This project tackled two research questions for separate clients. The first question was posed by Livework, a service design agency, which wanted to learn how systemic design principles can be applied in projects aimed at organisational sustainability transformations. The second client, Juvenile Company, a company that designs and manufactures strollers and other juvenile products, wanted to figure out what their relationship with customers and business partners should look like to reach their sustainability goals by 2035.
Through a series of analyses and co-creative design activities, I discovered two key factors that might serve as an opportunity or barrier in Juvenile Company’s transition towards a more sustainable future: the relationship between parent and stroller in the current system and Juvenile Company’s culture of product innovation through design.
Using context mapping, insight into the value exchanges between parent and stroller over time were captured. This led to identifying three distinct phases of value creation tied to a child’s developmental stages. It was found that the value implicitly delivered by the stroller over these developmental stages is the core value proposition of Juvenile Company.
It was found that Juvenile Company’s current strategy of revenue growth through product innovation is at odds with its sustainability goals. To achieve its sustainability goals, Juvenile Company must rely on qualitative innovation, rather than quantitative, to drive revenue growth.
Using the input from all research, a vision statement was formulated that describes the possibility space of Juvenile Company’s future innovation. “Juvenile Company empowers parents and their children to explore the world by providing value beyond products that adapts to parents’ changing needs without compromising the future needs of their children.”
A design strategy concept was created to describe what a circular Juvenile Company will need to look like to be fully circular. The concept consists of four elements that build on one another. At the deepest layer sits a new mental model: a culture of innovation through qualitative value creation. To create qualitative value, on the next layer up we find a reframed version of the core value proposition discovered through the context mapping research. Juvenile Company focuses on developing value explicitly for the three developmental stages identified. To guide the development of this value, three core vision principles were developed: Value beyond products, Adapting to changing needs and Dependable guide. To further illustrate these vision principles, thirteen key propositions were designed that help shape what the relationship between parents and Juvenile Company could look like in the future.
This strategy was conceptualised through two deliverables: a parent-Juvenile Company relationship journey map that describes how the key elements to the relationship interlink, and a children’s book that describes the story of how one family’s relationship with Juvenile Company develops over time.
Through constant reflection over the course of this process, key insight was created into how Livework designers can implement systemic design principles in organisational sustainability transformation projects. A knowledge gap was identified, consisting of three layers that each describe a different type of knowledge Livework designers must acquire. Additionally, it was found that a major difficulty in applying systemic design principles will be adopting an ecosystemic design lens that focuses equally on human and non-human participants of a system. Further implications and opportunities were identified that might shape how Livework approaches design projects.

The relationship between creative agencies and their clients is a difficult one to manage. For clients, the methodologies and processes applied by creative agencies often lack sufficient transparency; so much so that working together needs to be subject to a carefully thought-out process. While agencies recognize the importance of such transparency, the implementation of said transparency remains a difficult characteristic to master.

In order to address this gap, the work performed in this project puts forward a strategy to approach both creative agencies’ client relations and their work in such a way that lasting relationships can be built together with clients for optimal growth and building towards an agreed vision.

To develop this approach, the literature on Service Design was first reviewed followed by that on leadership and creative agency-client relationships: the first because it is the specialization at the Service Design agency Unplugged; and the second because to be an agent of change the creative must lead the way. The derived insights brought to light different typologies of clients, relationships and scopes. From this foundation, three impact levels were identified, namely: organizational transformation, organizational process and organizational service.

Conducting interviews at Unplugged, with its leadership and creatives and clients generated data and insights on the situation or problem space as it exists for the agency. The combination of the problem space and the knowledge gathered from the literature and the discussions with experts enabled the creation of a strategy playbook. The playbook is built around six principles for the day-to-day practice of and development of thriving client relationships. In order for the creatives to live by these, question cards were developed which correlate with the six principles to give creatives a reference point throughout their projects. Furthermore, to measure progress and maintain focus on project goals, two impact portfolio graphs are included. Finally, to ensure integration of the strategy playbook, a workshop has been designed for defining the purpose of the client interaction and applying the principles and tools by using them through fictitious scenarios.

As design challenges are becoming more and more complex, we aim to solve them by including an increasing variety of perspectives and opinions into the creative problem-solving process. Co-creation aims to achieve this by involving stakeholders throughout the process. Including all these different opinions makes co-creation activities increasingly complex, risking the quality of the outcome (Agueverre et al., 2020).

This thesis aims to unravel the complexity of these activities in designer-client co-creation projects. The designers targeted in this study are the designers of the consultancy Unplugged, based in Amsterdam. Unplugged aims to discover business opportunities together with their client, to take steps towards transformation. The assignment from Unplugged was to perform research into the ideation phase, as this is often experienced as difficult in practice, especially in the context of co-creation.

Through semi-structured interviews with the designers of Unplugged and several extensive literature reviews, three iterations were performed to get to the core of the complexity. The first iteration showed that the design proces, as a designer wants to perform it, is continuously disrupted. Three disrupting factors were identified: 1) the projects are stuck between design and research, 2) the client does not have a sufficient understanding of innovation, and 3) the designers do not have enough influence on the projects.

From these factors, it was concluded, in the second iteration, that there is a lack of autonomy for the designers of Unplugged. Based on this insight, an extensive literature review was conducted to discover the cause of the lack of autonomy. This literature review showed that there exists a tension between autonomy (independence) and conformity (obedience) in the context of social trusteeship (acting in the best interest of the client), or: “Do you give the client what they ask, or what they need?”

Through synthesis it was revealed that this tension is strengthened by the difference in perceived status of the respective members of the co-creation team and a misunderstanding of each other’s expertise. This difference leads to a power imbalance in which the designers have taken on a facilitating role, whereas the client takes the dominant role. Resulting in the client taking over the project and limiting the input of the designers expertise.

In the third iteration, roles are introduced for both the designer and client. These roles aim to ensure that each actors expertise is used in the correct way and at the correct time in the project by eliminating the power hierarchy in the project, through dialogue. Based on these roles, a new approach is introduced to designer-client interactions in which a rich understanding about each other’s expertise is created.

In conclusion, this thesis proposes a new approach to designer-client co-creation projects based on roles. This new approach aims to free designers from their facilitating role by creating a rich understanding between designer and client through dialogue.