Moving from a Product-Based Economy to a Service-Based Economy for a More Sustainable Future

Traditionally, economic growth and prosperity have been linked with the availability, production and distribution of tangible goods as well as the ability of consumers to acquire such goods. Early evidence regarding this connection dates back to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776), in which any activity not resulting in the production of a tangible good is characterized as unproductive of any value." Since then, this coupling of economic value and material production has been prevalent in both developed and developing economies throughout the world. One unintended consequence of this coupling has been the exponential increase in the amount of solid waste being generated. The reason is that any production and consumption of material goods eventually generates the equivalent amount of (or even more) waste. Exacerbating this problem is the fact that, with today's manufacturing and supply chain management technologies, it has become cheaper to dispose and replace most products rather than to repair and reuse them. This has given rise to what some call a disposable society." To put things in perspective: In 2012 households in the U.K. generated approximately 22 thousand tons of waste, which amounted to 411 kg of waste generated per person (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, 2015). During the same time period, households in the U.S. generated 251 million tons of waste, which is equivalent to a person generating approximately 2 kg of waste every day (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2012). Out of these 251 million tons of total waste generated, approximately 20% of the discarded items were categorized as durable goods. The disposal of durable goods is particularly worrisome because they are typically produced using material from non- renewable resources such as iron, minerals, and petroleum-based raw materials

Thinking with a New Purpose: Lessons Learned from Teaching Design Thinking Skills to Creative Technology Students

This paper reports on the insights gained from introducing design thinking into the final year of a UK university course where students created positive behavior change interventions. The rationale for the course design and teaching process are outlined, with a focus on design as engineering versus innovation process. The students took a design thinking journey using Stanford University d.school's 5-step approach of Empathize-Define-Ideate-Prototype-Test, and their journey is described in detail. We found that at first students found the Design Thinking approach counter-intuitive and confusing, yet throughout the process they recognized the strengths and opportunities it offers. On the whole, students reflected positively on their learning and on their re-evaluation of the role of a (service) designer. Lessons learned from a teaching point of view are also outlined, the most poignant being the realization that it was necessary to 'un-teach' design practices students had come to take for granted, in particular the view of design as a self-inspired, linear and carefully managed process

Systemically Administered TLR7/8 Agonist and Antigen-Conjugated Nanogels Govern Immune Responses against Tumors

[Image: see text] The generation of specific humoral and cellular immune responses plays a pivotal role in the development of effective vaccines against tumors. Especially the presence of antigen-specific, cytotoxic T cells influences the outcome of therapeutic cancer vaccinations. Different strategies, ranging from delivering antigen-encoding mRNAs to peptides or full antigens, are accessible but often suffer from insufficient immunogenicity and require immune-boosting adjuvants as well as carrier platforms to ensure stability and adequate retention. Here, we introduce a pH-responsive nanogel platform as a two-component antitumor vaccine that is safe for intravenous application and elicits robust immune responses in vitro and in vivo. The underlying chemical design allows for straightforward covalent attachment of a model antigen (ovalbumin) and an immune adjuvant (imidazoquinoline-type TLR7/8 agonist) onto the same nanocarrier system. In addition to eliciting antigen-specific T and B cell responses that outperform mixtures of individual components, our two-component nanovaccine leads in prophylactic and therapeutic studies to an antigen-specific growth reduction of different tumors expressing ovalbumin intracellularly or on their surface. Regarding the versatile opportunities for functionalization, our nanogels are promising for the development of highly customized and potent nanovaccines

An Integrative Design Framework for New Service Development

Service innovation is focused on customer value creation. At its core, customer-centric service innovation in an increasingly digital world is technology-enabled, human-centered, and process-oriented. This requires a cross-disciplinary, holistic approach to new service design and development (NSD). This paper proposes a new service strategy-aligned integrative design framework for NSD. It correlates the underlying theories and principles of disparate but interrelated aspects of service design thinking: service strategy, concept, design, experience and architecture into a coherent framework for NSD, consistent with the service brand value. Application of the framework to NSD is envisioned to be iterative and holistic, accentuated on continuous organizational and customer learning. The preliminary framework's efficacy is illustrated using a simplified telecom case example. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014

Redefining innovation processes: The digital designers at work

As design in digital innovation has become a thing, we highlight the inconclusive concepts that describe design activity in innovation processes. Proposing an alternative theoretical lens - a sociomaterial practice lens - we claim that this view can reveal the contribution of digital designers to the work of innovation. This paper draws on a research study with digital designers in the UK. At the same time as we begin to reconceptualise the ways digital design activity can be described, we also illustrate a theoretical framework based on 1) action and knowing as ordered by collectively produced objects, 2) sociomateriality and the configuration of human bodies and materials in action, 3) the co-emergence of objects and sociomaterial configurations where each is the condition of the other. This alternative way of looking at design activity may pose some challenges to the theoretical traditions in the field. We however believe that it contains immense potential too

Scenario Analysis as a Tool for Informing the Design of Behaviour Change Interventions

This article presents the design process behind the specification of a behaviour change intervention method to promote energy saving. The amount of energy used for food preparation is highly influenced by people’s behaviours. A user-centred design approach based on scenario analysis was applied to provide understanding of context of use and specification of user requirements. This knowledge was applied to the design of behaviour change interventions to motivate sustainable behaviours