In the following article I want to focus especially on the area of ecological sustainability and sustainability is used synonymously for economic sustainability.

Sustainability has received a lot of attention in recent years and the role of sustainability in business and design is a heavily discussed topic. While I certainly agree that it is the right thing to follow principles that ensure economic, social and ecological sustainability, I am less convinced about the value “sustainable products” offer to customers.

But if sustainability doesn’t offer value, why is there a need for electronic cars? And why do consumers pay organizations to offset their carbon footprint? I think this has nothing to do with the value that “sustainability” offers but is instead motivated by other reasons. I would like to discuss a few observations that I have made and the consequences these observations have for marketers.

In search of substitutes

The recent interest in electric cars is not driven by an increased demand for sustainable, electric cars but actually because of souring prices for oil. Consumers are looking for cars that use something else than oil and found it in hybrid and electric cars.

The same holds true for other products where paper packaging is used instead of plastic packaging as well as the so called cradle-to-cradle design, where you focus on designing your products with the whole product lifecycle (including  recycling) in mind.

All these decisions are driven by consumers (and designers) who are looking for substitutes to reduce the high costs of current solutions.

Your peace of mind

Another driver for an increased demand for sustainable products is guilt. It has become en vogue to look down on people who drive a SUV and to feel guilty whenever you do something that is not environmentally friendly. This has gone so far that people have started not only to calculate their carbon footprint, but also pay someone to offset their carbon footprint through investments in economically friendly initiatives.

Whenever I book a flight on a German travel site it induces guilt by telling me how much carbon dioxide I will create with this flight. Luckily I have an option to pay someone to make up for my environmentally unfriendliness which so far I have chosen not to use due to my personal concerns about this “donation schemes”. These donation systems are already the reason for official warnings from the U.S. government about scams to offset your carbon footprint but this is whole different story.

Certainly there is nothing wrong with using guilt to stimulate a certain consumer behavior and make people buy your products. Yet at the end of the day, it is guilt and the corresponding need for having “peace of mind” that is driving the decision of consumers and not the intrinsic need for a “sustainable product”.

Sustainability becomes a hygienic factor, but not a differentiating factor

If sustainability does not provide any (functional) value to consumers itself, one might ask why more and more companies are changing their marketing message to incorporate aspects of sustainability? There are certain interest groups that use the current environment to push their interest and their messages and they pick rather popular targets. Apple has created a special section on its homepage about the ecological aspects of its products as a result of a public criticism from Greenpeace in 2006 about toxic materials in its products.

This is also the reason that it becomes a necessity for companies in the current zeitgeist to ensure and communicate all aspects of their sustainability initiatives in order to prevent to become a publicly criticized for unsustainable practices. But just when every product and company is “sustainable”, sustainability itself becomes a commodity, a hygienic factor and is not a differentiating factor anymore.

The role of sustainability to create customer value

With sustainability not being a differentiator itself and due to the lack of customer value that is created through sustainability, one might ask what the role of sustainability can be in product and service design? From a theoretical perspective the task is to turn the value of sustainability from a symbolic, emotional value created by ecological aspects into functional value of the core product. IDEO’s Diego Rodriguez calls it “turning green into red”, designing green cars so they full of passion and delight.

I have written about the Tesla Roadster, a fully electric car that is a great example about this. Tesla has continued this “process of turning green into red” with their latest car, the Tesla S Sedan, which has received praise all over the media for it’s revolutionary design that doesn’t reflect that the car is an electric car. Here is one picture, you can find more pictures online.

 

The implications for your business?

So is design for sustainability the wrong approach? Not, it isn’t and designers and engineers should indeed focus on it. But one has to remember that the value proposition to the customer is essential and business should not focus on product characteristics that leave the customer’s needs and motivation out of the equation. A “sustainable product” alone doesn’t solve a customer problem, except that it make him feel less guilty and could help him save costs.

If businesses are serious about designing sustainable products, they need to translate sustainability into features that offer customer value and are not just providing peace of mind. And if you are designing a substitute product, then position it as substitute product and help consumer safe money.

The goal should be to design a product that sells not because consumers want a sustainable product, but because consumers want the product and don’t care that it is sustainable. Only then we have achieved a true change towards an ecologically sustainable society.

Images courtesy of [xotoko], [vgm8383] and Jalopnik

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"Green" products face the challenge that while they are friendly to the environment they usually lack the aesthetics to attract a wide-group of buyers that are not primarily interested in the green aspects of the product.

The challenge is to make "green", environmentally friendly products attractive by designing them so that customers can develop passion and delight for these products.

IDEO partner Diego Rodriguez, describes this challenge of turning green into red in an article in the NZZ Folio (weekly magazine of the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the article asked where the next millionaires will come from).

What I find most dazzling these days are people working to change environmentally-focused products from being merely "green" to being what I like to call "red" as well.

Too many green products, such as the Prius hybrid, are the modern-day equivalent of a hairshirt. While undoubtedly morally and ethically rewarding to own, they lack a certain je ne sais quoi when it comes to providing the kind of visceral delights which bring pleasure to our monkey brains. Something red, on the other hand, feels more like a Ferrari, overflowing with wonderful sounds, scents and physical sensations which forge the kind of emotional connections that keep you coming back for more.

[...]

Red is about passion and delight, and we need more of it in our green products if they’re going to pull people away from existing, non-green solutions. Emotional connections will be, and always have been, worth millions.

One great example of "turning green into red" is the Tesla Roadster, a fully electronic sports car produced by Tesla Motors.

Yet a nice picture is not enough to get an understanding if an electronic car can really come up with the expectations that customers put into a sportscar – no matter whether it is powered by gasoline or by electricity.

Taking an actual test drive might be difficult because there are still not that many cars around, still Jason Calacanis, founder of Weblogs Inc., took the Tesla on a test drive and recorded the whole experience. See for yourself:

 

After watching this video I was impressed: because I just saw a real example of turning green into red. The experience about doing something good for the environment is one part, but building an experience that is "green" and improves your status is a totally new experience.

Image courtesy of dreamymo

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