In their master thesis project, Sara Lindgren and Olle Trens investigated how sharing of equipment and material within the cultural scene of West Sweden could be encouraged and increased through a digital platform, Returkultur. As part of their user studies they conducted workshops to explore user needs and requirements using early versions of the Circular journeys exploration pack included in the Use2Use design toolkit. The tool supported workshop participants to map and create circular user journeys, and foresee potential problematic areas related to the use of a digital platform for sharing. Following the workshops, Sara and Olle were able to identify important needs throughout a defined user journey that helped them ideate new functions for the digital platform.

Based on their ideas and evaluations of early concepts, they designed a combined service and digital platform to make sharing of equipment and material easier in the cultural sector. Sara and Olle describe their proposed service as a sharing hub with many similarities to a rental business, where the equipment and material is acquired through partnerships with big cultural institutions. The digital platform can be seen as a combination of a webshop and a hotel booking site – two concepts that many users are already familiar with.