By Janus Boye
Val Mitchell is the academic training lead for Snook. Alongside her role at Snook, Val is co-lead for the UX and Service Design MA at Loughborough University.
Reducing and mitigating the impact of climate change is the key challenge of our time and designers have a vital role to play in cutting emissions and diminishing their impact. According to the UK Design Council around 80% of the environmental impact of today’s products, services and infrastructures are determined at the design stage.
In a recent member call, Val Mitchell introduced the work of the Thriving Planet team at Snook and how they are beginning to use the principles and practice of Service Design to consider the needs of our planet alongside the needs of organisations and users.
Below I’ve shared my notes from the call. Towards the end you can also download the slides and even watch the entire recording.
Why do we need to make the sustainable thing the best thing?
Val opened the call talking about climate change, specifically mentioning the recent floods in the UK. Such disastrous events were also witnessed back in 2021 where heatwaves led to record highs in Canada and elsewhere. The Australian bushfires in 2019 - 2020 is another example.
As a part of the floods in the UK in 2012, severe weather warnings and a number of flood alerts were issued by the UK's Environment Agency, and many areas were hit by flash floods that overwhelmed properties and caused power cuts
Climate change is just as man-made as cigarettes and we need to take responsibility. But how can we engage in making our products and services more sustainable?
It's all about behaviour change and making climate-friendly products worthwhile. As Val puts it:
Sustainable offerings also need good services
Sustainability in every part of the design process
Val is committed to providing businesses and individuals with the skills needed to create human centred products and services. As part of her role, she provides UX design expertise to clients and is part of Snook’s Thriving Planet team, a collective of passionate designers that are pioneering the design and use of planet Centred design tools and methods within Service Design.
Design has a huge impact on our offerings and Val mentioned a few examples, including Uber Green, which allows users to request a more environmentally friendly car in big cities like London and Paris.
Not only does Uber Green provide you with an environmentally friendly ride, but drivers of fully electric vehicles are also eligible for the Zero Emissions incentive, which lets them earn an extra $1 on every Uber trip (up to $4,000 annually). For more, read: The Road to Zero Emissions
Another example is Danish fashion brand Organic Basics, which has created a low impact website to also contribute to cleaning up the digital part of the fashion industry.
Screenshot of the Organics Basics low impact website. They have an entire low impact manifesto in 10 steps, which includes not loading any images before they are actively requested by the user, minimizing the power consumption on the users device and more
She also made it clear that convenience wins and we are dealing with complex behaviours, like shopping a bit more to get free shipping, only then to return a few of the goods.
Free shipping clearly helps drive revenue and even outdoor clothing firm Patagonia offers “Free Delivery On Orders Over £90”, despite their focus on environmental activism. Read more about the problem in this interesting story featured on Forbes in 2019: There Is No Such Thing As A Free Return. In brief: Free return comes with a high price to pay.
Design sustainable behaviours
So how do we reduce online returns and enhance customer satisfaction? Val talked about managing customer expectations and nudging behaviours.
What does she mean by behaviour change? She mentioned the three essential conditions for behaviour change:
capability
opportunity
motivation
For someone to be able to change their behaviour all three need to be in place. Service design can be used to influence all three and remove barriers to behaviour change front and backstage.
She also referenced the Behaviour Change Wheel, which is a synthesis of 19 behaviour change frameworks that draw on a wide range of disciplines and approaches.
As she said, many organisations are good at coming up with ideas and glossy apps, but more work is needed to drive sustainable change and this requires nudging behaviours.
PS: For more on changing behaviors, refer to our popular member call with BJ Fogg in 2020: Simplicity changes behavior.
Learn more about sustainability
This is a topic that we’ve covered quite closely during the past months. Here’s just a few popular posts on sustainability:
You can also download the slides (PDF) or lean back and enjoy the entire recording