M. Carolina Escobar-Tello

Happiness as a harmonising path for bringing higher education towards sustainability

This paper is a reflection of an innovative project that complements existing higher education for sustainable development (HESD) approaches within universities by providing an alternative path to embed sustainable lifestyles within the student population. It presents the SLEUTH project; an initiative born out of the need to reduce energy consumption of students at university but that, due to its systemic design, transforms and goes beyond purely energy reduction and brings Happiness as an approach to build sustainable lifestyles. This is the distinct feature of this initiative, proposing it as adding value to existing HESD approaches. The paper describes and discusses the collaborative building process, implementation and results in detail. The experiences gathered during the project are used and analysed through ‘participant observation’, ‘documents’, ‘questionnaires’ and ‘theme-ing coding’ techniques as a means to understand the richness and diversity of the data resulting from a combination of formal and informal learning settings. Through empirical evidence, this analysis presents ‘real life’ evidence to suggest, firstly the initiative’s design success, its impact on energy consumption and contribution to happiness and sustainable lifestyles. Secondly, a successful example for the contribution to existing HESD frameworks that move away from indoctrination and instead leans towards pro-activeness, self-organisation and voluntary collective action.

Crafting Sustainable Futures. The Value of the Service Designer in Activating Meaningful Social Innovation from within Textile Artisan Communities

Abstract In order to tackle complex sustainability challenges, top-down one-size-fits-all services and strategies do not always effectively address the diverse needs of local communities. It is increasingly recognised that multi-disciplinary stakeholders need to draw on their locally situated knowledge and cooperate towards achieving a social aim. With this in mind, and moving beyond the designer’s ‘parachuting’ into projects that do not grow or develop, this paper explores how the service designer can contribute to activate meaningful routes for the transition of textile artisan communities towards sustainable futures. This paper proposes a service design framework for better understanding local contexts, making sense of visions for the future and reframing them into meaningful actionable realities. For the purpose of this paper, the theory is here presented through its application to a community of Nottingham lace artisans, chosen as unit of analysis for this participatory case study research.

A Design Framework to Build Sustainable Societies: Using Happiness as Leverage

Abstract Increasingly, design is being forced to re-examine the role it plays in the happiness of people and the sustainability of society. This paper proposes the ‘Design for Happiness’ Framework as an approach to address this and it is illustrated through a design study. The design methods, process and characteristics of products and services capable of contributing in a positive and holistic way to these issues are discussed. The findings demonstrate that the framework encourages the reinterpretation of the relationship between products, services, and users; approaching design from a new perspective where the characteristics of what is meaningful for people sits at its core. The results are innovative systemic designs with high potential to contribute to happier sustainable societies.