Stroller Service System : How to make customer products sustainable within the planetary boundaries - using the case product ‘stroller’, PSS and a Design Thinking approach

Sammanfattning: Physical customer products have an environmental impact, such as greenhouse gas emissions, due to the use of virgin resources from cradle-to-grave, especially when the origin of the material is from fossil resources. This thesis aims to create a circular business model, by investigating the product ‘stroller’ and place it in a Product Service System, where the user subscribes to the Stroller Service System. This means that the product gets a service function: ‘transportation of a child’, mapped with a user-centered approach. The main objective is to lower the ecological footprint by adopting a modular design including bio-based material and stainless steel, and also include services to address economical and social sustainability goals. The methodology that is used is divided into two parts: Status Analysis – which consists of stroller related literature study, literature review and case study, and the second part is the Design Process – creating the product-, service- and system design. The results are grounded in user insights, life cycle assessment and co-creation with experts, where the conclusions are that a PSS Model Stroller should be used by 4-6 users which translate to about 15-20 years of usage for the steel layer. The way of refurbishing the strollers is done by contract workers that exist where the users exists, i.e. Ease Stroller Hub, who change the bio-based material in-between the use-phases and hands over the refurbished stroller to the next user. Add-on services of access to car pools and grocery delivery is included in the system to ease the stroller user’s everyday life and is a way to designing out the need of owning a car, to lower the overall environmental impact.