PSS are often celebrated for their potential to reduce environmental impacts by diminishing resource consumption, raw material extraction and waste generation. By transitioning from to selling the benefits of a product rather than the actual product, some claim that companies are naturally eager to design for longevity, repair, recycling and remanufacturing - all of which entail improved overall environmental performance. Yet, PSS solutions do not always render such sustainability ‘gains’. For instance, many have observed that, when placed in a Product-as-a-Service business, products tend to last much less than their ‘one-sale’ counterpart, e.g. due to misuse and vandalism. Take-back systems have also been observed not to work as expected, often because the value of returning the hardware to the provider is not clear to the user.
The main goal of this workshop is to investigate the issue of how to ‘intentionally design’ PSS in a way to promote responsible consumption and resource preserving behaviours among consumers – two aspects that are discussed today by the research community as being the most significant contributors to sustainable development. The workshop targets both senior researchers and young investigators, featuring a mix of activities in a plenary session and in smaller groups. The workshop will kick-off with a keynote reviewing the concept of ‘responsible consumption’, showing examples of unsustainable PSS, followed up by a panel discussion on how PSS design activities are seen to affect consumer behaviour (alternatively, on how PSS can be designed to affect consumer behaviour and to provide consumer-led experiences that will foster responsible consumption with active engagement). Participants will be then divided in smaller groups – and provided with prototypical PSS ‘cases’ – to discuss more in detail how Product-Service Systems shall be ‘intentionally designed’ to foster responsible consumption.
The workshop is designed so that it will be possible to conduct a hybrid event, with participants being co-located and joining remotely at the same time. The room shall be equipped with a projector as well as movable furniture and whiteboards. A digital workspace for visual collaboration (e.g., mural.co) will enable the break-out discussion among the online participants. An interactive platform such as Mentimeter.com will be used to gather the participants’ feedback during the session. The results of the workshop will be summarized in form of a short white paper, as well as in form of a video that will be shared on YouTube and on the SIG webpage (pss.designsociety.com).
When: May 23rd 2022
Where: ONLINE, see DESIGN'22 instructions to join
Host: Design of Product-Service Systems SIG
Chairs: Prof. Marco Bertoni (Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden), Prof. Yong Se Kim (Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea)