Project 1 - Little Hamlet by IKEA

Fostering Conscious Purchasing Behaviour for First-Time Birthing Parent in London

For our theme, "Sustainable Living at Home," we want to focus on one of the most consumption-heavy periods in life: welcoming a first baby. For many new parents, the new roles of caregiver, teacher, and planner for a child's future create anxieties about the little one’s well-being and development, which can lead to emotionally charged purchasing decisions that may not be in the best interests of the family or the planet. 

And as a baby quickly grows, so does the pile of stuff, some of which was essential, but quickly outgrown, and others of which turned out not to be as useful as the parents thought. The cycle of over-purchasing and discarding is stressful for families and harmful to the environment. 

Based on the insights from our synthesis, we came to a set of hypotheses that can inspire interventions to better support with the transitions and decisions of early parenthood.

We enriched our collective understanding around first-time parenthood and sustainable living and unified our ideas. Utilising a synthesis map, we consolidated the overarching themes to explore ripple effects on the cycle of new parents’ purchasing decisions and consumerism.

So, how might we help first-time birthing parents feel more confident and secure in their parenting abilities while relying less on products, making life at home more sustainable for both family and planet?

After we processed the inputs from our co-design sessions, we converged on a few key ideas. Now it was time to build out the concepts in a greater level of detail, compare, merge, and finally...vote! 

Although it was a difficult– and very close– vote, an idea called Little Hamlet came out on top. In our voting process, we inventoried and systematically considered a range of factors of importance, including alignment to each of our insights, each dimension of the brief, and being systemically informed (sustainable, long-term change over a quick fix). Plus... Little Hamlet was Marina’s conception, and given she’s the only mum on our team, we all had a pretty good feeling about this. 😉

To best align to our participating mum’s schedules and constraints, we met mum’s 1-1, at a time and location of their choice, and engaged them in an insights validation and co-creation session, where we asked them to react to and engage first with our insights, and then with our ideas. During this process, we also asked them to contribute their additions, changes, and new ideas. We wanted to be sure we designed Little Hamlet with mum’s, not for them.

We tested Little Hamlet with mothers from our research, who responded positively, saying the service would ease their concerns about safety and accessibility while allowing them to be active without guilt. Business owners and professionals saw value in Little Hamlet’s certification, recognising its benefits for community spaces. Librarians highlighted its potential to enhance inclusivity and engagement, reinforcing its role in fostering stronger community connections.

Our project was selected as a finalist in the global Service Design Challenge, with stakeholders—including IKEA and SDC—praising our innovative use of service design methodologies and the depth of our insights. The project highlighted the power of research-driven design in shaping sustainable consumer behaviors, offering a tangible solution to reduce waste and reshape societal norms around parenthood and consumption.