A sustainable food delivery service minimizes emissions with green transport and eco friendly packaging while engaging customers through carbon tracking and waste reduction incentives.
2. Promote sustainable behavior in honest and transparent way
To effectively promote sustainability, it’s essential to understand which environmental impacts your core audience’s behaviours have and set measurable goals to guide their actions. Equally important is maintaining honesty in your sustainability claims.
Example: A clothing retailer implements a transparent labelling system that clearly indicates the environmental impact of each product, including carbon footprint and resource usage. This approach empowers consumers to make informed choices and fosters trust by avoiding exaggerated or misleading claims.
3. Design with the end in mind
Design services with circularity principles in mind, focusing on upgradability, repairability, and minimizing waste. Materials, data, and resources should be reused, recycled, or repurposed to reduce resource extraction and energy consumption.
Example: A ride-sharing app incorporates circular design by encouraging the use of electric vehicles powered by renewable energy and rewards eco-friendly practices, such as carpooling or using low-emission vehicles.
4. Consider non-human stakeholders
Incorporate profiles for non-human entities – such as ecosystems, animals, and natural resources – to evaluate how a service impacts the environment and identify opportunities to mitigate harm.
Example: In Arctic tourism, creating a stakeholder profile for the local polar ecosystem can guide decisions like restricting activities that disturb wildlife habitats and adding educational content on Arctic conservation.
Keen on starting your path as a sustainability advocate?
Unlock the potential of sustainable digital transformation with Gofore’s Environmental Digitalisation Toolkit. The toolkit is designed to help you integrate sustainability into every aspect of your digital projects – from Planetary Service Design to Conscious Digital Design, Energy Efficient Coding and Green Cloud & Data.
