DIGITAL SUSTAINABILITY IN SERVICES - A study of practices and challenges when designing sustainable digital services

Andersen, Maria Højgaard

4. term

Service Systems Design, Master

2022

2022-05-25

100 pages

IT companies face a growing corporate responsibility for reducing CO2 emissions coming from digital services and related energy consumption. Many organizations, institutions, and companies have proposed various ways to reduce digital energy consumption. However, companies are still struggling to implement digital sustainability as such an implementation requires large-scale change across strategies, competences, and practices. Through a social practice theory lens, this thesis aims to examine core areas of digital sustainability and the experiences of employees within IT companies to support the design, implementation, and practice of sustainable digital services. The study involves a literature review that identifies the prominent roles of a service designer in relation to change management and researches state-of-the-art literature within the field of Green IT. It employs design thinking and MUST methodology to study four selected IT companies’ current practices and challenges with implementing digital sustainability through a qualitative and participatory approach. Through an iterative design process and co-creation methods, the study proposes a framework to implement digital sustainability successfully. The framework provides an overview of principles for IT companies to explore, use and develop more energy-efficient solutions. It suggests a plan of action for each principle and advocates the use of service design in change management processes to improve employee experiences. This paper supports digital design teams, change managers, and service designers in implementing digital sustainability by suggesting a process for anchoring and building digital sustainable competences within an organization. In addition, it provides an in-depth understanding of the multiple contributions they can integrate to create the right conditions for new practices. This paper identifies and examines the core elements that must be firmly integrated into the design of digital services design and system infrastructure to advance the approach to digital sustainability within the field of service design and IT practices. In contrast to related work that focuses on what should be done to create greener services, this thesis focuses on how this is done in a business-oriented organization.

Digital bæredygtighed ; Grøn IT ; Forandringsledelse ; Service design ; Digital Sustainability Framework

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