Master thesis | 2019
Summary | The aim for my thesis was to develop a guidance to be used by purchasing personal at ICA in order to enhance sustainability knowledge in general and packaging sustainability specifically. An end result of a guiding document on sustainable packaging and one procedural and documenting checklist to be used in day-to-day communication with suppliers was developed based on the findings from our research.
Skills: User research, workshops, co-design, prototyping
Tools: Illustrator, InDesign, Figma
Understanding the primary user is always very important in order to create a powerful design, in this case ICA’s purchasers. In this organisation, various secondary users often had impact on final packaging decisions. To cope with this, all these roles were included in both interviews and workshops. Involving not only the primary users gave multiple perspectives to the current situation and an understanding of how decisions and actions from each role affected and got affected by certain behaviours. This gave valuable information in how communication and responsibility among roles could be altered in order to make better and informed decisions on packaging.
Knowing the existing status of packaging documentation, documented working procedures and sustainability guidelines was equally important as the user insights. With approximately 20 purchasers responsible for their own day-to-day business, a lack of common ground and strategic sustainable goals to strive towards resulted in many challenges. Focus on sustainability varied a lot among purchasers and the attention to packaging in general very much depended on personal affection rather than an organisational approach. A review of existing packages also showed a huge variation in sustainability performance.
Combining the results from both user research and the organisational study gave us nine areas for improvement towards sustainable packaging. The client had a demand for a quick and easy to implement solution since they wanted to start an overall change towards increased sustainability focus as soon as possible. Some of the opportunities were more long term focused but going in to the second phase of ideation and solutions, all areas were considered.
A powerful tool during ideation is involving both primary users and other more adjacent stakeholders. In addition to our own creative methods, we conducted a co-creation session with multiple roles at ICA and a one with people not at all related to use case. This enabled employees with experience from other fields to give valuable input that not only directly could improve tasks for the purchaser, but could have positive secondary impact for other roles in the company. E.g. earlier notice on planning and tasks, knowledge sharing, shifted responsibility to appropriate roles etc.
A final design of a Packaging guide and a Checklist frames the project scope and are used in combination to ensure a greater focus on sustainability and a common ground for purchasers to lean on. The packaging guide introduce one source for all ICA’s guidelines on packaging and a way to increase knowledge among all employees. Together with the Checklist to be used in every new purchase communication with supplier, it ensures all necessary aspects of sustainability is covered.
The purpose of the Packaging guide is to support product managers at Ica in improving the sustainability of the packaging in their assortment, by providing knowledge as well as strategies and tips for how to make sustainable improvements.
One of the major reasons why packages are not optimised for sustainability, or even cost in some cases, is due to the standard packaging solution provided by the supplier not being reviewed and questioned. Designed as an interactive PDF in the cloud, the Checklist is easy both accesible and easy to use as it can be filled in and stored in a structured way.