Quick guide to Planet Centric Design Thinking
By Antonio Marugán, Digital Product Designer and Jimena González, Researcher & Service Designer at Idean Spain.
What is Planet Centric Design?
For some time now, the global design community has been asking the same question: what on earth are we doing? Many of us feel that our radical commitment to empathy is sometimes devoid of conscience, and makes us complicit in an accelerated consumerism. An unsustainable cycle that drains our planet bit by bit, and also fails to generate authentic emotional well-being.
It is estimated that 80% of the environmental impact of products is determined during the product design phase.
Perhaps in a fit of ego, at Idean we began to consider design as a superpower. As Spider-Man says, “with great power comes great responsibility”. So we asked ourselves another question: what can we do?
We started talking about moving beyond user-centered design and putting the needs of environment at people at the core of what we do. Planet Centric Design began as a framework that takes design thinking to the next level. It is based on the next five principles:
Step by step, how does this materialize in the design process?
This time, we are going to focus on Idean’s design framework. Our goal is to make a tangible difference by implementing simple switches into each of the phases of the design thinking process to make a tangible difference.
1. Discover
To begin with, we need to pick the research sample. Here we will need new recruits in addition to the usual nominated. A stakeholder map can be of help when identifying them.
In addition to the future user, we can add other stakeholders who can contribute their vision, such as:
- people from different departments of the organization, such as HR or CSR,
- neighbors who will be affected by our product or service, or
- if budget allows, an environmental consultant.
Also, choose people of different gender, sexual orientation, age, physical and intellectual abilities, etc. to incorporate their point of view.
Once we have the sample, we choose the research activities we will carry out (interviews, surveys, focus groups…). This is a great opportunity to open up the conversation about social and environmental impact, values, sustainability, the effect of the design on the immediate environment, etc.
For example, we can ask questions like:
- How do you think the future design will affect the close environment?
- Do you think it will have positive effects on its social environment, and negative effects?
- How do you think the environmental impact of the design could be improved?
2. Define
After the research, it is time to form a team to co-create the solution. If possible, invite social and environmental impact promoters, such as the person in charge of corporate social responsibility or someone from an NGO.
With this team in place, we build the user personas to help us empathize with their needs when designing. Have you ever tried to build different user personas, but they all come out as… standard? In this step, we will try to do the opposite, overrepresent minorities to gain insights on their needs. We used our Cards for Humanity game as inspiration.
When building user journeys, we can include a new row to map the impact of each moment of their experience.
In the ideation phase, we will generate alternatives to improve this impact, as well as to offer a differential user experience.
The next step would be to choose among all these ideas. To do this, we have several options, for example using a matrix in which we position the idea according to its total impact (how much it contributes to the user experience and how it impacts the environmental and social environment) and the cost or effort it needs to be carried out.
Another option would be, for example, to classify ideas according to user experience but adding a planet centric tag to those ideas with a positive social and environmental impact, and a red mark on those with a negative impact.
3. Refine, refine…
A principle we usually follow when designing is “simplify is (almost) always right”. Eliminate everything superfluous and unnecessary, and you will have a more consistent experience and, incidentally, an optimized design.
If you are designing a digital solution, invite a developer to help you quickly identify less consuming alternatives, for example, by eliminating loops.
Finally, when testing your design, again be sure to include a wide diversity of users. This is the only way to know if they understand your design and if it really meets all their needs. We recommend using Idean’s The Universal Score at this point to test the inclusivity of your design.
The road is important too
It can be very interesting before, during or after the project to get the team together and discuss: what factors impact the environment during the process? can you think of ways to reduce the environmental footprint of your way of working? can you reduce travel? can you identify any ways to reduce the material you use? Can you quantify in any way the ecological footprint of the process? what alternatives can you think of to reduce it?
The crucial thing is to start
“We need to move beyond guilt or blame, and get on with the practical tasks at hand.”
David Attenborough
Don’t let complexity paralyze you! Your beginnings may be humble, but more important than arriving at a perfect answer is to keep asking yourself the right questions.
