Matricula 897286 | Codice Persona 10640148
Riccardo Agosto
Service design enables the shift to a sustainable lifestyle through PSSD and collaborative services Essay
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Politecnico di Milano Scuola del Design A.Y. 2017/2018
Msc PSSD Service Design and innovation
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ciou c:Pre
prof. Daniela Sangiorgi turors. Marta Carrera and Felipe Lima
Riccardo Agosto Matricula 897286 Codice Persona 10640148
Service design enables the shift to a sustainable lifestyle through PSSD and collaborative services Keywords: service design, sustainability, PSS, creative communities, collaborative services.
Abstract During the last years, society is facing challenges that are growing in complexity and the whole world seems under a sense of diffused crisis (Manzini, 2009, 1): indeed, local values are weakened by global competition. Communities deal with new online relationships. The environment is suffering due to the mass production and consumption. In this scenario of broken bonds, it is necessary to develop a transition to a new sustainable lifestyle. Therefore, the role of design that is shaping this world must change. This would be possible using a more systemic approach of PSSD. Service design could take advantage of the emerging SLOC scenario, seek opportunities through collaborative communities and foster innovative connections between local-offline and global-online for a sustainable future.
Development and states: ‘sustainable development is the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (WCED, 1987, 41). It is noteworthy that no focus was given to any peculiar area. In fact, a specificity is required since environment, society and economy need, as fields of interests, to cooperate in order to efficiently face the emerging
Introduction During the last two decades, sustainability grew in importance and relevance in the global context. Eventually, it reached higher awareness spreading through institutions, decision-makers and citizens. The first definition of sustainability appeared in Our common future, a book written by the World Commission on Environment and 1
sustainability challenges. Indeed, it is already proven that the mankind could not go on consuming resources at the actual pace and modalities, otherwise, the planet would not be able to support today's living standard (Prendeville & Bocken, 2016, 292). For these reasons, a radical lifestyle change is needed to build and warranty new perspective on the future. So, a process of social innovation should be undertaken that ‘refers to changes in the way individuals or communities act to solve a problem or to generate new opportunities. These innovations are driven more by changes in behaviour than by changes in technology or the market and they typically emerge from bottom-up rather than top-down processes.’ (Jégou & Manzini, 2008, 29).
the top-down process is crucial for the success of a new bottom-up activity (Sto & Strandbakken, in Jégou & Manzini, 2008, 140). The current context is favourable to this kind of evolution thanks to globalization, sharing economy, internet networks and distributed systems, and it is clearly summarized by Manzini (2009) in the concept of the SLOC scenario. SLOC is the acronym for small, local, open and connected, that are the four pillars of small-scale activities, that act locally and in the local community with an open mindset and are connected through a network, which could compete on the global market. Therefore, radical changes in a pinpointed area could have a waterfall effect globally, intended as a "network of local" (Manzini, 2009, 1).
The aim of this paper is to explain how service design could positively contribute to the transition towards a sustainable way of living, by providing enabling solutions and by broadening the design perspective on a systemic landscape. Moreover, the actual panorama of diffused creativity and networked creative communities is described as the possible promoter of the emerging standard of living. Later, an analysis concerning the opportunities for the service design field is explained, by introducing the concept of enabling solutions and productservice-system design. Eventually, a case study is introduced to clarify what written and it would be followed by the conclusion.
Creative communities and collaborative services Thanks to this environment of diffused creativity, local promising cases have already started in the form of creative communities. These groups could be defined as collaborative creators and managers of innovative solutions that generate new lifestyles (Meroni, 2007, 10). They overtake the general pace of system innovation, anticipating economic and institutional changes, and achieve their goals by inventing new combination of actual products and services (Jégou & Manzini, 2008, 30). These communities generate special solutions named collaborative services: a form of social service that involves directly the members of a community, who assume the role of co-designers and co-producers (Jégou & Manzini, 2008, 32) to solve specific unmet needs. As a consequence, the standard established relationship between the agent (service provider) and the client (service user) is broken due to the cooperative approach of
Radical changes and SLOC Scenario To achieve the social innovation required, it is meaningful to understand the actual social context and to grasp given opportunities. Behaviour innovation is usually bottom-up: it arises in the local undergrounds and then it moves to the mainstream culture. Though, 2
As Manzini reported, designers shape the imaginary of wellbeing by envisioning and creating solutions that promote a certain lifestyle. Therefore, their responsibility is crucial for generating the correct social expectations (Manzini, 2006, 2). During the last century an unsustainable product-based-consumption lifestyle was promoted without considering the ecosystem and the social and environment context. The harmful consequences of industrial disposable production began to be brought to light by Victor Papanek in the 70s. As a reaction, the issue was addressed in several ways in the past decades, however, the recent transition to a service-based shared economy is providing a different approach towards promising result-oriented solutions. Subsequently, the three insights should be taken for service designers to support this transition to sustainability.
these services that are based on an interwoven model where relation, mutual intimacy and community as main values (Cipolla, in Jégou & Manzini, 2008, 151). Studies led by Baek (Baek, Meroni & Manzini, 2015; Baek, Kim & Pahk, 2016) analysed the phenomenon from a socio-technical system approach, identifying a mutual relationship between the solutions created and the social network: the improvement of one simultaneously affect the other, creating a virtuous circle (Figure 1).
Enabling solutions and PSS Designing for this scenario means design to empower the community to act and namely designing enabling solutions, which are ‘a system of products, services, communication, and whatever else necessary, to improve the accessibility, effectiveness and replicability of a collaborative service’ (EMUDE in Jégou & Manzini, 2008, 36). In fact, a collaborative community faces those three are main issues: accessibility, to make the service easy to access and to reduce the effort threshold required by the participation; effectiveness, to make effective and perform professionally to retain users and collaborators; attractiveness, to make it appealing to attract new participants. The potential creativity of a community is unlocked because, instead of providing a ready-made offer, a toolkit is provided and solely after the effort of collaboration, the solution is generated. As a result, the
Figure 1 A virtuous circle of collaborative community Baek, et al., 2016, 2
Framed in the SLOC scenario, collaborative communities could foster the local sustainable-oriented transition and then scale it up outside through a diffuse network.
The role of service design and the opportunity gap The pictured landscape leads to three main insights: first, macro-transformations could be driven by local networked radical microones; second, the users/stakeholders are active, creative and participative; finally, it is possible to enhance the creation of social fabric through design- developable solutions. It is indeed, noteworthy to locate the role of service design in the scheme and highlight which opportunities are opened. 3
interaction, the side effect is the reinforcement of the social fabric. As mentioned, enabling solutions are product-service-system (PSS), a combination of tangible and intangible solutions that together are able to satisfy specific needs of the customers and generate value-in-use (Baines et al., in Costa, et al., 2017, 114), that as such could be designed and serve as a platform for social innovation. Moreover, different research aimed to understand the potentiality in terms of innovation, strategic competitiveness and sustainability (Manzini & Vezzoli, 2002; Tukker, 2004). Even if, it is still not proved that they are a win-win solution, it seems clear that the focus should be put on the S-side of the acronym in order to have a role in the servicebased economy.
strategic perspective and foster the competitiveness of companies adopting PSS and towards the transition to a serviceoriented perspective. "Services seem to be opening up a room for more promising innovation with regards to sustainability and the human-centred approach, given their focus on interactions, relations and activities rather than on objects. Thinking in terms of services helps designers to deconstruct preconceived ideas about how things should be done, and generate new solutions that have the potential to reshape behaviours, rethink products and places, and eventually transform society" (Cooper, in Meroni & Sangiorgi, 2011, xi). Service Design copes with intangible and complex respects such as co-production. Since a service is an activity where the users shape it together with service providers during the customer experience, it is impossible to be fully designed; the latter, because a deliverable service deals with different stakeholders and professions that must be evaluated in the system. Finally, service designers have knowledge and tools to translate the intangible aspects (like experience, values, system) into visual and tangible solutions, maps or prototypes that are helpful to understand relevant features and bridge designers to users.
However, in the manufacturing industry the service perspective is still overlooked (Costa, et al., 2017). Indeed, companies, particularly SMEs (small-medium enterprises), do not have yet the competences to build a solid service component, due to lack of experience, tools and perspective in the field. Technology, especially internet platforms, has already been recognized as enabling services, thanks to the capability of connecting people and promote a horizontal and peer-to-peer exchange of information (Baek, et al., 2010). On the other hand, the tool would turn to be completed solely by designing also products that foster collaboration and inclusive patterns. An example is given at the end of this paper.
Competitive requirements for collaborative services are accessibility, effectiveness and attractiveness, plus an enabling platform that provides crucial touchpoints. In this way, service design could strikingly contribute to the development of enabling PSS by widening the focus on a more holistic stance, exploring touchpoints and customer journey, seeking connection amongst stakeholders and co-creation of value opportunities (Costa, et al. 2017, 116). Secondly, service design explores the whole
The Service Design contribution Service Design is a recently born discipline that could contribute to solve the trade-off between the more sustainability lifestyle and new design ethics. Indeed, it could provide a 4
machines and communication were designed, but the project is mainly service-oriented. In this way, locals can build the machines, acquire knowledge about plastic, start a recycling business, clean the neighbourhood collecting plastic waste, enhance the creativity of the community (offline and online), grow civil sense and gather feed-backs. In practice, set up a collaborative service.
experience ecology with empathy and user participation, then it transforms the experience in tangible artefacts and stresses the communication of the experience (Stigliani & Fayard, 2010, 6). In the end, sustainable business model innovation could be driven by service designers considering how value is created through stakeholders and to which benefits a change of these relationships leads (Prendeville & Bocken, 2016, 295). It seems clear now that service design is a key facilitator in the transition to a sustainable living standard, empowering collaborative communities and orienting the focus of design on providing a solution.
The service design approach is found in the understanding of a broad number of stakeholders: dumps for second-hand materials, technicians to build the machines, neighbourhood that could collect home plastic waste, the makers' community for design new outcomes, amateur collaborators to run the laboratory. Secondly, the user is put at the centre designing the solutions in the clearest and simplest way possible and visualized strikingly in order to foster accessibility, effectiveness and appearance. Moreover, also an innovation in the business perspective is reached by creating a local economy from wastes.
Precious Plastic: An enabling platform for recycling communities Dave Hakkens is a Dutch designer who has always shown a systemic vision in his projects. Precious Plastic (2013) is an open-source project which mission is to reduce the plastic pollution by turning waste into valuable objects. Son of the SLOC scenario, it presents all the features of an enabling PSS. Indeed, Precious Plastic provides free blueprints, tutorial and educational material to build a set of machines (made of scraps and easy to realize) and run a recycling workplace. Moreover, it offers an online website where an exchange of knowledge and skills happens, but also economical thanks to the e-commerce. The product component is present due to
Skipping the positive side effects of a collaborative community, the sustainable shift is pursued in Precious Plastic in both a material and psychological way: first, because the life-cycle of plastic is extended and a better recycling system is established. Second, because the users acquire new knowledge about recycling potentialities that could positively affect their daily life behaviour.
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The set of machines (extruder, shredder, injection mould and compression mould
Some example of products (from extrusion to injection and compression)
The last update: the container workspace
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A screenshot from a tutorial video
Offering map
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Worldwide network
developed artefacts with some meaning for society. […] But now the same bridge also has to be trodden in the other direction: to look at social innovation, identify promising cases, use design sensitivities, capabilities and skills to design new artefacts and to indicate new directions for technical innovation." (Jégou & Manzini, 2008, 41). Service design has the capabilities to pursue this mission by enabling competitive PSS and by generating new sustainability-based social paradigms.
Conclusion The paper showed how service design plays a main character role in the transition to a more sustainable living standard. It would happen by reorienting the focus from a productbased wellbeing to a service-based one and fostering development and spread of social innovation. The emerging scenario has the premises to guarantee the change, but a shift in the design vision is required too. "Designers have always created bridges between society and technology. So far, they have mainly looked at technical innovation and […] they
References Baek, J.S., Manzini, E., Rizzo, F. (2010). Sustainable collaborative services on the digital platform: Definition and application. Conference paper retrieved from https://researchgate.net. Baek, J.S., Meroni, A., Manzini, E. (2015). A socio-technical approach to design for community resilience: A framework for analysis and design goal forming. Elsevier, Design Studies, 40 (2015), 60- 84, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2015.06.004.
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Baek, J.S., Kim, S., Pahk, Y. (2016). A socio-technical framework for the design of collaborative services: diagnosis and conceptualisation. Conference paper retrieved from https://researchgate.net. Costa, N., Patricio, L., Morelli, N., Magee, C.L. (2017). Bringing Service Design to manufacturing companies: Integrating PSS and Service Design approaches. Elsevier, Design Studies, 55 (2018) 112-145, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2017.09.002; Jégou, F., Manzini, E. (Ed.) (2008). Collaborative Services: social innovation and design for sustainability. Milan, Italy: Edizioni Poli.Design. Manzini, E. (2006). Design, ethics and sustainability: guidelines for a transition phase. Retrieved from http://designblog.uniandes.edu.co Manzini, E. (2009). Small, local, open, connected: An orienting scenario for social innovation and design, in the age of networks. Public lecture, Glasgow, UK: Institute for Advanced Studies. Manzini, E., Vezzoli, C. (2002). A strategic design approach to develop sustainable product service systems: examples taken from the ‘environmentally friendly innovation’ Italian prize. Journal of Cleaner Production, 11 (2003), 851–857, doi:10.1016/S09596526(02)00153-1 Meroni, A. (Ed.). (2007). Creative Communities: People Inventing Sustainable Ways of Living. Milan, Italy: Edizioni Poli.Design. Meroni, A., Sangiorgi, D. (2011). Design for services. New York, USA: Routledge. Prendeville, S., Bocken, N. (2016). Sustainable Business Models through Service Design. Procedia Manufacturing, 8 (2017) 292 – 299, doi: 10.1016/j.promfg.2017.02.037 Stigliani, I., Fayard, A.L. (2010). Designing new customer experiences: a study of socio-material practices in service design. London, UK: Imperial College, Business School. Tukker, A. (2004). Eight types of product– service system: eight ways to sustainability? experiences from SusProNet. Business Strategy and the Environment, 13, 246–260 (2004), https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.414. World Commission on Environment and Development (1987). Our Common Future. Retrieved from http://un-documents.net/our-common-future.pdf
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