trends and future of sustainable development - TransEco

models of behaviour and institutional principles (“scripts”), often unintentionally. For example, in thecontext of industrial design a common script for a designer to enact would be to generate sketches anddrawings early in the design process or to highlight the importance of the usability of a product. Ofspecific interest for this article are the last two phases, where members of the institution revise orreplicate existing scripts and lastly externalize and objectify them. These are the phases in which the roleof the context plays a crucial role and to a great extent determines whether existing behaviour is to berevised or replicated. This article suggests that focusing strongly on environmental sustainability is arevision of scripts because it differs from the often-agreed tasks and definitions of industrial design (ie.focus on aesthetics and ergonomics). In the interviews the focus was therefore on how the designers hadattempted to revise existing scripts and in case of failure, what they experienced the reason of the failureto be. As the model also suggests, this phase of the process often requires intentional action to beeffective. Therefore, the motivation and background for the intention to change existing scripts (ie. toengage in sustainable design) is also looked into. For example, whether sustainable design has been apart of professional education is a relevant question for understanding the capability to intentionallyquestion existing and introduce new scripts.Based on the analysis of data, three main barriers were identified. These are barriers imposed by 1) alack of pull towards sustainability 2) problematic image of sustainability and 3) methodological issuesrelating to sustainable design. Next, I look into each of these barriers through the interview data andinsights brought in from literature. Selected interview replies have been collected to Appendix 1 toelaborate the issues discussed with replies 1-3 referring to category 1, replies 4-6 to category 2, and 7-9 tocategory 3.1) Lack of pullThe first identified barrier was a lack of pull towards sustainable design on many fronts and especially inthe domain of environmentally sustainable design. To start with, none of the interviewees felt thateducation had taken a strong role in advancing sustainable design, although the topic had beenintroduced to many. The call for more sustainable design approaches was in many cases a student-ledeffort and as a veteran of design education puts it, “it was the students who were creating the change”,supported only by some individual members of the teaching staff. For two younger graduates sustainabledesign had become a topic of interest in the end of their studies through individual projects, but notextensively. Considering the model of institutionalization, these aspects are very interesting since thelast phase generally suggests that patterns of action should be disassociated from specific actors andconditions in order to become institutionalized (Barley & Tolbert 1997, 102). Therefore, although beingintroduced as a topic, sustainable design was not something that would have cut through the whole ofdesign education. As education is a key factor in shaping the professional practice of industrial design(Valtonen 2007, 102), the lack of education on the topic can be seen as a major barrier when consideringthe need for intentional action to change existing scripts.Since companies approach design agencies to buy design services, the content of the contract anddesign brief plays a key role in determining whether or not sustainability plays a role in the productrequirements or specifications. Based on the data, the results whether sustainability had been requestedby clients were rather mixed: some considered sustainability to be rarely requested while others replied529