Synthesizing Sustainability Considerations through Educational Interventions

Abstract

This study addresses the synthesis of sustainability-related considerations in packaging design curricula by means of educational interventions. The core of the research revolves around an educational module for students in packaging design and development. This research targets the current late-stage integration of sustainability considerations in product-packaging development processes. The combination of the front-end involvement of sustainability considerations with the focus on educational interventions in product-packaging development is lacking in currently available research. The educational interventions which are tested in representative educational environments—as presented in this article—address the required focus on the balance in decisions and criteria, trade-offs, and team dynamics within multidisciplinary product-packaging development teams. The educational framework targets five perspectives of packaging sustainability: (1) managerial decision making, (2) life cycle assessment (LCA), (3) consumer purchase behavior, (4) recycling efficiency and effectiveness, and (5) plastic recycling chain redesign. This research’s main contribution is bridging the gap between implementing new scientific insights in the field of sustainable packaging from various perspectives, and practicing by applying the relevant knowledge in this field, by means of a design synthesis approach. This research derives findings from both an extensive introspective analysis and expert analysis of the results of the educational module.

1. Introduction

As the urgency of tackling climate change continues to grow, sustainability remains a hot topic. In recent years, the concept of sustainability has developed from a theoretical definition provided by the well-known Brundtland report [1], to becoming a worldwide known and applied approach to increasing awareness of environmental impact at the economic, social, and environmental levels [2]. In various decision-making processes—within academia, policy making, business organizations, and NGOs—the focus on the integration of considerations related to sustainable development is expanding. Currently, in decision-making processes, these considerations mainly take place at the strategic level rather than the operational level. The field of sustainability is still developing in this direction; therefore, we can speak of a misalignment between the strategic and the operational levels [3]. In the field of packaging, sustainability is also high on the agenda. The awareness of impacts with respect to the environmental burden of product-packaging chains is increasing and there is an intense pressure to act urgently on the challenge of packaging waste. Across Europe, new laws and policies are being proposed to tackle this problem, from plastic bottle deposit systems [4] to phasing out non-recyclable packaging [5]. Such measures are being developed to prevent the environmental burden imposed by existing packaging. However, if we really want to address this problematic development, we need to tackle the roots of the problem, focusing on developing more sustainable product-packaging combinations. We speak of product-packaging combinations, because the packaging is in the service of the product within the complete supply chain and provides more than just the function of protecting the content, but also informing about and transporting the product [6,7,8,9].

In current product-packaging development processes, sustainability considerations are mainly tackled at the end of the design process, implementing minor changes in the product design, that lead to only negligible effects on the environmental burden. This approach is known as eco-efficiency [10]. However, recent years have shown an increased interest in continuous material cycles, in which materials can be recycled without loss of quality, like Cradle to Cradle [11,12] and the concept of the circular economy [10]. These approaches can be explained as eco-effectiveness.

Incorporation of sustainability considerations in an early stage of the product development process will be crucial to create more eco-effective product-packaging solutions. Furthermore, when implementing sustainability at an early stage, the early-stage environmental lock-in is key [3]. In other words: the probability of creating more eco-effective sustainable product-packaging combinations will be higher when we start thinking about sustainability immediately from the start of the design process, by selecting more sustainable effective measures. Incorporating sustainability at an early stage of the design process supports both existing and future designers in such a way that they regard sustainability as equally important as other disciplines such as technical constraints and marketing. Analyzing this challenge, we encountered two main problems that need to be discussed.

Currently, the integration of new scientific insights in packaging development processes regarding sustainability-related design choices remains limited, due to the inadequate applicability of theoretical knowledge in design processes [3,13,14,15]. During the product development process, sustainability considerations mainly play a relevant role at a strategic level. The impact of sustainability considerations at an operational level seems to be limited because of the cost, time to market, and technical challenges [3]. The misalignment between the strategic and operational levels is a serious problem and needs to be overcome.

The second problem we intend to address is the lack of integration among scientific insights from various perspectives of sustainability in the education field of young packaging designers. The inclusion of sustainability in education is a crucial step to stimulate the dialogue with this theme in practice. These novice designers are the packaging managers and directors of the future, and need to become aware of the fact that sustainability is an increasingly relevant part of the design process, which also relates to technical and societal constraints. However, in the current curricula development of higher education, sustainability is not always integrated in the design process in a more holistic approach [16,17]. In most cases, only one perspective regarding sustainability is implemented, and that is merely based on the traditional, science-oriented approach involving tools and methods [17]. There are knowledge-based books addressing specific topics of sustainability such as LCA or consumer behavior towards sustainability [18,19]. However, the delivery of courses that focus on a more integrative approach remains limited. Nevertheless, the structured implementation of sustainability considerations in the packaging design processes requires design teams to possess relevant and applicable knowledge on this implementation, especially focusing on the integration of dilemmas encountering during the design process [3,20,21,22]. The success of sustainable packaging development relies on both technological development and social considerations [18,22] and requires insights from all perspectives covering the complete life cycle of a product-packaging combination. During the process, novice packaging designers need to encounter and practice by applying various perspectives regarding sustainability, learning to make balanced decisions (trade-offs) to finally arrive at the best synthesis.

In this paper, we aim to bridge the gap between implementing new scientific insights in the field of sustainable packaging from various perspectives, and practicing by applying the relevant knowledge in this field. To simulate the complex interaction of various perspectives, an educational module is developed and integrated in a course of 15 ECTS taken by packaging students of Industrial Design Engineering at the University of Applied Sciences in The Hague (The Netherlands). The setup of this educational module is based on five perspectives of sustainability [23] and aims to integrate both scientific and practice-based knowledge to design more sustainable product-packaging combinations. This paper will further elaborate on both the efficacy and effectiveness of this educational module, describing the results of an extensive introspective analysis and an expert analysis of the results of the course.

The innovative approach of the educational module is the integrative aspect of the subject sustainability addressing five perspectives, with the dilemmas that often occur during such processes. Designers needs to deal with various kinds of information, such as technical-oriented information (e.g., recyclable materials, technical specifications, technical constraints about the end of life) and societally-oriented information (consumer purchase and recycling behavior regarding sustainability). These insights converge in a real-life packaging design case, using a serious gaming concept during an early stage of the design process that acts as a synthesis tool. This educational module promotes an integrative approach focusing on learning about the environmental consequences of various fields involved in packaging sustainability.

The holistic approach of the course and the tools that are offered support students in making more balanced choices to finally design a product-packaging combination that leads to synthesis of all disciplines. The term design synthesis is an important contemplation and will be explained in the next chapter.

2. Design Synthesis

The key characteristic of the educational module is the alignment of semi-related knowledge bases into one integrated entity. These knowledge perspectives cover one topic (packaging sustainability), but address these from various perspectives, ranging from behavioral considerations and managerial decision making to material-related analysis and recycling effectiveness. In order to achieve this integration and to improve the efficacy of the module as an educational intervention, we scope the development within design research. More specifically, design synthesis—following analysis-focused research steps [24,25,26,27]—is what shapes the added value of design research for the development of the integrated educational module. The notion that research that focuses on “merely” analytical reasoning will not result in the full integrated inclusion of knowledge bases into one multi-perspective educational module directs this research’s synthesis focus. Design synthesis enables the educational module to provide more added value in transferring knowledge than separate knowledge bases would, as shown in Figure 1. Furthermore, the integrative nature of the educational module enables the students to follow this design synthesis approach in their development process, and to include the combined knowledge bases as a synthesized foundation for product-packaging development.

Within the educational module, the identification and recognition of trade-offs is key. When combining the various perspectives on sustainability in packaging design, the relevance, depth, and applicability of the perspectives can be ambiguous. As a result, the balance in focus and emphasis can vary, resulting in inevitable trade-offs during the design process in which the knowledge must be integrated. In literature on sustainability in development processes, the relevance of balancing trade-offs is well-established—both within and beyond the scope of product-packaging development (e.g., Byggeth & Hochschorner (2006) [13], De Koeijer (2017) [3], Deutz et al. (2013) [28], Wever & Vogtländer (2014) [29]). Therefore, this poses a critical point within an educational module targeting sustainability-related knowledge in product-packaging development processes. For the didactic value of the educational module, tools targeting balanced trade-offs are essential.

The combination of the described synthesis-focused research towards (1) the integration of novel sustainability-related knowledge in product-packaging development education, and (2) the requirement for balancing trade-offs direct the development of educational interventions. The first intervention is a project guidance tool in the form of a design game to simulate stakeholder interrelations and decision-making in product-packaging development processes. The dashed line in Figure 1 represents the design game which acts as synthesis tool to manifest trade-off balancing between the major areas in the product development process. The second intervention is a real-life packaging design case in which the newly acquired packaging sustainability knowledge must be incorporated. Together, these interventions shape the design synthesis of the educational module. In the following sections, the setup of the educational module, and the development and application of these interventions are addressed.

3. Educational Module

This educational module builds upon insights developed in a four-year scientific research program initiated by the Netherlands Institute for Sustainable Packaging (KIDV) and the Dutch Top Institute Food and Nutrition (TIFN) to reduce the environmental burden caused by product-packaging chains in the Netherlands. The insights can be divided into five perspectives on product-packaging sustainability: (1) managerial decision making, to understand the various decision-making roles and trade-offs between development-influencing factors in sustainable product-packaging development processes; (2) life cycle assessment (LCA), measuring the tangible sustainability scores of new product-packaging designs; (3) consumer purchase behavior, addressing the perceived sustainability of product-packaging designs; (4) recycling efficiency and effectiveness, focusing on the recycling behavior of consumers, in response to packaging design factors; and (5) plastic recycling chain redesign, aiming to further align product-packaging designs with current plastic recycling chains and processes. In the research program, several universities and institutes are cooperating, based on their research expertise in relation to these perspectives. The selection of these perspectives was based on a range of stakeholder perspectives (including designers, marketers, consumers, and recyclers) to simulate a real-life situation, and the consideration of various sections of the product-packaging chain. This integrated approach towards considering the product-packaging chain as a whole, and the various stakeholders within this chain, is a relevant addition to the currently available research [30,31,32].

The main focus of the educational module is the alignment and integration of the insights derived from the research program with the students’ baseline packaging design knowledge. This alignment between theory and practice is implemented by (1) the involvement in teaching of the experts and researchers who collected and developed these insights; (2) the application of a real-life packaging design project as the common ground of development; and (3) a synthesis tool in the form of a serious game to integrate all perspectives to help designers in becoming aware of the critical decisions in the development process. The latter will support the design students during the synthesis of complex considerations in the product-packaging development process.

The setup of the course follows a project-based learning approach, in which students are encouraged to master theoretical knowledge through the active exploration of real-world challenges [16,33]. Therefore, a realistic case from a well-known company is used as the starting point to immediately apply both practical and theoretical knowledge. The taxonomy of Bloom [34] was used to structure the course by aligning learning objectives with student assessments. The main learning objective can be formulated as: after finishing the course, the student is able to explain and apply the five crucial perspectives of sustainability and is also capable of designing a packaging concept, integrating these perspectives. As also described by Bloom, this main learning objective contains the most important levels, because students need to understand the knowledge in order to remember it, they need to analyze the knowledge to apply it and finally they need to evaluate the knowledge in order to create new packaging.

The course is divided into 10 weeks where the first seven weeks were used to gain new insights regarding the five perspectives (Figure 2). Every week the students receive both scientific and practice-based knowledge about a different perspective. Parallel to the lectures the students could immediately apply the knowledge in the realistic case. The last three weeks aims at designing a sustainable packaging proposal by synthesizing all available knowledge about the different perspectives. The five perspectives were lectured by the experts in a “colstruction”, in which theoretical knowledge is alternated with small-scale practical assignments and discussions.

16 students of Industrial Design at the University of Applied Sciences in The Hague who specialized in packaging design enrolled on the course, and they were subdivided into four groups. As a final deliverable, they were requested to present their work on an A3-size poster and a short report explaining how the five perspectives influenced their design process and the resulting final design. The outcomes of the educational module can be found in Figure 3.

4. Results

4.1. Introspective Analysis

The process and the results of the educational module are assessed via two routes: an introspective analysis, and an expert analysis. The introspective analysis is an assessment conducted by all students that participated in the educational module by means of a reflective measurement on their own results. The aim of the introspective analysis is to determine if students have acquired knowledge on the different perspectives after following the educational module. The aim of the expert analysis is to measure to which degree students are able to integrate the perspectives and apply a holistic approach by means of asking experts to grade the results. The latter will be discussed in Section 4.2. This paper calls into question the ability of students to translate knowledge from multiple fields within the scope of product-packaging development into practical suggestions by reviewing packaging concepts. The targeted students are educated to understand the role of a product designer in the development of product-packaging combinations. The educational program that these students are enrolled in is oriented at applying existing knowledge to develop practical solutions for packaging designs, rather than developing new knowledge. For this reason, testing the students’ ability to convert abstract scientific insights into meaningful considerations that influence practical design choices is an essential indicator for measuring the impact of the educational module.

To determine to which degree students were able to translate knowledge derived from the educational module into sustainable design considerations for product-packaging from various knowledge bases, two analyses were conducted. The first analysis preceded the educational module and included an individual assignment whereby 16 students were instructed to design a packaging for a drink on-the-go. No limitations, nor requirements, were set for the design, but for clarity the designs had to include a brief, written explanation on their design. This first assignment was a base measurement test that aimed to capture the foreknowledge of the students. At the time of the first analysis, the students were not explicitly familiar with the five perspectives yet, but the students were aware that the educational module would concern sustainability in product-packaging development.

After the courses of the educational module were concluded, the students were asked to improve their own initial designs from the base measurement for the second analysis. For this reflective measurement the students were instructed to sort their suggestions into the five perspectives and include at least one advice per perspective. By letting the students reflect on their own designs by using sticky paper notes, we aimed to retrieve concise practical recommendations for improvements.

In an attempt to structure the quality of the provided answers, we applied a classification of learning objectives that resemble the learning goals of the course.

Table 1. Decision criteria for the classification of learning objectives and examples of answers

Classification of Learning Objective	Decision Criterium to Determine the Quality of the Answer	Example 1	Example 2	Example 3
Applying	Concrete suggestion for improvement that is assigned to the requested perspective	“Explain how to dispose. Recyclability promotion using logos on labelling.”	“Make it easy to recycle for the consumer. Communicate how to recycle and what material it is made from.”	“Clear communication is important on how it works. The sustainability aspect is unclear to the consumer.”
Understanding	Vague suggestion assigned to the requested perspective; or a concrete suggestion for an alternative perspective	“Remove label. Choose the correct materials, that are compatible with sorting. Transparent/white colors to prevent contamination.”	“Greenwashing. Make the cup green. Emphasis on the open and closure feature.”	“Use logos or images to improve recyclability.”
Remembering	Unclear suggestion, but recalled concepts or phrases that relate to the requested perspective; or vague suggestion for an alternative perspective	“Make different materials easily separable from each other.”	“Use two different materials that you can recycle in one bin.”	“For the engineers it is easy to make but for marketing it is boring.”
Not useful; no observation of an increase in knowledge perceived	No suggestion for improvement provided; or the answer does not include relevant information; or is an unclear suggestion for an alternative perspective	“Aluminum is awesome!”	“The product is already made from a single material therefore disposing of packing is simple.“	“Use paper!”

shows how we distinguished three levels of learning objectives: applying, understanding, and remembering, and determined for each level a decision criterium to determine the quality of the answer. The three levels of learning objectives, hence the chosen names, were inspired by the bottom levels within the cognitive domain of Bloom’s taxonomy for two reasons [34]. First, the categories of Bloom were also used to develop the educational module. Second, Bloom’s taxonomy provided a structure with existing defined levels and thereby a systematic way to classify answers that were brief and often inconclusive.

For the decision criteria, we separated suggestions between “concrete” (the suggestion is clear and sound), “vague” (the suggestion is lacking in detail), and “unclear” (the suggestion is confusing). In addition, we checked whether the provided answer belonged to the correct topic. Answers that did not include suitable information were put together in the category “not useful”. To reach the level of “applying”, the answer needed to be a concrete suggestion for improvement in the correct topic. Reaching “understanding” required either a concrete suggestion in the wrong topic, or a vague suggestion in the right topic. For “remembering”, a vague suggestion in the wrong topic, or an unclear suggestion in the right topic was enough. In our view, answers that reached the level of remembering or higher indicated an increase in knowledge, and answers that reached the level of understanding were considered as growth of the competence of the student to apply the acquired knowledge in practice.

As shown in Table 1, examples of answers by students, and our allocated levels are: “Make it easy to recycle for the consumer. Communicate how to recycle and what material it is made from.” (applying); “Greenwashing. Make the cup green. Emphasis on the open and closure feature.” (understanding); “For the engineers it is easy to make but for marketing it is boring.” (remembering); and “Aluminum is awesome!” (no observation of an increase in knowledge perceived).

For the base measurement, 14 out of 16 students included a total of 25 comments to their drawings. The most striking result to emerge from the data is that 13 of those 25 comments were related to life cycle analysis. Overall, the base measurement comments remained on the surface, with suggestions as for instance: “use one material”, “use less material”, or “material recyclable”. These ill-defined suggestions from the base measurement offer additional support for increasing the insight of packaging development students about sustainable design considerations.

In contrast to the base measurement, the reflective measurement included more concrete suggestions. Following our decision criteria, the total of 75 answers was distributed along the learning levels as follows: applying (13), understanding (27), remembering (23), and not useful (12). This result indicates that 63 out of 75 answers showed evidence of an increase in knowledge.

Table A1. Distribution of suggestions for improvement and comments added to the base measurement

Classification of Learning Objective	Total	Design Models	Consumer Purchasing Behavior	Plastic Recycling Chain	Life Cycle Analysis	Recycling Behavior
Applying	13	4	3	1	2	3
Understanding	27	3	5	5	8	6
Remembering	23	4	4	7	3	5
No observation of an increase in knowledge	12	4	3	2	2	1
Total	75	15	15	15	15	15
Base measurement comments	25	0	3	4	13	5

(Appendix A) shows the division of the answers amongst the subject areas. As expected, the marketing, design, and development perspective was the most difficult for students. Nonetheless, at 4 out of 15 comments, it scores the highest on the learning level applying. Figure 4 shows the division of the answers between the subject areas for the base measurement and the reflective measurement. For the reflective measurement, only the suggestions that reached the learning levels “applying” and “understanding” were counted since these answers indicated an increase in applicable knowledge, as opposed to merely remembering relevant terms. The most surprising result of the reflective measurement is that, while all answers increased in clarity compared to the base measurement, the suggestions related to life cycle analysis were not significantly better than the answers for other subject areas. This result contrasted our expectations based on the results of the base measurement and is clearly reflected in a more equal division between the subject areas as seen in the bar chart of Figure 4. We assume that this also reflects an increase in adopting a holistic view by the students, because contrary to the base measurement, students were better able to formulate concrete design choices related to all subject areas of sustainability instead of limiting themselves to life cycle analysis. Thus, this finding validates that after following the educational module, the students were better able to incorporate knowledge from multiple disciplines into design choices that increase the sustainability of packaging designs.

4.2. Expert Analysis

To test the applicability and efficacy of the educational module, it is essential to measure if all the perspectives are taken into account in the newly created product-packaging combinations. The main objective of the course, as discussed previously, will be used to test if the students succeed in this task. The designs created by the students are evaluated qualitatively by means of asking experts about the various perspectives. The scope of this expert-analysis is to evaluate if the students are capable of understanding but also applying the scientific knowledge in their designs. The five experts who lectured the students about their respective perspective were responsible for naming three experts in each of their specific working areas. In total, 15 experts were asked to evaluate the four designs, which are shown in Figure 3.

The experts had to follow a specific form using three steps to evaluate all the designs. First of all, they were asked to rate the design by assigning a grade based only on the poster. We requested the experts to first have a look at all the posters, and subsequently grade all the designs at once. The experts could justify their grade with comments. Secondly, they were asked to read the specific part of the report relevant to their specific field and assess the learning objectives of the course. Those learning objectives were specifically written in their field and divided into two levels (understanding and applying). The assessment of the learning objectives was divided into four levels, describing each level in detail. The levels are described as follows:

• Level 1—demonstrated knowledge is limited. Students show poor understanding of the material and demonstrate weak ability to form a judgement.
• Level 2—The content of the work is sufficient, but the chain of reasoning is weak. The basic requirements are fulfilled despite several shortcomings.
• Level 3—Students show good insight in the learning material and correctly applied the knowledge in their work. Nonetheless, a critical view is absent or non-convincing.
• Level 4—Demonstrated knowledge is convincing in the report and the presentation. Deliberate decisions, from a critical perspective, were made during the process and the final design.

In an assessment criteria matrix the more specific information per perspective is described (see Figure 5 and Appendix C for a full overview of all questions per perspective), where the experts are able to highlight the correct level (yellow) and add comments (pink) to explain their considerations more precisely. Again, we requested to justify why the experts selected a certain level by adding comments. Finally, they had to rank the four designs again, from best to worst, and add their final comments.

Since it is difficult for the experts to assess if a specific design succeeds or fails to meet the learning objectives, we decided to evaluate all the comments written down in the extensive evaluations of the experts. In the analysis of the comments, we searched for words and terminology that explains the quality of the results, as also described in the levels of Bloom. To say if the designs have met their main learning objectives, we will use the conscious competence model, which describes learning along two dimensions: “consciousness” and “competence” [35]. This model supports us in differentiating if students have gained knowledge (going from unconscious incompetence to conscious competence) to whether they can also use the knowledge themselves (going from conscious incompetence to conscious competence). In addition, to make the division of levels even more clear, we highlighted in white when the designs fit to this specific field (Figure 6). In this way, we were able to classify all the comments of the experts.

The transition from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence indicates the “understanding” of theoretical insights, whereas the transition from conscious incompetence to conscious competence indicates the “applying” level as previously described. The transition from conscious competence to unconscious competence indicates the level of “mastering”.

The results are based on two aspects: firstly, the grading scores rated by the experts themselves and the differences between the various perspectives, and secondly the classification of all comments in the conscious-competence model.

The grading scores show that concept B was graded as highest with an average score of 7.9 (M 7.93, SD of 0.70), while concept A was graded lowest with an average score of 6.2 (M 6.23, SD of 1.13). Concept C scored an average of 7.4 (M 7.37, SD 1.18) and concept D an average of 7.3 (M 7.27, SD 1.23). These results clearly show that the experts’ opinions were most uniform regarding concept B, regarding the low SD value. Surprisingly, concept C and D are graded almost equally, while the comments used to grade concept D described more positive quotes compared to concept C. However, the grading scores show that concept C is even graded slightly better as concept D. In addition, we could conclude that the high SD value of concept C and D indicates the level of diversion between the answers. To get a better understanding, it could be interesting to consider the differences in grading per perspective and the comments that are used to justify their grades.

The scores from the first question where the experts were requested to score the design, together with the quotes show a clear and convincing picture (Figure 7) from which to draw conclusions. In this picture, we see an overview of the grades divided per perspective categorized per design. In this overview the perspectives are shown with a colored line and an abbreviation of the perspective. The abbreviations represent: RB (recycling behavior), LCA (life cycle analysis), CPB (consumer purchase behavior), MDD (marketing, design, and development), and PRC (plastic recycling chain). We can conclude that all graders agree about design B. The differences between the grading is negligible (difference in grades between lowest and highest average grade is less than 0.7). Furthermore, we could say that designs A and D are most fluctuating (difference between grades is respectively 2.17 and 1.84), whereas MDD experts especially show a more extreme negative reaction. Both quotes in Figure 7 explain “difficulties” regarding the closure of the design. However, MDD experts tend to be more critical towards the integration and justification of all elements, compared to the PRC expert who mentions the critical aspects, but still values the overall design. For concept D, it is the other way around. All three quotes in Figure 7 mention the promising and well-thought-out idea behind concept D. However, MDD experts praise the positive and holistic attitude of the group, while the end of life experts (PRC and RB) are more critical towards problems that could occur during the end of life of this concept. Surprisingly, the LCA experts (red line) are in general more positive about the results during grading. However, reading their comments suggests that a lot of improvements still can be made.

Besides the overall grading of the experts, we decided to classify their quotes and dividing them in a conscious-competence model. In total, 57 comments were classified based on the verbs and adjectives they used in their comments. Out of these, we highlighted the most important quotes which indicate where we placed them in the conscious-competence model. An example of the quotes can be found in Figure 8. All the numbered comments and a justification of the classification can be found in Appendix B.

The results show a higher distributed allocation in the level “applying” (23 out of 57 quotes) versus the level “understanding” (17 out of 57) as can be seen in Figure 8. The “mastering” level shows a limited number of quotes (6 out of 57) versus the level “unclear” (red square) which shows 11 out of 57 comments. These results indicate that 30 percent understands the important influence of the five perspectives and 40 percent reached the level of applying those perspectives in their final designs. However, it also means that 19 percent of the students did not reach the levels of “understanding”, “applying”, or “mastering” and failed to meet the main objective of the course.

5. Design Game

Within the educational module, the real-life packaging design case forms the core of the development process by which students integrate the newly acquired packaging sustainability knowledge. This development process revolves around a project guidance tool in the form of a “design game”, a serious gaming concept. Within the design game, the synthesis of the various packaging sustainability perspectives, and the simulation of a design and development process are key, aligning with the core focus of the educational module. Besides the development of packaging concepts within the scope of the packaging design case, the main goals of the design game are the explication of development trade-offs and stakeholder interrelations, and the clarification of discussion and decision-making criteria.

5.1. Team Dynamics

The core of the simulation of the development process as an educational intervention is the student group’s dynamics as members of a product-packaging development team. We expect the student groups to act and interact as a multidisciplinary team, similar to development teams in practice. Within the student teams, the various disciplines are predetermined, to guide the students in their development process. Within the design game (and thus the packaging design case), we specified five disciplines (or roles)—each with specific points of focus. Since each team consists of four students, they are forced to divide the five roles according to their own preferences. We provided the students with brief descriptions of the roles:

• Project manager. This role mainly targets overall project governance, business case feasibility, and overall (estimated) project and product/packaging costs;
• Marketer. Focusing on the alignment of development decisions with commercial issues and market request (“voice of the consumer”);
• Packaging designer. Key focus on the graphical design and the overall appearance of the packaging design concepts;
• Packaging engineer. This role covers the structural development and the technical requirements of the packaging design concepts;
• Sustainability guardian. The sustainability guardian focuses on the structured implementation of sustainability considerations in the development processes.

Of these roles, the sustainability guardian is the novel extension to a typical product-packaging development team. Therefore, we further address this role’s characteristics and added value.

The Sustainability Guardian

For a product-packaging development process in which sustainability considerations play a key role, the sustainability guardian poses a valuable addition to a development team. Research indicates that the structured implementation of sustainability considerations in product-packaging development processes can benefit from a revision of team dynamics (see e.g., [36,37,38,39,40]). Within the scope of the educational module and the design game, we focus this revision on teams’ multidisciplinarity (as described) and the role of a sustainability guardian. The addition of a sustainability guardian benefits the product-packaging development by its ability to balance sustainability-related trade-offs in development processes, following De Koeijer et al. (2017) [3]. This addition of a sustainability guardian to a development team must result in a more firmly established focus on sustainability considerations, balancing the more traditional stakeholder targets, such as costs and a product-packaging combination’s market proposition and business case. This echoes sustainability ambitions mainly driven by profit-driven and marketing-related considerations [41,42,43,44,45,46], in contrast to a company’s more holistic sustainability ambition [38,44,45,46,47,48,49].

The added value of a sustainability guardian relates to its position within a multidisciplinary product-packaging development team, as a key stakeholder in addition to marketers and packaging developers (designers and engineers), following findings by De Koeijer et al. (2017) [3] and Petala et al. (2010) [50]. In a multidisciplinary team, the implementation of a sustainability guardian can materialize in one of three options: (1) as a stakeholder in addition to the team, (2) as a stakeholder taking up the sustainability guardian’s role as an additional responsibility, or (3) as a shared team effort.

5.2. Gaming Process

The process of (re)designing packaging concepts by means of the design game consists of seven steps. In the first step, the student teams divide the development roles, following the brief role descriptions; in each team, the five roles must be represented by a division according to the preferences of the students. The second step of the Design Game covers the formulation of design requirements, following the specific real-life case’s design brief. In the third step, this is followed by a “quick and dirty” design phase, in which each team member individually drafts a design idea, considering the design brief, the requirements, and the role(s) which they represent.

After these start-up steps, the fourth design game step covers the visualization of development trade-offs. In this step, each design proposal is mapped on the “idea board”, accompanied by a brief pitch by the responsible designer. After that, each team member must rate the designs, by means of placing score cards (ranging from −3 to +3) on the idea board. This rating is done according to each team member’s role. This rating results in an overview as illustrated in Figure 9—in this example, four designs are rated by four team roles. Note: if one of the team members is unsure of the design, a score card with a question mark can be placed on the board, indicating that more information is required before scoring the design idea.

As soon as all design ideas have been rated, the team must select one of the options as their preferred concept. This selection can be done in various ways: the design idea which has not been rated any “negatives”, the design idea which has the highest accumulated score, or the design idea which is preferred by one of the roles, for instance the sustainability guardian or the project manager. This selection approach is determined by the team and is representative of the team dynamics that are at play. By means of this rating and selection system, the development team is forced to make trade-offs explicit, and discuss these, as also addressed by Mulder-Nijkamp et al. (2018) [23]. It is in the best interest of the development team to select the “best” design option, and therefore it is essential to focus on a proper rating and selection, and substantiation of it.

These steps of the design game can be executed multiple times, according to the preferences and requirements of each development team. For instance, a development team can decide to play the design game to determine an overall design, followed by sequential games focusing on a packaging’s main body, a closure, and the packaging graphics.

5.3. Findings

The design game produces two types of findings, relevant for this article: the insights in the student development team dynamics, and the tangible packaging concepts as part of the real-life design case. The latter is discussed in Section 4, as the results of the overall educational module. Therefore, in the current section we focus on the findings related to team dynamics, and specifically the role of the sustainability guardian. Out of the four product-packaging development processes conducted by the student teams, three proved to be usable; the results of team C contained too little information to be able to analyze the team dynamics.

5.3.1. Team A

In team A, each student selected one of the “traditional” roles as their core role. In addition, the team decided to add the role of the sustainability guardian to the student acting as the team manager. In the development process, the key trade-offs relate to sustainability versus use and consumption considerations, and product branding. For team A, the design game was found to be a relevant design tool to determine options and alternatives for the closure of the packaging concept.

5.3.2. Team B

Team B determined the sustainability guardian as a role in addition to a development team, taken up by one of the team members as a core role. Following, the remaining three students divided the four traditional development roles, of the project manager and marketer role are taken up as a combined role. Within the product-packaging development process, many of the trade-offs involved sustainability considerations, with the sustainability guardian as its representative.

5.3.3. Team C

For team C, the students made the decision to mainly focus on the “content-focused” roles. The project manager role remains undetermined, and is therefore an (implicit) shared team effort. Similar to team B, the students focus on sustainability-related trade-offs: mainly in relation to the packaging’s closure mechanism, and the overall packaging design (packaging shape and color).

6. Discussion

This paper describes the quality of the results of an educational module, integrating five different perspectives on designing sustainable packaging with young packaging designers of the University of Applied Sciences in The Hague. Within the educational module, design synthesis is the core feature. Both by the synthesis of semi-related knowledge bases into an integrated entity, and by enabling design students to synthesize these knowledge bases in the real-life design case, the module adds to research and knowledge on integrating operational sustainability efforts in development processes. This added value closely relates to the design game, in which the application of theoretical knowledge materializes.

The design game is applied as a newly developed design tool, aimed at providing students with a tangible option to make trade-offs in design explicit, as a basis for discussion. Following, the student teams are forced to address these trade-offs, and relate these to development team dynamics—especially in relation to sustainability considerations and the role of a sustainability guardian. For example, finding the optimum between sufficient protection for the packed item and using too much materials, is an important trade-off to make. In order to help the students to make decisions on this trade-off, they are encouraged to use a specific LCA tool to calculate the actual sustainability of a packaging proposal. This knowledge forms important content for the decision-making process and during the design game they are challenged to discuss the consequences of certain decisions guided by the experts of the perspectives. The application of the design game is a small-scale interpretation and simulation of the development process, representing a real-life product-packaging development process. However, less tangible development factors are not part of this simulation, such as experience and certain types of specific knowledge. As a result, part of the decisions and trade-offs by the student teams are based on incomplete information and assumptions. However, the main aim of the educational model is not to discuss all specific topics and related knowledge, but to make the most important trade-offs from the five perspectives explicit by learning to discuss about the consequences of certain decisions relating sustainability.

Within the design game approach, the team dynamics and role divisions are key. However, the process and results show that for the students it is a challenge to fully integrate their specific role’s characteristics and points of pocus throughout the development process. The students are trained and educated as designers who view product-packaging as integrated entities and consider a wide array of packaging functions and requirements during the development process. Following, by focusing on the role divisions within the current design game approach, we risk an overly forced integration of these roles in the student teams’ product-packaging development processes.

The design game approach and the findings show that the role of a sustainability guardian adds to a development team by its dedicated focus on sustainability considerations and balancing these in relation to other development-influencing factors. However, when appointing a sustainability guardian as the key stakeholder—focusing on sustainability considerations in (product-packaging) development processes—we introduce a risk of “sustainability laziness”: a limited responsibility or knowledge of sustainability efforts by other stakeholders in the development process [3]. However, with the current scope and broadness of the integration of the role of a sustainability guardian within the student teams, this effect is difficult to assess.

Secondly, we can identify a bias in the efficacy of the sustainability guardian’s role. The student groups are aware of the focus on sustainability in product-packaging development, both in the design game and the educational module as a whole. Therefore, it is expected that sustainability will receive more attention in the students’ development approaches. When considering the example of student teams B and C, the clear focus on sustainability-related trade-offs indicates the significant impact of the sustainability guardian’s role. However, the bias effect may have an impact here as well, which has not been tested. The third issue regarding the role of the sustainability guardian is the practical application. Even though the educational module and design game have been developed as a simulation of real-life product-packaging development processes, the actual team dynamics have not been tested in operational product-packaging development practice.

In order to test the efficacy and effectiveness of the educational approach we conducted an extensive introspective analysis and expert analysis. Although the results of the experts’ reviews show the students were able to integrate the perspectives, there are some remarks and limitations that need to be discussed.

The approach of the research was qualitative in nature, mainly due to the fact we only had four design proposals to investigate. The extensive analysis of the outcomes of both the introspective as expert review leads to interesting conclusions; however, these conclusions should be further investigated preferably with more design proposals. The expert analysis was mainly based on comments and quotes mentioned by the experts. An important remark that should be taken into account is the difference in grading per person and per perspective. As already indicated previously, the grading scores of the LCA perspective were more positive compared to their comments, this could be influencing the end results. However, we can also point out that the difference in grading within a specific perspective was not that different.

Another discussion point is the classification of all the quotes in the conscious-competence model. It is quite easy to indicate if a designer is competent or not, however, it is quite hard to indicate if the designer is conscious or not. We can identify if a design proposal is viable by means of asking experts, but this does not immediately imply that students made this design more “conscious”.

7. Conclusions

In this paper, we strived to implement new scientific insights in the educational field of sustainable packaging from various perspectives and focused on integrating and applying those insights by developing an educational module. The holistic approach of the course and the tools that are offered support young packaging designers in making more balanced choices to finally design a product-packaging combination that leads to synthesis of all disciplines. The efficacy and effectiveness of this educational module describing the results of an extensive introspective analysis and expert analysis has shown evidence of students understanding and applying knowledge in their product development process. However, only a few students reached the mastering level.

The added value of the education module closely relates to the focus on design synthesis. Firstly, the module itself targets the integration of semi-related knowledge bases into one synthesized entity. Secondly, the approach of the educational module—especially the design game—enables students to apply this design synthesis of knowledge in their product-packaging development processes.

In order to simulate the complex processes of decision making in product-packaging development, we developed and applied the design game as a project guidance tool. Within this design game, the core characteristics of development relate to team dynamics—specifically the role of the sustainability guardian—and balancing inevitable trade-offs between project- and product-defining factors. This educational intervention of addressing trade-offs and team dynamics within a synthesis-focused development process simulation shapes the core of the educational module.

Strategic commitment and support is a critical enabler of the successful integration of sustainability considerations, following Boks (2006) [39], Hallstedt et al. (2013) [40], Jansson et al. (2017) [48], and Johansson (2002) [38]. Furthermore, for the role of a sustainability guardian to be successful, substantiation and support on a strategic level is required. However, within the scope of this educational module, this is not analyzed. This therefore poses a relevant direction for further research. Also, the practical implementation of the role of a sustainability guardian benefits from research into the open-ended nature of the various settings in which this role interacts within a development team, as the findings suggest.