Designing sustainable services with the ECO-Service design method: Bridging user experience with environmental performance

Abstract Eco-design is focused on incorporating environmental criteria early in the design process to reduce the environmental impacts of new products. However, while services now represent the largest share of the world’s economy, the incorporation of environmental sustainability in the design of new services is very limited. This research proposes the ECO-Service Design (ECO-SD) method that integrates eco-design and service design to conceptualize new environmentally sustainable services. The ECO-SD method bridges environmental criteria from eco-design with the human-centred approach of service design, to foster the environmental sustainability of new services, while offering a desirable user experience. To this end, this method encompasses four stages: service exploration, to understand the service context and how users interact with it; service visualization, to visually identify the barriers to environmental performance and user experience during service provision; service ideation, to conceptualize a new service that overcomes the identified barriers; and service assessment, to understand the changes in environmental sustainability and user experience of the newly designed service. The application of the ECO-SD method to two individual shared transport services shows how it enables integrated identification of opportunities to overcome environmental and user experience barriers in the existing services.