Designing for sustainability

Perla's work process often begins with reaching out to customers to get a better understanding of their needs and expectations. Once the team has identified what these are, they draw up the first sketches to visualize the product and its features. The features are the individual traits of the product that solve the customer’s needs.

From this early moment in the design stage, sustainability is the red thread that guides the project forward. “And like a diamond, sustainability has many facets and we need to consider all of them in our design process,” says Perla.

Inclusion and accessibility are two of those important facets of sustainability. This means finding ways to use design to make places like rooms, buildings and public spaces accessible for everyone – including people with visible or invisible disabilities. The design solutions may vary from a door that opens when a wheelchair approaches to a product that emits sounds, or textures on surfaces to assist with orientation.

"We want to make places accessible to everyone, and that’s quite a complicated design challenge. We think everyone should be able to participate in society – and we want everyone to feel equally welcome," says Perla.

What Perla and her team know is that to make innovative products that are sustainable, both for people and the planet in mind, and in the long term, designers have to think from a sustainability perspective from the start and consider all aspects in their designs.