Enhancing Sustainability in the Design Process
How can designers make sustainability tangible, not theoretical?
Through interviews, analysis, and experimentation, I explored how sustainability can become a practical part of everyday design, not a distant ambition.
The result: a tool that helps designers turn awareness into action, the Tactical Sustainability Cards.
Project Type: Master’s Thesis (Individual)
Institution: Delft University of Technology
Published in: Journal of Cleaner Production, 2025
Skills: Design research, sustainability strategy, tool development, qualitative analysis, design facilitation
Impact Proof Point:
I synthesised interviews, academic theory, and design practice into a set of actionable sustainability cards that help designers turn complex sustainability ambitions into everyday design decisions.
Overview
Sustainability in design is often discussed at a strategic level: in frameworks, policies, and declarations. But on the ground, designers need tactics: ways to act, justify, and communicate their sustainable intentions within complex organisations.
This project explored how design practitioners engage with sustainability in their professional work and how this engagement can be improved through practical interventions.
The Tactical Sustainability Cards, a tangible tool helping designers integrate sustainability into everyday decision-making.
Facilitating a co-creation workshop where designers used the cards to align sustainability goals with design outcomes.
Positioned within the Double Diamond framework, the cards support ideation in the “Develop” phase and communication in the “Deliver” phase.
Challenge
Interviews with designers revealed that while they value sustainability, they are rarely decision-makers in their organisations. Many struggle to advocate for sustainable choices or to communicate their value to managers and clients.
The challenge became clear: designers need a way to translate sustainability principles into everyday practice, balancing innovation, business goals, and human-centred design.
Mapping how professional designers understand and apply sustainability in practice.
Approach
I conducted a literature review and interviews with professional designers in the Netherlands to map how they conceptualise sustainability. Using thematic analysis, I identified recurring patterns, from organisational barriers to mindset gaps, and transformed these into insight cards.
These insights guided a co-creation workshop, where designers and stakeholders explored new ways to make sustainability visible, relatable, and actionable. The result was a prototype that evolved through multiple rounds of validation.
Clustering insights from designer interviews to uncover recurring barriers, roles, and perceptions around sustainability.
Translating research findings into actionable design tactics that would later form the foundation of the card set.
"Empathy Map" Co-creation workshop with designers, translating insights into tangible sustainability tactics through collaborative ideation.
Concept: Tactical Sustainability Cards
A set of digital and printable cards designed to activate sustainable thinking during ideation and evaluation.
Each card presents:
A tactic
A real-world example from the market
Supporting academic models that connect design actions to sustainability theory
Mapped along tactical–strategic and individual–systemic axes, the cards help teams position their ideas, align non-designers, and build confidence in their sustainability arguments.
They are most effective during the “Develop” and “Deliver” phases of the Double Diamond, where teams move from concept to implementation, making sustainability part of design dialogue, not a separate goal.
Front: tactic and real-world example.
Back: supporting models from design research.
Outcome
The cards were validated through workshops and interviews with designers, showing they:
Spark conversations and align teams on shared values
Bridge the gap between theory and practice
Encourage designers to link sustainability goals with tangible design moves
“The cards helped us connect sustainability goals to design decisions.”
— Validation Session participant
Impact
This project reframes the designer’s role in sustainability, from passive implementer to active strategist.
By equipping them with a vocabulary and tangible tools, it empowers design teams to make sustainability visible, measurable, and actionable, one decision at a time.
Explore More
Full Thesis Report
Available through the TU Delft Repository: Enhancing Sustainability in the Design Process through Tactical Sustainability Cards.
Published Paper
Calabretta, G., Döver, Ö. T., & Nikou, S. (2025). Navigating sustainability challenges in design: Bridging theory and practice with Tactical Sustainability Cards. Journal of Cleaner Production, 145340.
Medium Article
Bridging the Gap Between Design and Sustainability: How Tactical Sustainability Cards Empower Designers