Introduction
As an extension of the WDO platform, this guide is meant to be a tool that allows designers to identify the challenges related to realizing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. This guide aims to help understand and contextualize these challenges through the design process, and facilitate opportunities for the development of sustainable projects.
As sustainability becomes a critical consideration across all design disciplines, multiple projects, methodologies, practices and approaches have been developed in recent years to provide designers with the necessary tools and insight to generate impactful solutions.
Together with the WDO platform, this guide aims to provide resources that can help you and your team develop and structure a sustainable project according to the situation that you may might find yourself in: either willing to start a new sustainable project motivated by many of the problems described in the SDGs or looking to change the way projects are framed within your company, adopt sustainable practices and/or position yourself in a new market.
This guide does not claim to be the solution to sustainable problems, nor does it guarantee results that do not generate negative impacts. It is to be understood as a tool that can contribute to identifying, creating and transitioning towards best sustainable practices.The idea behind the creation of this guide is not based on identifying a particular SDG to a specific project, but on providing the tools to identify, understand, formulate and develop a project that impacts the SDGs more broadly.
To continue using this guide, we recommend taking a moment to visit the Bility platform, where we provide more insight into the intersection between design, the four areas of sustainability and the SDGs. This information will help you effectively understand and follow the steps presented in this guide.
The Two Approaches
One of the main components of the design process is motivation: the reasons why designers are doing what they are doing, and the processes that activate creativity and innovation to develop unique solutions to the problems we face. The motivation must be clear to the designer since it will influence each step made throughout the iteration phase and be reflected in the final design output.
When approaching a sustainable project, it is important to be motivated by the desire to generate change, to find solutions in alignment with other disciplines, to not to fear failure, to consider new points of view, and to look towards generating long-term impacts.
That motivation for approaching a new project that is mainly framed by sustainability may put you and your team in two different positions, each one of them has a different approach suited to its particular conditions like objectives, stakeholders or contexts.
The two approaches are:
Starting a sustainable project: This refers to the idea of carrying out a project, from ideation to implementation, that incorporates sustainability best practices and addresses one or more key challenge(s) as presented in the 17 SDGs. This approach is for those designers or teams that are driven by the idea of generating change and positive impact through the conception and development of solutions that can target many of the problems that we are facing right now.
You might be any of these:
- A student or a group of students looking to start a project focused on sustainability, or come up with solutions that tackle a particular real-world problem.
- A teacher looking for new methods to share with your students as a way to develop more projects focused on sustainability and generate change at an academic level.
- A researcher exploring new frameworks of how sustainable problems can be turned into opportunities for new projects that can generate knowledge and positive impacts.
- A studio looking into starting sustainable projects aligned with the needs of an evolving business environment that may foster new work opportunities.
- A design lab looking to start sustainable projects to achieve innovative solutions to key, real-world problems.
- A company that is looking to develop innovative, sustainable projects as a way of expanding into new markets and attracting capital from the private and public sector.
Transforming an existing design project or process to become more sustainable: This approach aims to commercial, industrial, and professional activities that seek to shift towards sustainable models. This approach is thought to obtain new sustainable projects that will either replace or modify existing practices and generate new positive impacts. This approach is for those designers or teams that are driven by the idea of generating change and positive impact through their professional/corporate activities.
You might find yourself in this scenario:
- You and your team have already developed a project that has faced challenges relating to sustainable factors and want to find new ways to improve your process.
- You and your company are looking for a way to identify how your activities are impacting sustainability efforts and find a way to transform existing negative impacts into positive ones.
- You and your company are trying to adopt sustainable practices as a way of keeping yourself relevant in a changing market and be able to make a meaningful impact in society.
Choosing the Right Approach
Below are some questions to help you and your team decide which approach is best suited for your situation.
- Do you and your team want to look for new solutions that tackle any of the 17 SDGs?
- Do you and your team want to explore multiple processes and methodologies to find key elements that would help create innovative and creative solutions?
- Are you and your team inspired to take action on a particular issue related to the SDGs?
- Are you free to explore new frameworks and solutions that may tackle that problem?
If you answered yes to at least 3 of the of the above questions, we recommend following the first approach: starting a sustainable project.
- Are you trying to adopt sustainable practices as part of your commercial and professional activities within an established company?
- Are there specific goals tied to the activities developed within your organization, like revenue?
- Are you limited by a set budget or available resources?
- Are there any negative sustainable impacts related to existing company practices that you would be looking to change?
If you answered yes to most of the above questions, we recommend following the second approach: transform an existing design process.
Approach 1: Transforming an Existing Design Process
This approach is designed to help an organization or company identify the impacts that their project has on the four areas of sustainability, and the key points of contact with the SDGs. Observing, in particular, the aspects where this commercial, professional or industrial activity has contact.
By identifying these impacts, you and your team will be able to formulate and develop a sustainable project and/or practices that align with the goals and targets delineated in the UN SDGs.
Process
- Analyze: Identify and map out your current design process to understand the current state of your practices.
- Identify/evaluate: Identify the impacts of your activities either positive or negative and connect them with your current process to find the key relations between what is happening and why it is happening.
- Relate: Connect and find the connection between your impacts and the issues described in the SDGs so you can have a clear understanding of which SDG you might work on.
- Define: Choose and select the SDG to work on and frame your project within the aspects and targets that your activity is most related to.
- Formulate: Investigate and define the problem or question you are trying to answer within the SDG chosen and the aspects of your practices that you are trying to change.
- Structure: Structure your design process according to the needs and aspects of your problem, assessing the weak points found in the second step.
- Evaluate: Analyze the results of your project and identify the new impacts of it, negative and positive.
Analyze
The objective of this step is to establish the current design processes of your company, identify the relevant stakeholders, the scale in which your company works, the external and internal limitations and the elements that compose the design process. This will help you and the team have a clear overview of your current situation.
As part of this analysis, it is necessary to gather relevant information on company projects developed in the past and to connect with different actors that were present in these processes. Here you will start to see how important it is to understand the relationships between actors and systems and how they influence the way a project is developed.
To understand what we mean with the design process, we encourage you to visit our website where you will find the main components that define a design process.
To start, you’ll need to define the 3 core areas of your design process:
Problem: What are the common problems that your company tackles when creating a solution (products, services, experiences, systems)?
Motivation: What drives you as problem solvers to approach the projects that the company usually develops?
Focus: What are the focuses in which you approach a problem? Is there a particular factor that defines the way you want to approach a project?
Example: Technology, ergonomics, Behavioural change, graphics, etc.
This part defines the values and focus of your company, the ways in which you see the world and therefore the problems of the people you are trying to reach. These three components will later define the shape of your processes and influence the project decision making.
The next step will be to define the methodologies that you and your team usually follow to develop a project. These can be established methodologies (design thinking, human-centered design etc.) or methodologies that were created as part of company practices. As these methodologies are defined, you and your team will determine the corresponding tools – make sure that you can list and describe the way you execute and use these tools as it is important to understand how these tools are being applied.
After you and your team have defined your process, you will need to identify the scale in which your project is framed, the actors that are involved in the various steps and the internal and external limitations that you find while executing each step and using each tool.
Scale: At which scale do we and our company work? At which scale are we using our tools? A project can be projected at a national level but the research phase is focused only in one city or community.
Actors: Who are our stakeholders? Who are we targeting? Who is helping us? Who are we trying to help? In which steps of the process are they being included?
Limitations: What are the limitations of our team in each step? Are there external factors that influence the execution of each step? What are the weaknesses of the tools that we use? Which of the limitations are internal or external?
During a prototyping phase the machinery and resources available influence the decision making process of solution building.
You have now defined the system of your design process which becomes the DNA of your products and services. The next step will be to see the relationships that exist within that system and relate it back to your impacts.
Identify
The objective of this step is to define the positive and negative impacts that you, your team and your company are having in any of the four areas of sustainability. These impacts can come from the activities you execute and the context in which these products are being produced, distributed, used and disposed. Once identified, you can start making connections between those impacts and your design process.
For this step we will be using the matrix of the circles of sustainability to help keep track of the impacts. It is also important for you and your team to be as precise as possible on the nature of the impact – i.e. describing what is happening and how it is happening.
Identification of Impacts
Now you will carry out an exercise to evaluate company activities, processes, and solutions (Products, Services, Experiences, Systems) to determine their impact and/or relationship with the particular aspects of each area of the circles of sustainability. The team will then utilize this information to complete the matrix.
For this, the team must fill out the matrix that accompanies this step, marking those aspects that the company has impacts or influences. To fill out this matrix there are a series of questions that could help the team understand these relationships:
- Which of the following areas or aspects are considered vis a vis the development of your products, services, experiences or systems? And how?
- In which of the following areas or aspects does your activity as a company have the most influence? And how?
- In which of the following areas or aspects do our company processes influence society? And how?
Note that the evaluation can relate to the four pillars and multiple aspects simultaneously through both positive and negative impacts. The depth to which these impacts are established will depend on the company’s level of commitment and self-analysis.
Example
Chair World, as a company focused on the design, development, and production of furniture, is deeply connected to the environmental pillar, more particularly in the materials and energy category relating to:
Abundance and availability
- General consideration: There is a direct impact on the amount and availability of material(s) used in furniture production, whether that be wood, metal, plastic products ect.
- Specific evaluation: The company focuses its production on wooden materials derived from a tree type in a specific region. However, the increase in production, coupled with the appearance of other companies that use the same type of wood has led to high deforestation affecting the environmental conditions of surrounding areas and a general shortage of material for future product development.
Electricity and gas
- General consideration: The correlation between energy resources used during the production and commercialization of company products.
- Specific evaluation: The company utilizes outdated machinery and technology designed to treat and transform production materials. As a result, existing processes are not energy efficient and result in higher use of electricity use in the long run.
Renewable and recyclable
- General consideration: The company produces products from renewable and/or recyclable materials OR uses materials from these same origins within industrial and professional activities.
- Specific evaluation: Internally, the company is working to incorporate renewable and recyclable materials for its administrative activities, but its production activities remain strongly dependent on the wooden materials used for many years in its products.
Connect
This step consists of overlapping the impacts of the company, its activities and solutions with each matrix of the 17 SDGs. At this point, the team will start to see how its work can have a positive impact on the SDGs and understand the specific aspects in which projects can be framed to tackle problems related to sustainability and existing design processes can be restructured to support more sustainable practices.
Examining the SDG cue cards available on the site, you and your team should try to overlap your matrix and identify the matching points. You might find yourself having all the SDGs with at least one point in common – but the idea of this step is for you to see how your work may have an impact or influence in multiple issues related to the SDGs. This should be interpreted as a huge opportunity for you and your company to develop multiple projects that are aligned with emerging areas of sustainability and the objectives of current governments and international organizations.
Define
This step consists of selecting the SDG on which you and your team want to focus, which will ultimately form the basis for identifying the problem to be addressed through a sustainable project. For this decision process the team needs to ask questions that help them find the appropriate SDG to start working on, these questions can be focused in multiple aspects that can be directed either to the expertise in your commercial and professional activity or the context you work on.
At the end of this step, you and your team will have an SDG as the main objective for the project and understand the main reasons why you are motivated to carry it out.
There are multiple global targets delineated by the 17 SDGs that, according to the UN, represent the main sustainable objectives for 2030. Each of these objectives is complex due to the nature of the factors that influence them.
For this you will need the results of the previous step, where you have each SDG with the specific aspects that match with your impacts.
Three sets of questions are provided below that might help the team choose the SDG to focus on.
Questions to Consider
In connection to the companies work, knowledge and/or experience:
- Are there any particular SDGs that directly relate to your work or what you do every day as a team?
If you work in the education sector you might find that the most suitable SDG to be SDG 4: Quality Education, but you might also want to explore the impacts you have on other Goals. This can be a great opportunity for your company to expand market reach and generate positive impact.
- Have you encountered problems throughout your work that relate to any of the SDGs?
For example, if your company has a production line that uses a specific kind of machinery that is obsolete and inefficient, this might be the opportunity to explore new affordable and clean energy, in alignment with SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy.
- Understanding your workplace practices and processes, is there a way your work could meaningfully approach any of the SDGs?
In relation to the regional context:
- Is your country, region, or city facing a challenge explicitly outlined in any of the 17 SDGs?
In connection with stakeholder(s) perspective:
- Do any of the SDGs connect with you on a level that motivates impactful action?
- Do you have a direct connection to any of the challenges outlined in the SDGs?
- Are any of the company stakeholders directly connected to one or more SDG?
In connection to company processes:
- Are there any SDGs impacted by the production processes handled internally by the company?
In connection to company mission and vision:
- Are any of the SDGs related to company objectives, as described in the guiding mission/vision statements?
Formulate
Once you have established which SDG(s) to focus on, the next step will be investigating and formulating the problem that will become the core of your design process and your project.
Having all the information collected from the previous steps, the task will be to formulate the design problem by responding to six series of questions which will allow for a first investigation and analysis of the problem. As you go on in the process of developing your project, we encourage you to revisit these questions. It is important to remember that these processes work as an iterative system, which requires consistent updating as new considerations arise.
What? Definition
- What is the problem?
- Which impacts identified in the matrix that are related to the chosen SDG will you work on?
Who? Subjects
- Who is being affected by the problem? And at what level (directly or indirectly)?
- Who is involved in the problem? Who are the relevant stakeholders?
When? Moments
- In which moment(s) or situation(s) is the problem present?
Why? Reasons
- Why is this happening?
- What are the reasons behind this issue?
Where? Context
- Where is this problem happening?
- What are the contexts where you see this problem?
- What is the scale of the situation?
- What environments are being affected by this problem?
How? Ways
- How is this problem being reflected?
- What are the consequences of this situation?
Structure
At this point, the team should have zeroed in on a sustainability issue, which will allow for the development of an impactful project. The objective is now to structure the design process according to the different factors related to the issue. The team has two paths:
- Adapt the Company’s Design Process: The team should take the design process identified in the first step and do a thorough review of every component and adapt them to the needs of the new problem.
- Structure a New Design Process: The team should research potential methodologies that can respond to the needs of the problem. In this scenario, the team will take components of multiple methodologies and adapt them into one that fits the needs of the project. We recommend you explore the different resources available on our site.
Next are a series of questions that can help you and your team in the structuring process.
Focus
- Is the focus that we have been using the right one for this problem?
- Are there any new upgrades available in terms of sustainability? And how can we adopt them?
- Are there other focuses that can generate new opportunities to approach the problem?
- From a design perspective, are there new focuses that are being adopted to solve sustainability problems?
Methodology
- Which steps within the methodology of the company should we improve or add to approach this problem?
- Are there new upgrades and additions to the methodology we use that we can adopt in this project?
- Can we use different activities or tools from other sustainable methodologies or practices to find a solution that is better suited to our problem?
- Are we properly executing the different stages of the project?
- Are there any changes that could improve existing processes and help us achieve the objective of this new project?
Scale
- Is the scale defined in our process the right one to approach the problem?
- Is our analysis, investigation and application of tools consistent with the scale of our problem?
- Are we aware of the complexity and the limitations between the different actors on the geographic scale (a city in comparison with a country) and the social scale (an individual in comparison with a community) in our project?
- Do we have the pertinent tools that allow us to understand the social and geographic relationships of our project?
Actors
- Are we involving all the necessary actors related to the problem?
- Are we considering the different needs of the actors that will be influenced by our project?
- Have we identified every actor and their level of internal/external influence on the project?
- In what ways are we involving the different actors of the project in the process?
- Does our process accurately represent the heterogeneity that we find in the actors impacted by the project?
- Who are we bringing from other areas of expertise to expand our vision on the problem?
Limitations
- How are we responding to the limitations already identified to achieve results that are better suited to our project?
- Are we setting clear expectations that are reasonable and consistent with our resources and capabilities?
- What resources can be used during the design process to respond to these limitations?
- How can the team and the process adapt itself to these limitations?
We recommend exploring different resources from our site and encourage external research to better structure and develop your project. There is no unique solution or methodology that could respond to every need or project, but rather a constantly changing system that needs to adapt to every circumstance.
Monitoring and keeping a record of the process will allow you to respond in an appropriate way to the different scenarios and be able to improve in future iterations. Do not forget to find support in different areas of knowledge and work to expand the points of view on the problem and increase your chances of success.
Evaluate
As with any process, it is important to evaluate the results and compare them to initial expectations and objectives and to identify relevant weaknesses and strengths. This will enable you to approach future projects in a more efficient and sustainable way. Understanding that the nature of every project is different, methods of evaluation and monitoring are equally different, so teams are encouraged to seek out diverse resources.
Approach 2: Starting a New Project
This approach is designed to help those who wish to tackle problems related to the SDGs through design.. This tool also strives to challenge the idea that sustainability can only be achieved through existing strategies, like recycling packages and the use of different materials.
Process
- Analyze: Investigate and understand the nature of the SDGs, their targets and the specific aspects within each one.
- Define: Choose and select one SDG to work on and frame your project within the aspects and targets that you want to focus on.
- Formulate: Investigate and define the problem or question you are trying to answer and the aspects of your practices that you are trying to change.
- Structure: Structure your design process according to the needs and aspects of your problem.
- Evaluate: Analyze the results of your project and identify new impacts, both negative and positive.
Analyze
As you enter in this process of finding opportunities to develop sustainable projects focused on any of the 17 SDGs, the first step is to understand the nature of these objectives and where they came from. We first recommend visiting the United Nations website dedicated to the SDGs for background on the goals and their specific targets. We then suggest exploring our take on the SDGs, to see how they connect with the specific aspects of the four areas of sustainability.
In addition, you and your team should identify how the SDGs relate to you on a professional and personal level – in your house, your neighborhood, your city or your country. This will help you have a clear motivation for your design process.
Define
This step consists of selecting the SDG you and your team want to focus on, which will ultimately form the basis for identifying the problem to be addressed through your sustainable project. To do so, the team needs to consider relevant questions either to the expertise in your commercial and professional activity or the context you work on.There are multiple global targets delineated by the 17 SDGs that, according to the United Nations, represent the main sustainable objectives for 2030. Each of these objectives is complex due to the nature of the factors that influence them.
Three sets of questions are provided below that might help the team choose the most appropriate SDG to focus on.
In connection to the teams’ work, knowledge and/or experience:
- Are there any particular SDGs that directly relate to your work or what you do every day as a team?
- Can your work, knowledge or expertise be applied to any particular SDGs to create innovative solutions?
- Are there new applications in your area of expertise that could meaningfully impact any particular SDG?
- In your line of work, have you encountered a situation that directly relates to any of the SDGs?
In relation to the regional context:
- Is your country, region, or city facing a challenge explicitly outlined in any of the 17 SDGs?
In relation to a personal situation:
- Do you personally have any situation that connects you with any of the SDGs?
- Have you worked on any organization or project that may be connected to any of the SDGs?
- Are you personally motivated to work on any of the 17 SDGs?
- Do you know people that are affected by any of the situations mentioned on the SDGs?
Formulate
Once you have established which SDG(s) to focus on, the next step will be investigating and formulating the problem that will become the core of your design process and your project.
Having all the information collected from the previous steps, the task will be to formulate the design problem by responding to six series of questions which will allow for a first investigation and analysis of the problem. As you go on in the process of developing your project, we encourage you to revisit these questions. It is important to remember that these processes work as an iterative system, which requires consistent updating as new considerations arise.
Questions
What? Definition
- What is the problem?
- Which impacts identified in the matrix that are related to the chosen SDG will you work on?
Who? Subjects
- Who is being affected by the problem? And at what level (directly or indirectly)?
- Who is involved in the problem? Who are the relevant stakeholders?
When? Moments
- In which moment(s) or situation(s) is the problem present?
Why? Reasons
- Why is this happening?
- What are the reasons behind this issue?
Where? Context
- Where is this problem happening?
- What are the contexts where you see this problem?
- What is the scale of the situation?
- What environments are being affected by this problem?
How? Ways
- How is this problem being reflected?
- What are the consequences of this situation?
Structure
The objective is now to structure your design process keeping in mind the particular factors that come with your problem. As part of this step, we recommend reviewing the different components that make part of the design process.
The team will have to carry out a more extensive investigation to assess different methodologies that respond to the needs of the project’s problem. In this scenario, the team will probably need to take elements and components of different processes and try to integrate them. Referring to our resources may be helpful in this instance.
As the structuring process will require constant research and exploration of resources, case studies, practices, and projects of a sustainable nature, we have put together a series of questions as a jumping off point.
Focus
- Can the focus of our work be used to approach the identified problem?
- Are there new practices or focuses within our sector that would help create a meaningful impact on our problem?
- What focuses are being taken to approach sustainable problems and which ones can be applied as part of our project?
- Are there multiple focuses that can work together to bring innovative solutions to the problem we are addressing?
Methodologies
- Which methodology is better suited to approach this project?
- Are any of the methodologies that the team has used suitable to bring new solutions for this problem?
- What tools can the team use from different methodologies that could help achieve project objectives?
- Which methodologies are framed within the aspects identified in our problem and can be used to solve it?
- How can we adapt current practices and existing challenges as part of our approach?
Scale
- Are we working on a scale that is realistic with the resources that we have?
- Which scale would better let the team understand the needs of the actors and context mentioned in the problem?
- Have we defined the geographic presence of our problem?
- Are we aware of the complexity and the limitations between the actors in the geographic scale (a city in comparison from a country) and the social scale (an individual in comparison from a community) vis a vis our project?
Actors
- Are we involving every actor that is affected by our problem?
- Are we considering the different needs of the actors of the project?
- Have we identified the actors and their level of internal/external influence?
- How are we involving the different actors in the design process?
- Does our process represent the diverse nature of the different actors impacted by our project?
Limitations
- Have we identified our internal and external limitations?
- How many resources do we have available to respond to the needs of our project?
- How can we adapt our team and process to the external limitations of the project?
- Have we measured our expectations against relevant limitations?
- How is our methodology limited and how can we respond to that?
We recommend exploring different resources from our site and encourage external research to better structure and develop your project. There is no unique solution or methodology that could respond to every need or project, but rather a constantly changing system that needs to adapt to every circumstance.
Monitoring and keeping a record of the process will allow you to respond in an appropriate way to the different scenarios and be able to improve in future iterations. Do not forget to find support in different areas of knowledge and work to expand the points of view on the problem and increase your chances of success.
Evaluate
As with any process, it is important to evaluate the results and compare them to initial expectations and objectives and to identify relevant weaknesses and strengths. This will allow you to approach future projects in a more efficient, sustainable way.
Do you have or know of a resource that would
make a great addition to our database?