MIIPS Students Combine Passion for Innovation and Design to Create Sustainable Solutions – Integrated Innovation Institute

The Student Service Design Challenge is a competition that challenges students to design a service that will change the world for good. 

The challenge invites students to redesign business processes to improve them and innovate for the future. Students offer a fresh perspective to the industry that is rare to find and these solutions create an impact for the businesses involved.

Undergraduate and graduate students form teams, read the design briefs, and choose the one that resonates with them most deeply. Throughout their journey, the teams are mentored by representatives from the challenge and ultimately pitch a final service design solution to industry sponsors.    

This year, Philips, Ikea, Laerdal, and ISDIN provided the briefs, which focused on fragmented healthcare, sustainable living, emergency response, and packaging waste reduction. 

Five Master of Integrated Innovation for Products & Services (MIIPS) students, Sri Lakshmi Pakhala, Suvarsha Rai, Isha Raghuvanshi, Heena Barhate, and Dev Vijh, formed Team InsideOut.

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“We joined the challenge because of our shared love for service design and our desire to address real-world issues through innovative solutions.”

The team came together naturally after reaching out to each other and finding their shared passions for innovation and sustainability.

They also saw the great opportunities the competition offered them. With the promised value of mentorship, collaboration with industry leaders, and industry experience, there was no question that they needed to join. 

The challenge team InsideOut chose was “How to turn the tide on the packaging waste epidemic?” This question was posed by ISDIN, a beauty company that sought to reduce its impact on the environment by reducing its product waste.

“We were deeply motivated by the environmental impact of packaging waste and saw this challenge as an opportunity to make a meaningful difference.”

With their knowledge, they were able to understand the economic impacts of their solution on the industry and consumer demands, which they had to balance.

To balance all these varying demands the students found the MIIPS curriculum to be very helpful because they were able to put their interdisciplinary skill set to use to understand the whole problem. 

“From a design perspective, we applied human-centered design principles to deeply understand user needs and behaviors. On the business side, our knowledge of market analysis, business model development, and strategic thinking helped us ensure that our solutions were not only desirable but also viable and sustainable.”

Their solution was Harmony, a service designed to promote a “circular economy in beauty packaging.”

Harmony promotes refillable and recyclable product packaging. To encourage consumers to participate in sustainable efforts by reusing containers, there are QR codes on the packaging that unlock rewards for their recycling and refilling efforts. Harmony allows consumers and ISDIN to have shared ownership over the product by creating this refillable model and sharing responsibility for their impact on the planet.

To create incentive with their service for their customers to participate, they used the traditional idea of a reward system to create habit loops to encourage sustainable practices. They looked at both the front and back end of their product to understand it. 

Harmony also includes AI-driven quizzes that help consumers with their personalized skincare routines. This integration collects and analyzes data to understand the consumers and help create more sustainable outcomes. 

A Summary of Harmony

“By fostering a culture of sustainability and making eco-friendly choices rewarding and accessible, Harmony minimizes environmental impact due to packaging waste.”

To build their solution and compete in the challenge, the team focused on human and planet-centered design principles to guide them. They considered the planet as one of their critical stakeholders, which meant they had to understand the interactions and the consequences that actions would have on the environment. 

Overall the product’s goals were to educate and inform, build consumer trust, enhance convenience with recycling programs, and offer incentives. By empowering consumers through the creation of Harmony for ISDIN, Team InsideOut addressed crucial sustainability issues to change the future of our current waste epidemic. 

Throughout their process they interviewed ​​Tara Fothergill, the brand director of Pact. Additional resources they had was the mentorship of Mike Yee, a product designer at IBM, and Aman Sinha (MIIPS ‘23) who was a previous winner of the competition. 

For their idea of Harmony, Team InsideOut received third place in the competition.

Through this process, they learned many different design methodologies and how they could be applied to real-world problems that companies have. 

“Participating in the Student Service Design Challenge taught us invaluable lessons about innovation, collaboration, and resilience. Working together as a team, we discovered the power of diverse perspectives and the strength that comes from leveraging each member’s unique skills and experiences.”

After the challenge, the team felt even more committed to reinforcing sustainability through innovation to create an impact on the planet.

Learn more about Harmony: