Design Innovation for Sustainable Services

Dear Colleagues,

The quality of human activities to be carried out without the destruction of the environment and depletion of our planet’s resources requires the coexistence of society in harmony with the natural environment, achieving a balance between the current way of existence, characterized by economic growth based on the consumption of natural resources and the protection of the environment through the discovery and implementation of alternative ways of resource usage for their conservation. This goal can be achieved by designing new products and services with the support of new innovative design methods. From this perspective, service design innovation has an essential role to play in addressing the climate crisis, and designers have a huge responsibility to help save the Earth’s environment through the unlimited power of their creativity to bring about change.

We want to campaign for the policy and systems change needed to design a more sustainable future, achieved by sharing the knowledge of design experts, leading to sustainable and inclusive design to inspire the community of scientists. To fully utilize the potential of design, it is important to understand how the latest and most creative approaches used by the community of researchers and services designers can be integrated into the circular economy alongside the tools and frameworks that experts use in sustainable business, sustainable strategic innovation, and innovation of business models.

This Special Issue will constitute a professional and scientific forum for research scientists from universities, research centers, and industry to present recent developments as well as current practices in design innovation for sustainable services. We aim to bring together practitioners and scientists from different fields to share learning and encourage innovation, to better understand and define what emissions mean in different sectors of activity but also the ways in which we can work together in more sustainable ways. Through this collaboration, hopefully, we can better understand customer needs and the creative methods that could be used; the community of service designers can be a fundamental agent of change, contributing to the integration of systemic thinking in current work processes.

Contributions to this Special Issue should focus on the environmental, social, and economic value of service design. We encourage the submission of any articles that can inform on these topics, and especially contributions from researchers and service design professionals on how their results can contribute to progress in sustainability practice. Along with research articles, systematic reviews on the theme of this Special Issue are welcome, as well as contributions of applied research that deal with the integration of sustainability and design methods, and new methods and tools that give assurance that design is well placed in the challenges of sustainability.

In this way, a resource will be created and organized through which service designers empower themselves through new innovation methods, which will act as a platform for those who already create innovation in service design and who inspire other creators. There is much that the service design research community can do to reshape the way we live and work together; through this Special Issue of Sustainability, we can create a path to a better future.

We look forward to receiving your contributions. 

Prof. Dr. Liviu Moldovan
Dr. Adrian Gligor
Dr. Flaviu Moldovan
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• sustainable and inclusive design
• environmental, social, and economic value
• customer need
• circular economy
• sustainable business
• sustainable innovation
• business model innovation