On the adoption of design methods: Accelerating the sustainability transformation in manufacturing industry

Licentiate thesis, 2024

The manufacturing industry requires a rapid shift and change of practices to align with sustainable production and consumption. This, together with emerging technologies, upcoming legislation, and changing market trends push for a so-called sustainability transformation. The notion of sustainable design practices has been identified and highlighted as a crucial enabler to succeed in such a transformation. At the same time, design researchers develop design methods that can support organizations to adopt sustainable design practices and accelerate such a transformation. However, the industrial adoption of such design methods is challenging, and their use remains under-utilized.

Research in the design domain tends to study this issue from a process and methodological perspective, often resulting in 'pragmatic' proposals on how developed design methods can be modified and adapted, or 'improved', to meet the needs of practitioners. Such an approach, however, often fails to appropriately consider organizational and human-behavioral aspects to change, which in turn have been more studied in the management research domain. This opens up for research considering these three perspectives simultaneously when studying the adoption of design methods. Qualitative empirical data focused on the adoption of sustainable design practices using design methods was therefore collected, using participatory observation in several case studies with actors from the manufacturing industry. Three literature studies complemented the empirical data collection to understand the topic further.

This thesis identifies five key barriers to the adoption of sustainable design practices using design methods: (i) The prescriptive nature of design methods combined with the influence of human-behavioral aspects; (ii) The contextual complexity of design method adoption; (iii) A paradigm of product design that persists in the manufacturing industry; (iv) The presence of cognitive biases that risk of leading to a state of pseudo-sustainability; (v) Insufficient information and data capabilities. Two new concepts were also introduced, referred to as the dualism of design methods, and the situational design problem. These two concepts clarify the role of design methods and explain the barriers to adoption. Finally, pathways for future research to address these key barriers were proposed, including approaches to needs driven and contextually adapted adoption, and Sustainable design thinking.