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PLANET 2050 CUSTOMER SUSTAINABILITY FRAMEWORK

Computer displaying the Cummins Planet 2050 logo


OVERVIEW: Sustainability has become a large factor for many companies. Businesses are feeling pressure to enhance environmental sustainability, which has increased the quantity and diversity of customer sustainability questions and requests submitted to Cummins. The company wanted to be more proactive in their approach for answering customer sustainability questions.

CHALLENGE: How might we build a customer sustainability framework to move from a reactive, slow and siloed approach for handling customer sustainability requests to a proactive trusted partnership approach.

SOLUTION: Our work in human-centered design resulted in a tangible framework with strategies for tools, information, and resources to drive the initiative and project forward to assist in customer sustainability requests.

SUMMARY OF THE PROCESS: With a tight three month deadline, we tackled a large and ambiguous problem space that involved many different stakeholders, a problem that had previously seemed too large for teams to understand where to start. As a team, we listened to internal and external voices, planned and facilitated a 5-day design sprint, identified and aligned existing and needed tools, tested the framework in front of Fortune 500 executive leaders, and generated a plan to pass the project to Cummins team members to continue the work and drive the solution forward.

ROLE: Human-centered design lead, presenter and facilitator. This project was led and facilitated by myself and a colleague. I served as the expert in human-centered design methodology and strategy, while my colleague's expertise was in sustainability and environmental engineering. We shared all other responsibilities including: research, data synthesis, recruitment, prototyping etc.

**Disclaimer: Due to confidentiality, all details have been removed from the design process**




DEFINING THE PROBLEM SPACE

Before beginning the project, we gathered team members who represented different parts of the business and conducted abstraction laddering and affinity clustering exercises to define our project goal and project scope.


COLLECTING EMPATHY RESEARCH: We collected previous ‘voice of customer’ research that had been conducted before we were assigned the project. In addition, we conducted additional interviews with stakeholders to better understand the needs of the internal team as well as the customers. Affinity clustering was used to sort the notes and find the insights.

screenshot of an abstraction activity on a digital collaboration tool



DESIGN SPRINT

Together we planned and facilitated a 5-day design sprint with internal stakeholders representing various voices throughout the company. The goal of the sprint was to understand the user journeys of both internal teams and external Cummins customers, then produce a tangible prototype of the framework concept to test with customers. We modified and adjusted plans quickly between each day to reach our final goal.

screenshot of a user journey mapping activity on a digital collaboration tool




MAPPING THE EXISTING EXPERIENCE: On day 1 and 2 of the design sprint, the insights and customer voices were shared with the team, personas were developed, and an experience map was crafted to visualize the pain-points in the user journeys.





GENERATING IDEAS: On days 3 and 4 of the design sprint, the team focused on ideation and prototyping. We facilitated a round robin activity for ideation. We broke the team up based on expertise to prototype solutions, then evaluated and improved each idea. Finally, we brought the ideas together to develop a tangible framework.





Framework outline







TOOL PRIORITIZATION & TEST PLANNING: On day 5, we prioritized the tools and crafted questions for testing.



screenshot of a 'what's on my radar' activity' on a digital collaboration tool


FRAMEWORK REFINEMENT AND TESTING WITH FORTUNE 500 LEADERS


SYNTHESIS: After the design sprint, we realized a lot of the tools were very similar. After learning more about the technical nature of each tool, we aligned tools and tool-teams to develop consolidated solutions for our stakeholders. We visualized the tool concepts for testing.

TESTING: We tested the framework with internal stakeholders and Fortune 500 executive leaders to gain feedback. The feedback was synthesized, and a transition plan was made to jump start further research and development for the framework.


RESULTS: The project launched the alignment of internal tools, the creation of an internal sustainability resource center, and customer-facing sustainability tools. The work still continues and remains a key initiative for the company's goals.



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