Trying to make an impact in the world as a Designer? Hello Digital Sustainability
As the days go by, I keep catching myself daydreaming about making a difference in the world, saving lives, leaving something behind that really matters for the future, and I always end up wondering: How in the world am I going to do that?
Is it possible for a designer to have this kind of job, where our creativity and our design processes can be aligned to create better experiences and save the world at the same time?
Currently, I work nine or more hours a day sitting in my home, designing digital experiences for companies that do not necessarily have sustainability as a priority in their business agenda. And that gets me thinking, how can I start a conversation with the client, stakeholders, my leaders, and my team, to change their work processes toward more sustainable actions and mindsets.
And people probably think, ‘Well, sustainability can be fulfilled if companies design with more sustainable materials or something’, but what I mean goes beyond that. Let’s start to challenge our mindset and move from physical sustainable solutions to digital sustainable solutions.
The world is digital now, anyway. So why shouldn’t we start being more conscious in our digital work?
“I feel better as a designer, I feel better as a member of the society if I am creating things and I’m using things that I can do as much out of it as I like and it’s not gonna be bad for the planet, in fact it’s going to be good for the planet”
— Tim Brown, CEO IDEO, Circular Design Guide
After a few years going through this storm of thoughts and questions, I ended up at the beginning again: lost and without a clue as to where and how to start making a change.
How can I leverage all my social and technical skills, knowledge, and experience in the design industry to dive into the Sustainability ecosystem and make a difference?
I’m happy to tell you that I recently found the answer to my never-ending concerns that kept me awake at night. And this is how it went…
My friends and the people around me know me as a nature lover. Yes, I am the friend who separates trash to recycle it, goes to camps to save turtles, and uses her free time to clean rivers and parks. The one who teaches her parents how to incorporate more environmentally conscious actions into their daily lives.
I’ve been involved in Tech for Good digital projects at Accenture, that have had a big impact on the way I think about people, communities, and the world in general. And at the end of those experiences, I always want to do more, want to see a change, want to dedicate myself and my 9 or more hours a day to work on something that really makes a difference.
My work as User Experience Designer on those projects brought another question to mind: Is there something out there already about design and sustainability? Changing the world is nothing new, so there must be a new way to design with that mindset, right?
And… I WAS RIGHT. How did I not notice this earlier? Sometimes we get so fed up with our daily work, our overwhelming thoughts of what’s going to happen tomorrow and all the goals and priorities we want to accomplish, that we forget to make a pause and look at the bigger picture as an outsider.
As I always do when I am researching something, I first checked in Accenture to see if anything was happening around the world on this topic and that’s how I found the Sustainability services and Social Innovators Base Camp for US and Europe. What an experience it was! For almost a month, I was able to interact with people in different countries from all over Accenture to understand and learn the basics of Sustainability in different roles and industries, using the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as our North Star. It was a dream come true. Even though I had to attend meetings at 1:30AM every week. 😅 It was definitely worth it!
And as I opened myself up with total strangers who had the same passion and vision for the world, I knew there was something out there I could do, that everything I know of User Experience, User Interface Design, Design Thinking, Agile, Prototyping and Storytelling can be more than enough to start my journey around this topic.
After this experience, my research continued. And The Circular Design appeared in my life. ‘Circular Economy, you mean?’… Kind of, but focused on design, isn’t that cool?!
“The next big thing in design is circular” is this familiar to you? If not, you MUST read all the bibliography references located at the end of this article. 😉
“We use circular design as a shorthand for the practice of applying circular economy principles at the design stage of everything.
It is a practice that embraces systems thinking to address some of the biggest interconnected challenges we are facing today.”
And… why should we focus on Sustainability?
Sustainability has been around for too long and it’s crazy how recently is that we started to pay attention to it as brands consumers. As our needs and priorities evolve, so our expectations in companies, brands, and products. And every one of us, as humans and consumers, are on a different stage of this never-ending journey of Sustainability. So how can we, as designers, give consumers the best personalized yet sustainable experiences they are expecting?
“Accenture combines deep insight and experience with technology to help
clients convert their customers’ intentions into new behaviors by delivering sustainable customer experiences that meet consumers where they are on their sustainability journeys while shifting perceptions about a brand’s commitment to sustainability.”
I’ve found myself totally in love with embedding the SDGs into my daily life mindset and would be amazing to include those in my daily work as well. In fact, one of the newest goals in Accenture is to make Sustainability present in all the products and services we offer to clients, including the environmental, social and governance (ESG) capabilities into offerings and our core business. So yes, I’ve finally found peace in my mind and heart that in the company I’ve been working on the last 5 years, is prioritizing Sustainability with their clients.
Alright, so we are working on deliver digital solutions to our clients focused on achieving Sustainability… but how do we make an impact as designers?
Throughout my deep research I came across different authors and companies that are already making Sustainability a priority in digital design.
“Design as a discipline has moved from the traditional concept of the visual or tangible artefact through to orchestrating interactions and experiences, and to transforming systems.”
— Nesta
“We must all come together and have a more positive impact on our planet. Design has the opportunity to take on a powerful role in making the world a better place.”
The Circular Design Guide
And then I found The Circular Design Guide, a site made by IDEO and Ellen McArthur Foundation for innovators and creatives to start the transformation towards Circular Design. This information has a been a huge w-o-w to me. It has proved that there is an important role for us as designers to truly be part of the change and work with the SDGs in mind.
If you’ve been struggling like me to find a path in design and your passions or you are just curious to know what this is about, I recommend visiting their sites and get into this revealing information of our future as designers.
“That’s why we created this guide: to help innovators create more elegant, effective, creative solutions for the Circular Economy.
The Design Thinking approach that underpins this guide allows you to explore new ways to create sustainable, resilient, long-lasting value in the Circular Economy — giving you the creative confidence to redesign the world around you”
As I continued my research, I was very impressed by Tim Brown, IDEO CEO, his point of view on this topic, and his thoughts about the evolution we must have as designers. See this video to understand better his mindset:
As you can see, it’s important to always keep in mind that Circular Design is a new discipline, a brand-new state of mind that needs to be explored and tested with the different industries, clients and people involved. Each result will come up differently but hey, that’s part of the learning and how we deliver the best to our clients: iterations.
As the Ellen MacArthur Foundation explains in their article ‘How circular design guidelines unlock organisations’ potential for change’, at the end, circular design guidelines are tools to accompany an organization — and the designers within it — in a transition to a more circular approach to business.
“Circular design is a new discipline and there are a lot of unknowns and many solutions to be explored, creating circular design guidelines is an iterative process.
The guidelines are meant to be refined over time, in line with the organization’s circular economy maturity.”
— Ellen MacArthur Foundation
Ok, so how do we dive into this Sustainable path and start acting?
The Circular Design Guide recommends the following mindsets to get started:
Hands-on the process…
I’m thrilled to have found an established process we can follow as we start as beginners in this amazing journey. If you, as me, are more than excited to start putting this to practice in our projects with our clients keep reading!
In the guide, you can see that the Circular Design Process is made of four stages and is informed by approaches such as Design Thinking and Human-centered Design:
- Understand — Get to know the user and the system.
- Define — Put into words the design challenge and your intention as the designer.
- Make — Ideate, design, and prototype as many iterations and versions as you can.
- Release — Launch your design into the wild and build your narrative — create loyalty in customers and deepen investment from stakeholders by telling a compelling story.
Keep in mind…
“Designing is an iterative process that never finishes. You should constantly be testing and refining as you understand how your users interact with your design, and how it fits within the wider system.“
Emm — OK, is this trending or something?
It is. But we shouldn’t be tricked by that since Sustainability is not only temporary trending, and it should not be considered as a later step in ‘the future’, it has become our present. We are living in the Sustainability era. It’s a MUST in every aspect of the world, and Design is not staying behind.
“Sustainability is also embedded into how we innovate with clients. As companies reinvent themselves to become more sustainable, we lead with innovation to help clients “imagine and invent” their own futures.”
As every year, Fjord from Accenture Interactive released the Fjord Trends 2022 — A new fabric of life, an annual and global study that reveals the top trends for business, innovators and creators in the perspective for business and brand interactions with consumers. This study is key to understand what’s currently happening in the world, how we can tackle user’s problems, concerns and go ahead of their desires to give them the best experiences according to their needs.
This year, the study carries quite an interesting message for all: we need a mindset shift to decouple innovation from the notion of ‘new’. It’s important to understand that we don’t need to create something completely new, and as challenging as it may sound, it even gives us enough motivation and pressure to work on more creative solutions.
“ We believe that designing for the balance between affordability and sustainability could be the next big opportunity for brands to break new ground.
Ultimately, many customers will likely weigh the good of the planet against their families’ basic necessities when making purchasing decisions. A balance between the two should be at the center of brands’ sustainability innovation.
A few Takeaways
Here are some next steps and recommendations from what I found on how to start working under this mindset and putting Sustainable Innovation at the top of our work.
- It’s important to tell your innovation and product development teams that innovation does not have to mean new. Lead them with a Sustainability mindset and freedom to get their most creative solutions.
- Establish your sustainability roadmap to get your client’s business and customers to net neutral — and, further, to nature positive.
- Feedback is very important for the circular economy in order to know what’s happening with all the parties involved.
- Adopting a systems mindset. We need to know when to step back from the experiences we are designing and think about how it might influence the design of that whole design through this idea of circularity.
- Important to explain the Circular Economy and why designers need to get involved.
- And as Tim Brown says “Embarque in that journey of change. Get started and begin to design just a little bit differently”.
“We’ll start to see generations of designers, very soon I think, who are intuitive about this idea of circularity, and thinking about the various principles and elements of circularity, and bringing them into their work in a very natural way because they’ll have grown up with it and been trained for it.”
— Tim Brown, IDEO CEO
So… are you ready to start paving the path for future Circular Designers?
Here are a couple of interesting resources I found that are great to start implementing! If you know more resources don’t hesitate to publish them in the comment section!
The Circular Design Guide Videos
https://www.circulardesignguide.com/resources#video
User Experience Circular Methods
https://www.circulardesignguide.com/methods
The Circular Design Guide Strategies — Are there different or better ways to meet user needs by applying circular strategies?https://www.circulardesignguide.com/resources
Bibliography
Accenture. (2020). Social Innovators. Https://Www.Accenture.Com/Us-En/about/Corporate-Citizenship/Social-Innovators. https://www.accenture.com/us-en/about/corporate-citizenship/social-innovators
Accenture. (2021). Sustainability Value Promise. Https://Www.Accenture.Com/Us-En/about/Sustainability/Sustainability-Value-Promise. https://www.accenture.com/us-en/about/sustainability/sustainability-value-promise
Brown, T. B. (2018). Circular Design Guide. Circular Design Guide. https://www.circulardesignguide.com/
Ellen MacArthur Foundation. (2016a, November 29). Design & the circular economy [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAvkM7B7BBs
Ellen MacArthur Foundation. (2016b, November 29). The Evolution of Design Thinking [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeoqUkKM_-4
Ellen MacArthur Foundation. (2021a). From better products to a better society: designing for the circular economy. Https://Medium.Com/Circulatenews/from-Better-Products-to-a-Better-Society-Designing-for-the-Circular-Economy-8354269599a1. https://medium.com/circulatenews/from-better-products-to-a-better-society-designing-for-the-circular-economy-8354269599a1
Ellen MacArthur Foundation. (2021b). How circular design guidelines unlock organisations’ potential for change. Https://Medium.Com/Circulatenews/How-Circular-Design-Guidelines-Unlock-Organisations-Potential-for-Change-15b7a4caae10. https://medium.com/circulatenews/how-circular-design-guidelines-unlock-organisations-potential-for-change-15b7a4caae10
Ellen MacArthur Foundation & IDEO. (2016). User Centred Reseach Guide. Https://Www.Circulardesignguide.Com/. https://emf.thirdlight.com/link/8wbuy1pnfiwf-dizvcy/@/preview/1?o
Fabrizio Ceschin, F. C. (2016). Evolution of design for sustainability: From product design to design for system innovations and transitions. The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. https://bura.brunel.ac.uk/bitstream/2438/13123/3/Fulltext.pdf
Nike. (2019). Nike Circular Design. Https://Www.Nikecirculardesign.Com/. https://www.nikecirculardesign.com/
