Designers as sustainability champions: a discursive analysis of product designers claiming a role of ‘pushing’ for sustainability

A tension is apparent in the literature on the role of designers in making products more sustainable. On the one hand, there is a discourse of individual designer responsibility and many methods and tools are prescribed to encourage and help designers make more sustainable design decisions. Advocacy organisations focusing on sustainable and circular design have in recent years focused on inspiring designers to make more sustainable products. On the other hand, science and technology studies literature highlights the multi-stakeholder network character of design, where designers lack the power to make design decisions. This study examines how designers’ roles are portrayed in reflective verbal accounts collected using two methods – sixteen semi-structured video call interviews with sustainability-focused designers, and video recordings of seven sustainable design conference panel discussions. Selected extracts are analysed using discursive psychology, to identify how actions are accomplished through talk. We see many designers working to overcome the ambiguity of seeking to be a responsible designer while not being able to make final design decisions, by claiming an extension of their role as ‘pushing’ and persuading for sustainability, to influence key design decisions. Talk of ‘pushing’ for sustainability is common across interviews and in talk at public design conferences, and in both general talk and talk of specific projects, suggesting the framing is significant to the designers’ roles. The sustainable design community could consider how to support designers who report their roles as already ‘pushing’ to achieve more sustainable products, reflecting a sustainability champions concept that is established in other fields.