How do professional designers engage with sustainability? A systematic literature review

There is an increasing number of approaches and methods in design for environmental sustainability ranging from principles and frameworks to configure sustainable products to visions to confront socio-political systems. However, there is limited understanding of: A) how designers engage with sustainability; and b) how researchers have studied this engagement. This paper is a systematic literature review to identify what are the designers' perspectives and actions to create sustainable products and systems and how researchers frame their studies. The findings suggest that designers understand the critical value of sustainability; however, they do not incorporate sustainability into their practice. Designers are constrained by other priorities defined by management and policy. Findings also show that researchers studying this issue have focused on exploring case studies of how designers apply and react to various proposed methods for sustainability.