The New European Bauhaus and the circular economy
展示圆形设计潜力的机会
大公司正在利用循环设计来改变其业务。这就是宜家和DS Smith这样做的方式。
ByAlice Bodreau, Strategic Partners manager, Ellen MacArthur Foundation 上2021年7月15日
Over the past decade, design has been recognised as a force for change by organisations large and small. From creating innovative products to launching disruptive business models or transforming entire companies,design methodologies have been embraced to tackle corporations’ strategic challengesand a user-centric approach has been recognised to deliver results.
但是为用户设计还不够。今天的组织面临越来越多的期望。他们必须继续提供出色的用户体验,并保持相关性和创新性,同时也认识到他们在全球挑战中的作用,包括气候变化和生物多样性损失。这是一个艰巨的任务,传统的以用户为中心的设计实践是限制组织解决这一切的能力。
This is why leading organisations, fully recognising their impact and willing to transform themselves to become planet positive, are embracingcircular design: the practice of applying circular economy principles throughout the design process. This approach employs systems thinking to address some of the biggest interconnected challenges we are facing today. Circular designers adopt a mindset based on the three circular economy principles: to eliminate waste and pollution, to keep products and materials in use, and to regenerate natural systems.
Once organisations have identified circular economy as a useful framework to help meet their goals, such as achieving business success while tackling climate change, the question remains: how to put it into practice?
People who work at the design stage of a product or service — whether they actually have the word ‘designer’ in their job title or not — work by definition upstream in companies’ operations. Their decisions can impact the whole organisation’s operations and supply chain. That is the case for a company like IKEA where designers’ decisions about the product range will impact material sourcing, production, sales, etc. For a B2B company like DS Smith, a cardboard packaging company, designers are also in direct connection with their customers. They are on the front line where they hear their customers’ concerns about the environmental impact of packaging and receive increasingly demanding and sometimes contradictory specifications.Equipping the people who design with a toolto navigate these complex discussions became a priority.
跟随艾伦·麦克阿瑟基亚博ag意甲赞助商金会的亚博体彩买球苹果版圆形设计指南, published in partnership with IDEO in 2017, corporations are looking to create their own version, to address their own design challenges. To do so, there is first a period of learning, when the teams paving the way to a company’s transformation need to absorb the circular economy framework and apply it to their own supply chain, material flow, and design practice.
Alan Potts, Design and Innovation Director at DS Smith, explains, “We started with understanding the theory of the circular economy, but then needed to address the practicalities — how designers can support our customers with the transition in day-to-day design. That was how we started off formulating the Circular Design Principles.” The output of that process is the circular design guidelines, a framework and a set of protocols that will guide the design team’s work to become circular.
Because circular design is a new discipline and there are a lot of unknowns and many solutions to be explored, creating circular design guidelines is an iterative process. IKEA, for example, has now deployed its third version. Hanna Ahlberg, Project Leader Circular IKEA at Inter IKEA Group, explains, “In the very beginning, we started with a circular design guide that was, in hindsight, more or less a simplified description of circular attributes for a product. It was very important in creating the needed mind shift to move us from ‘this is how we design products’ thinking to ‘this is how we design circular products’ thinking. But the first guide created many challenges. It was full of high-level ideals but was incredibly difficult to translate into measurable solutions for circular design.”
Circular design guidelines are meant to be refined over time, in line with the organisation’s circular economy maturity. Indeed, implementation of circular design guidelines should create a new design mindset and open new ways of working. As every designer knows, it is by doing and testing that you learn and improve your practice. The same goes for circular design. In the first version of IKEA’s circular design guidelines, for example, one of the principles was to “design for assembly and disassembly”. This made sense in the context of IKEA’s transformation journey, when they needed to think beyond the traditional life cycle of a product. But once IKEA designers started to think about the next phases of the product’s life and specifically how to prolong the life of the product through repair, upgrading, moving, adapting, and so on, they realised that the key action to make things last was the ability to re-assemble.
“This was kind of an ‘aha’ moment for us,” says Ahlberg. “We know how to design for assembly. We are the ones who were the originators of putting things into a flat box and making it possible for customers to assemble things at home themselves. The key to the new circular world turns out to be enabling everyone to take things apart, move them, repair them, and live with them through changing life for as long as possible. So, the new principle is ‘design for disassembly and reassembly’.” And today, customers can see the output of the first step of that process by accessing disassembly guidelines.
Of course, the implementation of circular design guidelines takes time and requires training. Along with its circular design guidelines, DS Smith created its own circular design training. First, frontrunners in the design team led this journey. Then, when DS Smith launched its guidelines, 700 designers embarked on a six-month training process. Shaun Stamford, Customer Value Team Manager at DS Smith, highlights why this step is crucial and why the training needs to resonate individually for people to take actions: “One statement from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation that resonates most with me is that ‘waste and pollution are not accidents, but the consequences of decisions made at the design stage, where around 80% of the environmental impacts are determined’. As creative designers, and good stewards, we are now tasked with finding innovative ways to reuse or repurpose and recycle our packaging solution.”
In the process of implementing its circular design guidelines, IKEA assessed its 10,000 products on offer today. The assessment created a baseline understanding of where they stand today versus their circular economy ambition. The assessment also helped IKEA to further their understanding of what constitutes a circular product and what directions to take to increase the circularity of the product range. Simon Skoog, project leader at IKEA, says, “We clearly see that products made of fewer materials that can be separated easily are primed for circular flows. We also see that standardisation in types of fittings, finishes, and sizes, greatly aids the circular potential of a product.”
改变现状并破坏了数十年的线性业务优化并不是一个顺利的过程。第一步是创建买入 - 循环设计指南的第一个推出是与各个团队,潜在客户和赞助商互动的机会,并评估他们对循环经济和偏好的理解。亚博足球分析这将告知随后的指南培训和实施。宜家和DS Smith都发现,循环经济几乎没有推翻,这是其设计团队变革的框架。亚博足球分析挑战来自于清楚地了解循环经济如何应用于其组织以及当前的设计实践:如何回答实际的日常设计问题。亚博足球分析这加剧了设计团队和迭代循环设计指南的反馈循环的需求,这些指南会随着时间的流逝而改善并变得更加精确。与组织内的所有其他转型策略一样,找到正确的速度是关键。
最后,循环设计指南工具to accompany an organisation — and the designers within it — in a transition to a more circular approach to business. For DS Smith, it means empowering designers to challenge themselves and their customers in how they can deliver packaging solutions with a circular economy mindset. It reinforces the role of designers as advisors to their customers to help them navigate demanding requirements and environmental impact. For IKEA, it has helped the company deepen its understanding of the circular economy with the ambition to become planet-positive by 2030. Exploring design for reuse, refurbishment, remanufacture, or recycling has led IKEA to think about what else needs to be implemented so that these actions are — in practice — taken. This means exploring new business models and systems that actively encourage these practices. In the transition to a circular economy, much remains to be invented, making circular design guidelines valuable supporting tools for businesses.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation works to accelerate the transition to a circular economy. We develop and promote the idea of a circular economy, and work with business, academia, policymakers, and institutions to mobilise systems solutions at scale, globally.
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