New European Bauhaus Prizes 2023

Initiative category

Identify the award category for which this initiative is being submitted
Shaping a circular industrial ecosystem and supporting life-cycle thinking

Email user
peter@circular-experience.org

Basic information
Initiative title
Circular Experience Library

Full initiative Title
Circular Experience Library: free UX design patterns for a better experience in the circular economy

Please provide a short, catchy description of your initiative to be used in communication towards the public.
Customers will have a pivotal role in making the circular economy work. Their customer experience should be joyful and effortless. The Circular Experience Library offers 72 free UX design patterns to service- and ux designers and companies. This toolkit can be used to develop ideas and build prototypes for circular services fast. The aim is to accelerate the adaption of circular services by customers and lower the costs for companies and experience designers developing them

What was the geographical scope of your intiative?
Cross-border/international

Where was your intiative implemented?
Location 1
Germany

Location 2
Germany

Member State(s), Western Balkans and other countries
{Empty}

If relevant, insert names of region(s)/municipality(ies) involved
The library is available worldwide as multiple downloads via a website.

Does your initiative address mainly urban or rural issues?
Mainly urban

Does your initiative refer to a physical transformation of the built environment or other types of transformations (hard or soft investments)?
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)

Has your initiative benefited from EU programmes and/or funds?
No

Has your initiative won an EU prize with a monetary value awarded?
No

Does your initiative has a minimum level of maturity? The minimum level of maturity is exemplified by stakeholder/ initiative promoter commitment to implement the initiative in practice and a clear methodology /approach.
Yes

On whose behalf are you submitting the application?
As an individual
Please provide the contact details for the intiative promoter (the individual or representative of the organisation authorised to represent the intiative).
- First name: Peter
  Last name: Post
  Gender: Male
  Nationality: Germany
  Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Mosbacher Straße 13
  Town: Wiesbaden
  Postal code: 65187
  Country: Germany
  Direct Tel: +49 1515 8558142
  E-mail: peter@circular-experience.org
  Website: http://www.circular-experience.org
Social Media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.)
- URL: https://www.linkedin.com/company/72379305/admin/
- URL: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterpost1/
- URL: https://www.youtube.com/@circularexperiencedesign
In case my initiative is selected as a finalist of the NEB Prizes 2023, I agree to share the name (individual and/or organisation’s), email address, website and social media accounts indicated above with other NEB Prizes finalists. I also agree to publish the name (individual and/or organisation’s), website and social media accounts indicated above next to the public description of my initiative in the channels of the European Commission.
Yes

How did you hear about the New European Bauhaus Prizes?
Social Media

Description of the initiative
Please provide a summary of your initiative
The Circular Experience Library is a free library of UX design patterns. They focus on making the user experience of customers / citizens in the circular economy more joyful and effortless. The patterns address the main activities of customers in the circular economy (rethink, refuse, extended use, refurbish, repair, reuse, upcycle and recycle). They cover specific use cases from the point of view of endusers: "Decide for a used, shared of product-as-a-service model instead of buying a new product", "Refurbish it to extend its lifetime", "Refinance your product by sharing it with others". In addition, the library contains basic patterns that cover specific needs in the circular economy like the display of materials contained in a product or receiving alerts in different channels to do maintenance on a product. There’s also a prototype based on the digital product passport as planned by the EU. The patterns consist of wireframes optimized for mobile applications and come with a tutorial video, a clickable prototype, a pattern description and digital downloads in several formats. The patterns are focussed on the use in digital applications that enable circular services like product-as-a-service, sharing or tutorials for repair, but can also be used for ideation of analogue services.

Please indicate the main themes of your initiative with 5 key words.
Circular Economy

Please indicate the main themes of your initiative with key words
Service Design

Please indicate the main themes of your initiative with key words
UX Design

Please indicate the main themes of your initiative with key words
Pattern Library

Please indicate the main themes of your initiative with key words
Open Source

Please give information about the key objectives of your initiative in terms of sustainability and how these have been/will be met. Please highlight how the initiative can be exemplary in this context.
The key objective of the library in terms of sustainability is the acceleration of the development and adaption of circular services. Example: The shopping cart of online shops is one of the most powerful UX design pattern of the linear economy. It has been optimized over the last twenty years and works perfectly to support easy, fast transaction and pushes cross- and upselling. No UX designer develops a new shopping cart, but uses existing patterns and adapts them for his purposes and the brand he is working for. This makes it also easier for customers to use the cart, as they have a consistent experience across different platforms. For the circular economy, we do not have such patterns, and we do not have twenty years to establish them. The Circular Experience Library is exemplary in solving this problem by offering free components for fast development and prototyping.

Please give information about the key objectives of your initiative in terms of aesthetics and quality of experience for people (through design, positive emotions and cultural benefits) and how these have been met. Please highlight how the initiative can be exemplary in this context.
The key objective of the library in terms of aesthetics and quality of experience of people is to make the (new) task of customers in the circular economy joyful and effortless. The initiative is exemplary in this context, because all design toolkits for the circular economy focus on the design of products, materials and production processes. Which is good, because this is where the heavy lifting needs to be done. But by focussing on the experience of people, the library will support designers and companies to make sure that consumers actually use circular products in a circular way. The design patterns are deliberately designed in a visually neutral and basic look, as it is up to the designers who apply them to add the aesthetics of the brand and product they work for.

Please give information about the key objectives of your initiative in terms of inclusion (ranging from accessibility and affordability for all to inclusive governing systems, design for all principles or new societal models) and how these have been met. Please highlight how the initiative can be exemplary in this context.
The key objective of the library in terms of inclusion is to make circularity effortless for all. We deliberately chose not to build the patterns and services around ecological goals or a "lifestyle of health and sustainability", as this is still a privilege for a small population. The patterns mainly address economical advantages for the end user: "You can afford and enjoy a better product and performance if you share it with others", "You can preserve the value of your product by good maintenance and enjoy a higher re-sell price when you return it to the cycle" etc.

Please explain the way citizens benefiting from or affected by the initiative and civil society have been/will be involved in the initiative and what has been/will be the impact of this involvement on the initiative
Citizens will be involved when designers and companies use the free library to build circular services. Many patterns work on a local level, like sharing, a library of things or co-owning of products and thus will benefit local communities. In the first step of the initiative, we developed and published the library and now conduct workshops and webinars to train designers in how tu use it. In a future phase, we would like to implement a back channel for feedback from designers and the possibility for designers tu upload and share their own applications or even their own patterns on our digital platform. A further feature will be that we can conduct acceptance and usability testing of patterns directly on the platform to optimize patterns before they are implemented by designers.

Please explain how different stakeholders at various levels (local, regional, national, European) were engaged in the design and implementation of the initiative.
We are member of the "Circular Futures" program by ProjectTogether in Berlin and used this network of 100 circular companies, initiatives and start ups to collect use cases for the library. In a previous project (funded by the EU – EcoDesign Circle 4.0) the founder of Circular-Experience.org (UX- and service design consultant Peter Post) participated in the development of a service design methodology for the circular economy. From this collaboration with design centers and agencies of the baltic sea region (Finland, Denmark, Estonia, Poland, Russia, Germany) we also took a lot of inspiration for the use cases for the patterns and used the network of experts that evolved from the collaboration. Project partners include the International Design Centre Berlin and the international UX Design Award. The development of the library was financially supported by the state of Hessen (Ministry of Economic Affairs). We covered the other half of the costs privately.

Please explain which disciplines and/ or knowledge fields were reflected in the design and implementation of your initiative. Please explain how representatives of these different fields interacted with each other, and what the added value of this process was
In the design and implementation of the Circular Experience Library, classical methods and processes from service- and ux design were used, but through the lense of the circular economy. Circular-Experience.org is a regional collective of experts in UX and service design, engineering, ergonomics and product design, digital transformation, circular auditing and language services. Ideas and solutions for patterns were forwarded back and forth and optimized, while using samples to test with end users for acceptance and usability. The added value of this process was to "get out of the circular bubble" and confront our ideas with people that never heard of the circular economy and that are just interested in getting daily tasks done.

Please highlight the innovative character of the initiative, when compared to mainstream actions in the field of the initiative
The innovation is that at this moment, no library for circular UX design exists. There are many (also commercial) UX pattern libraries for the development of commercial services and apps and even more libraries for ready-to-use components, which offer everything from small elements (atoms) like buttons to complete features like a shopping cart (templates). By using a model like a pattern library that designers are used to, we make our new and innovative components accessible.

Please describe which elements of your initiative could be replicated or transferred to other places, groups of beneficiaries and contexts. This may involve, for example, aspects of the methodology, technology, processes, products, learnings, etc.
As the Circular Experience Library is open source and free to use, being replicated and transferred is at the very heart of the initiative. The tutorial videos help to implement the patterns, and our workshops and webinars specifically address a young generation of designers and creatives that are very interested in the circular economy and eager to contribute to it with their work.

Please describe the methodology or approach used in your initiative.
The Circular Experience Library was developed in an agile process within 10 months. First, we defined the use cases, then the 72 patterns to cover them. After that, we developed the wireframes and did iterations of them over and over again, adding micro interactions, building complete clickable prototypes and defining common elements of the patterns like the display of product value or the display of embodied materials of a product.

Please explain what kind of global challenges the initiative addresses by providing local solutions
Half of total greenhouse gas emissions and more than 90% of biodiversity loss and water stress come from resource extraction and processing (source: EU Climate Action Plan). By including citizens on a local level and enabling them by experience design to keep their products and the components and materials they embody in the loop, the Circular Experience Library contributes to the global goal of climate neutrality by 2050. By offering the library for free. the initiative helps to accelerate this transformation.

Please detail the scope of progress in the implementation of the initiative. This can include already demonstrated results/outputs related to the chosen Prizes category, and the already achieved benefits from the initiative for direct and indirect beneficiaries. This can also include a development plan of the initiative, with a particular attention to the steps envisaged in the year following the application, and including envisaged results and benefits from the initiative
The Circular Experience Library containing the first 72 UX design patterns has been finished and published online in November 2022. The first workshops to introduce the library to the creative industries have been held. There was coverage in the german design press (including exclusive interview in most important german design magazine PAGE) and several digital and social channels of design institutions in Germany with a reach of more than 100.000 views within the core target group. As the library is just online for a few weeks, there are yet no applications of the patterns we know of. The main focus in the next months is "spreading the word", and we already have bookings for apx 10 lectures workshops and events in Q1 of 2023 to present and train the library (amongst others Moonova conference, Munich Creative Week, several Webinars and lectures at design universities). In the next year, we want to focus on the application of the patterns in real world projects with a focus on small and medium sized companies, institutions and cities. The next stage of the library will include more community features (reviewing patterns and contributing patterns by other designers), but additional funding will be needed for the implementation of these features.

Please provide documents that demonstrate the maturity level of the initiative and commitment to implement the initiative in practice (e.g.: evaluation report, final or mid-term initiative report, certification, publications, building permit, grant agreement, letter of support, partnership agreement, etc.)
Both
PDF
- pdf-1-13467.pdf
Web link
If relevant, please describe how your initiative contributes to developing new competences, especially in the context of the European competence framework on sustainability.
The Circular Experience Library offers free UX patterns, because we especially want to reach young an upcoming talent in the industry. That’s why we also focus on design universities to hold lectures and train students on how to use the patterns for ideation and prototyping. We see an opportunity in "catching them young", before young talent is introduced to the mainstream, linear world in which their main role will be to produce more and sell more.
Please attach at least 6 high resolution images or visual representations of your initiative to your application.
If you would like to upload additional documentation, please upload or write below.
{Empty}

By submitting your application you confirm that you are the copyright owner of the images provided and that they can be used by the European Commission for the purposes of promoting the New European Bauhaus on all platforms (websites, print, social media and other).
Yes

By ticking this box, you declare that you are not in in one or more of the exclusion situations foreseen under Article 136 of the Financial Regulation.
Yes

By submitting this application, I declare that I am not related to the entities subject to EU restricted measures under Article 29 of the Treaty on the European Union (TEU) and subject to Article 215 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU)1, and entities covered by Commission Guidelines No 2013/C 205/05), which are not eligible to participate in any capacity.
Yes

By ticking this box, you declare that all the information provided in this form is factually correct, that you assume sole liability in the event of a claim relating to the activities carried out in the framework of the contest, that the proposed initiative has not been proposed for the New European Bauhaus Prizes in any other category or strand and that it has not been subject to any type of investigation, which could lead to a financial correction because of irregularities or fraud.
Yes

By submitting your application, you guarantee that you are the author or have the rights to proceed with the application and to authorise the use of the initiative and that you have obtained any necessary consents, licenses or assignments from third parties and included copyright notices when necessary
Yes

By submitting your application, you understand that all the applications that meet the eligibility requirements will be shared for the purposes of the selection processes, and notably published on the secured platform prizes.new-european-bauhaus.eu and for the purposes of the promotion of these on the New European Bauhaus website and/or other European Commission communication channels. In this sense, the applications would be widely available. Applicants should ensure that they present their initiatives, initiative, in such a way that they could be shared without giving rise to intellectual property related concerns. If your submission is selected as one of the finalists, it will additionally be shared for the purpose of the public vote that will take place. The European Union is granted a licence to use and share your application with the general public and the official external experts for the purposes of the selection process, including the voting. The European Union has the right to use the images and visual materials and the description provided in the application for communication purposes related to the contest and beyond. Rights granted comprise the right to store, reproduce, display, publish and communicate or distribute copies in electronic or digital format, including, but not only, through the internet. Unless you have disclosed your name, the European Commission has no obligation to share your name when using or disseminating your contribution to the public. The European Union cannot be held responsible in case any submitted initiative, initiative is found to infringe third party’s rights. The European Union shall be neither responsible for the use that third parties may do of the applications or related content.
Yes

By submitting your application, you acknowledge that you read and understand that the ‘Guide to Applicants’ of the NEB Prizes 2023, available online in the website of the NEB Prizes 2023, is an integral part of this application form and that it must therefore be observed when completing and submitting your application.
Yes