In recent years, sustainable thinking has been gradually recognized and accepted by more and more users, enterprises, and stakeholders. However, in daily life, there is often a gap between the value of users’ pursuit of sustainable lifestyles and their behavior habits. Also, the connection between different stakeholders is often ignored. The project started by the observation of unsustainable water usage habits of some tenants in the Växjö local housing company Växjöbostäder, and investigated the gaps in the water supply/toll system of Växjö municipality for some apartment tenants and the limitations of current solutions. Therefore, it is necessary to find a more effective solution. The author attempts to guide and change the user’s behavior through design interventions led by digital user experience design, connect the gap between the user and the system, and provide a more sustainable choice. At the same time, as a precedent, this project’s attempt to apply sustainable behavioral interventions to the field of digital user experience products at the system level can also provide some reference for similar projects or designs that may appear in the future. The aim of this project is trying to find solutions to bridge the existing gap between the water management system and the apartment users’ water consumption behavior. The project studies the relevant theories of behavior, analyzes the causes of motivations that lead to behavioral and habits changing, the methods of digital user experience design, and the theory of building sustainable systems. Action research has been used as a methodological guide to design processes, analysis, and reflection. The final design outcome “Drops” is an application based on mobile platforms that develop sustainable water-using habits. The application associates gamification motivation mechanisms, behavioral habit interventions, community social sharing, and the process of using the application with the user’s actual behavior, promotes the formation of user sustainable behavior and inspires users to a sustainable society thinking. From a hierarchical analysis of the system, “Drops” connects different stakeholders in the municipal water supply system, facilitating communications between tenants and communities to achieve positive interactions that promote sustainable behavior.  At the end of this article, the author analyzed the project outcome from the perspective of Växjöbostäder, one of the stakeholders and a possible product distributor, elaborated on the possible advantages of the design for the company’s ecological sustainability and the possibility of the company deploying this application in the market. Also, the author also analyzed and evaluated this project from the perspective of the product itself and different stakeholders, and explained the current limitations and the possibility of future development.

This thesis investigates the potential of User-Centered Design (UCD) and Agile to support Strategic Sustainable Development (SSD) practice in product and product-service system (PSS) design. UCD tools and concepts are used to support stakeholder and needs research. Agile provides process support for collaboration and resilience. SSD tools and concepts are used to define and work within the system boundaries for sustainability. All three practices are combined in an innovation approach that supports collaborative and cross-functional design teams as they develop products and PSS. Design teams using this approach will work to satisfy the needs of customers while considering the needs of all non-customer stakeholders and the ecosphere. The full-systems context emphasized in the approach will support innovation and encourage design teams to consider services as complements to, or substitutes for, physical products.

Evolution of the global economic system has significantly impacted on customer behaviors. The service economy era has accompanied rapid growth of the service industry. This work focuses on service innovation enhancement for cluster SMEs, which play important roles in the global economic system. These SMEs, which have specific knowledge and capabilities, are keys to improving customer service experiences. However, the entire service system has evolved, as have customer behaviors. In addition to understanding how service value is created, interactions between economic, social, and environmental systems during value creation are also crucial for the sustainable development of service industries. For service systems consisting of SMEs, the design of a value network for clustered SMEs still faces huge challenges in finding key value propositions and assessments for value creation. To assess service value, relationships, and customer feedback from both economic and social psychology perspectives, this research proposes a novel service ecosystem for value creation in service dominant logic and customer-driven and imagery-based value network design approach (CIVNDA) grounded in service dominant logic and image theory. The CIVNDA (1) provides a framework for designing and configuring a service value network that can identify the roles and value propositions of each partner; (2) provides a novel service imagery representation to characterize services of businesses from a customer psychological perspective; and (3) generates appropriate partners for specific cooperation goals and service journey designs. Due to the importance of information technology in service innovation, integration, and provision, this research also implements an ICT-based service platform—uVoyage using color image scale and metaphor theory. Tourism is selected as the study industry to evaluate the effects of the CIVNDA and the uVoyage service platform. Interview and focus group results (1) show that four different evolutionary stages of tourism SMEs exist when adapting to the current service economy era; (2) indicate how the CIVNDA and uVoyage platform facilitate value co-creation for tourism SMEs during different evolutionary stages; and (3) demonstrate how the features of service imagery differ from brand images and can be utilized to bridge gaps between product design and customer-driven service design. This research can contribute to our understanding of service system ecology and service value evaluation in service value network designs consisting of SMEs in the tourism, design, cultural, and creativity service industries. The proposed concept of service imagery also guides future innovative research and outcomes of service value network design.