Customers are signaling a need and desire for solutions, products, and services that are sustainable and have less of an impact on the environment. These signals are even adamant in traditional financial markets, with so-called ‘green stocks’: sustainable-driven organizations have consistently outperformed on the stock market.
If we are thinking in a truly human-centered mindset we must now also consider the needs of the planet alongside the customers, and shift to planet-centered design.
What is planet-centered design?
We are responsible for shaping services and products based on the human's distinct needs, to ultimately give them a better experience. With the imminent threat of global warming, we must now create, adapt and improve experiences to minimize the devastating impact that global warming could have on the human race. But how can we foster planet-centered design, and what service design tools could we harness to assist in this problem?
Thought leaders from the design community are mobilized and taking action on how we can help facilitate a positive change for this truly global problem.
Taking a stand: Service Design Global Conference (2021)
In 2021 the Service Design Global Conference (SDGC) was held on the topic of ‘Taking a Stand’. What actions can we take to create a better tomorrow? This event brought together the service design community, in a digital setting, and focused on the topic of the environment and what we can do as service designers to help fight our biggest challenge yet.
It’s worth stating, sustainability is certainly not a new initiative within design, “Design for the real world” by Victor Papanek in 1971, and the “The Waste Makers” in 1960 by Vance Packard, both called for an urgent shift away from disposable products and waste in our world of finite resources.
A new era of service designers is working on ways that you can adapt current service design tools and techniques, to foster planet-centric thinking, and minimize design’s impact on the environment.
Shifting to a planet-centered mindset
Cat Drew showcased this brilliantly with her work at Design for the planet, an initiative to stimulate and support the UK Design community for #designfortheplanet.
In a nutshell; striving to shift design activities to a planet-centric mindset. Florie Bugeaud-Remond also proposed a new addition to consider within the classic trinity of human-centered design (viability, desirability, feasibility) - circularity. Circular design in this context considers the implications of innovation on the environment, endeavors to avoid waste & pollution, and ultimately regenerate natural ecosystems.
Many looking for a modernized method of sustainable business and even a new economic theory refers to Doughnut economics’, by Prof. Kate Raworth. This concept challenges the status quo of old economics endless growth and considers not only ecological implications (ecological ceiling) but also social factors (social foundation).
The power to shift to a planet-centric mindset is in the hands of us all. Our ability to work together with collective intelligence has been one of humankind’s great success stories. We now also have the technology to engage in interdisciplinary collaboration, around the globe without leaving our desks - so what tools and techniques can you use to foster planet-centered thinking?
Take Action: Design for Planet Festival (2022)
More recently, in late 2022 the Design for Planet Festival, run by the Design Council in the UK, addressed the topic of taking action in the fight against climate change. An impressive range of speakers shared ideas, experiences, and insights on how to take action over the course of two days. To name a few;
- Jon Alexander and his book ‘Citizens’, on the importance to think and act like citizens rather than consumers
- Daze Aghaji spoke about her experiences in youth climate justice activism within central London, the role activism has in the climate emergency and the need for systematic change to fulfill the needs of the planet.
- William McDonough's keynote shares his recommendations for future generations of designers and businesses
There were many more exciting talks, but let's discuss how we can start to take action and implement designing for the planet in our daily work.
Planet persona - ‘put yourself in the planet’s shoes’
Inspired by those speaking at the SDGC (and those before them), raising awareness of this issue to the service design community, it is clear that there are practical and actionable ways to bring the planet to the center of design. I asked myself when listening to the SDGC:
If the customer is king/queen – then the planet is the kingdom/empire?
Without a kingdom, there will be no queen. So how can you bring the planet at the centre of design alongside the customer?
You can integrate them into our modern service design toolkit. Why not create a ‘Planet Persona’?
A ‘Planet Persona’ can be used to visualize the environment’s needs and pain points in your business context, and ultimately aims to give the planet a voice within your design and innovation process. It may even be showcased and visualized throughout your existing employee / customer journey and be used as a resource of alignment, internally and even externally, on planetary needs. Using this transparent artifact can allow for a higher level of empathy for the planet, and the consequences that innovation can have on it, and foster planet-centric design.
Creating a planet persona
A traditional persona should allow us to jump in the shoes of the customer/employee. With a ‘planet persona,’ you rather want to use it for advocacy for the planet within the business environment.
Much like all personas, a planet persona can be tailored to showcase the most important information found in your research. In this case, the research might rather be guidelines from your local government or municipality on how to combat climate change. Or perhaps even your employee and customer feedback for improvements in sustainability (planet pain points).
Therefore in recent years, we could observe a trend of companies including planet personas in their planning.
Below you can find an example of a ‘planet persona’ created using Smaply (Open read-only persona)
Elements to consider for your Planet persona:
- Implications - what are the global and local costs of not acting on climate change and meeting our sustainability targets.
- Initiatives - what global strategies can you refer to, to reduce climate change, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals. If your company has an internal sustainability policy or goals this can be a great place to add a hyperlink to the document.
- Pain points - common pain points such as waste and Co2 emissions can trigger innovation of how to reduce on a local level. (These could be tailored more specifically to your business context)
- Actions - what action can you take as individuals and businesses (i.e. renewable energy, self-powered transport, turning off standby mode on electronic devices)
Additions January 2023:
Planet Persona iterations and recommendations
It is great to see that the planet persona tool is already being put through its paces. Kin and Carta have recently used a planet persona in a project with a client to aid in the reduction of carbon emissions. Through this process they have some learnings and tweaks for the planet persona in this medium article, Mariana raises some really important points and questions to address before diving into using the planet persona.
- Understand what good looks like - try to not be caught on the common topics in the news (carbon emissions, renewable energy), and look at the project and business context holistically.
- Don't use the planet persona in isolation - its great to use the planet persona on a project basis, but go one step further and use it before and after the project to ensure visibility and measurability
- Empathising with non-human needs can be even more challenging than human empathy - what does good implicate for the planet in your business context and for your sustainability goals or regulations?
The Planet persona iteration in the Miroverse from Kin and Carta includes the above learnings and they break this down into two sections:
- Understanding your project:
- Problem statement & Project goals
- Sustainability goals & Existing initiatives
- Understanding the planet in relation to your project:
- Planet pain points
- Planet needs
- Ideal experience
- Other services
For more details please refer to the original article linked above.
If you have used the planet persona, we would love to hear about your experiences, learning, and how this tool can be further improved! Drop us a line at mail@smaply.com.
The UN sustainable development goals provide a great source for zooming out and away from simply reducing carbon emissions, so-called ‘carbon tunnel vision’ is a common trap. Daniel Christian Wahl spoke about the issue of carbon tunnel vision during the 2022 Design for planet festival on the topic of ‘Take Action’. In his talk he states, we should look beyond climate change and carbon reduction. The issue is deeper rooted and about humans' relationship with nature. It’s important to zoom out, look at the big picture and ideally avoid carbon tunnel vision.
Showcase the planet alongside the customer / employee
Like many new service design projects with the hope to scale, it’s good to start small. To show the value of such a project, especially with a ‘Planet-centric ‘approach, it could also be a good idea to work on a project that is visible and relatable across the whole organization - such as improving the employee experience with a planet centric mindset. Another benefit here is that sustainable-led organizations are known for improved employee attraction, engagement, and retention, a win for the planet and employee experience.
Example: Journey map with employee and planet
In this example, you can see a typical onboarding journey for a new employee at an organization, including the phases ‘getting started’ (job offer & relocation), as well as their ‘first day’. What is unique here is that the journey map not only displays the new employee (blue icon), but also a second planet persona (green icon). You can still map out the employee experience in detail, as on a typical employee experience map, but you can now also consider each step’s emotional journey in the eyes of the planet, by overlaying the employee's emotional journey and the planets emotional journey (i.e. negative emotional journey = an adverse impact on the planet.)
Example journey map (Extend journey map)
Specific journey lanes that could be used in a Journey map with a planet Persona:
- Planet pain points (text lane): some more details on why our planet personas needs are not met
- Planet opportunities (text lane): ideas to innovate the planet experience for this step
- Co2 emissions (arc lane): visualize from low to high the Co2 impact of each step
From the planet and onboarding journey map, you can notice a few interesting areas.
- Planetary opportunities can also benefit our employees/customers. For example, adding more plant-based dietary options at the canteen could please both the planet and our eco-conscious colleagues and staff.
- Digital meetings are not guilt-free. Even steps that are using only digital forms of communication, such as video calls, can still add to carbon emissions due to the energy consumption of running data centers. ‘This is Doing’ has a new course on ‘Earth Experience Design’ focusing on the impact of digital behavior on the earth.
- Moments that can be highly satisfying for a new employee, could have the most adverse impact on the planet. For example, receiving new equipment when starting a new job can be a high moment of satisfaction for the employee, but used or refurbished equipment might be just as effective and have less of an environmental impact
Example: FairPhone - a product designed with planet first
Fairphone is a sustainable-led company designing its product and customer experience with sustainability at its core. Not only sourcing the materials to make the phones ethically, but importantly they have supported a movement of ‘the right to repair’ within the notoriously consumable Smartphone industry. Designing their smartphones to be easily repaired by all customers, providing how-to videos, parts for easy replacement in case of breakages, and even modular components that can be upgraded. Quite notably, this is also being picked up by some of the largest smartphone manufacturers, Apple, almost famously making their phones difficult to repair by customers, has recently announced it will empower customers to repair their iPhones by providing components and their self-service repair program in the near future.
Summary
By creating a persona to represent the needs of the planet (planet persona), you are able to overlay both the planet’s experience and the human (customer/employee) experience on one journey map (Multiple personas on one map can be really insightful - get more info.) Doing so can create a new planet perspective to consider across all existing journey mapping activities or even new distinct planet/environment journey maps.
Let’s not innovate on the human experience alone but put the planet in the spotlight too.
If you are driving innovations to improve the customer/employee experience you should consider the implications on the environment as well. Designing with the planet at the forefront can ultimately help combat global working and have a positive impact on the employee, customer, and even shareholder satisfaction.
Looking for some more inspiration, assistance, or guidelines to design for the planet?
- Design for Planet: Catch up on the Design for planet festival with expert talks
- Earth Experience Design: A course from This is Doing on the impact of digital behaviour on the earth.
- ‘One Planet Standard’ Assessment: Guidelines to adapt business policy for ‘One planet Standard’
- Sustainable service design consulting by Koos Service Design: Sustainable service design consultants
- Example of social change implemented by design: A database of implemented social change projects
- The Digital ethical compass: a tool to assist in designing ethically. Orientate your design ethics with this compass.
- Aalto Design Factory for sustainable design education
Editors note: This article was updated for timeliness and an additional paragraph was added in January 2023.
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