How likely would you recommend living on Earth to a friend or colleague?
Housing company energy renovations reduce Helsinki’s carbon emissions. Image: Jussi Rekiaro
By developing the customer experience and effectiveness of energy advisory services we promote the city's sustainability goals. Service design has much to offer in the sustainability transition.
I have studied sustainable development and service design and currently work as a service designer in the Energy Renaissance Team of Helsinki City's Building Control. Our fantastic team of experts helps Helsinki's housing companies improve energy efficiency and adopt renewable energy.
Although "renaissance" is a beautiful term, it's not easily understandable as the name of our service to our customers, the housing cooperatives. Together with the team, we first developed a comprehensible name for our service: Housing company energy advisory.
While studying design, I often focused on developing service concepts and prototypes. In my current role in developing energy counseling for housing cooperatives, I am constantly working hands-on towards improving the service's customer experience and contributing to Helsinki's carbon neutrality. Our service is so young that it requires continuous practical implementation, refining, and adoption of new methods and tools.
Sustainability Perspective in Housing company energy advisory
I consider myself lucky because in my role, combining service design and sustainability work has been straightforward: From Helsinki's perspective, our service's primary goal is to reduce Helsinki's emissions. This is achieved when our service's customer experience and impact are as good as possible, and housing cooperatives improve their energy efficiency.
The basic principles of service design are highly beneficial for achieving our shared goal.
Energy use and energy prices have complex network effects in housing cooperatives and society. My education in sustainability themes has been useful in my work, as we've begun to consider our service's intersections with social justice, including the unequal impacts of energy projects in different areas and housing cooperatives. Therefore, we are now developing energy counseling especially to combat regional inequality.
Bringing a Sustainability Perspective to Service Design
In my opinion, service design is a user-centered development approach that considers users' needs and desires in the short term. While service design identifies various actors in, for example, shaping the service experience, the lens for sustainability themes and sustainability work is much broader, and the timescale is usually much longer. However, this does not mean that service design methods cannot be adapted for sustainability work.
If we wanted to develop climate change mitigation or adaptation, for instance, we could explore what the user experience of our climate is like. I believe that globally it is deteriorating, and simply asking "would you recommend?" won't help. We could also inquire about how the ecosystem services provided by our planet are changing as a result of the climate crisis. Essentially, we are designing the ecosystem services of our planet almost accidentally.
Deepening Sustainability Thinking in Service Design
Sustainability themes can indeed add considerable value to service design work. At least personally, I have gained a lot from assessing our service's systemic impacts and developing the service to stop regional disparities.
Service design methods are often very human-centered, but from a sustainability perspective, we should also ask how long-term and whose perspectives are being considered.
Ultimately, I think it would be best for city dwellers if future generations had the same opportunities to live on our one planet. What would a stakeholder analysis look like if it included future generations, other species, or a customer journey that spanned three different generations?
Services Have Their Impacts
The truth is, every service has its impacts on responsibility and sustainability, whether social, economic, or ecological. However, it's worth remembering that social and economic impacts are ultimately subordinate to ecological sustainability because without a functional planet, social and economic matters are entirely impossible.
At their best, city services can alleviate regional inequality, improve residents' well-being, and address the climate crisis.
This is why it's important for service designers and service implementers to have an understanding of sustainability issues. In the public sector, promoting these issues seems natural to me. Is there a better motivator for our work than a better future for all of humanity? I would like to continue recommending this life on Earth to my friends and colleagues.
This blog was orginally published in Finnish on Helsinki Design -website. Transalation by ChatGPT. Find the orginal here