The use of digital technologies in Product Service Systems (PSSs) has increased in recent years. More and more smart devices are used in these models, collecting significant amounts of data to provide personalized and responsive products and services. However, data extraction has been causing disruptions in the social sphere, manipulating users, threatening democratic processes, and harming the social dimension of sustainability. To mitigate these problems associated with user data, some solutions on the market claim to take a more ethical approach. This article presents the preliminary results of a study aiming to understand what features in these solutions may favour the resilience of democratic processes and reduction in user manipulation due to personal data extraction and personalized activity. It also examines how designers can use them to develop smart PSSs that incorporate these elements and features in their process. Based on a literature review, three key elements relevant to personal data and democracy were assessed and applied to analyze 30 cases. The results provided a preliminary list of 46 features and 15 strategies for designers to embed these elements in the design of smart PSSs, as well as a conceptual framework. The study concludes with recommendations for future research.

Digital technologies have become essential in most parts of the world. Being leveraged by the covid-19 pandemic, they have been used to scale up and create new products and services in different sectors. It is a shared understanding that these disruptive technologies have caused profound changes in the structure of society and, particularly, opening discussions about ethics and democracy. The Sustainable Product-Service (S.PSS) and Distributed Economy (DE) systems models are win-win opportunities for sustainability, not only in the economic and environmental but also, in the social dimension, sometimes neglected. Despite the growing application of digital technologies, there are few discussions about their socio-ethical interference in the design of S.PSS and DE. This article is a systematic literature review to map the benefits and risks of digitization for the social dimension in these models. The selection criteria are based on six design strategies for the social dimension in S.PSS and DE developed within a set of projects conducted by the Learning Network on Sustainability (LeNS). This study aims to map and reflect on what is presented in the articles through those consolidated socio-ethical system design strategies. As a result, there is pointed a gap in ethics as a strategy for design in the digital era.

Smart Mobile Devices (SMD)—including hardware devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and wearables; the software systems that animate them; and the data-communication infrastructure that connects them—pose increasing sustainability challenges due to their short lifespans, high resource demands, and growing e-waste. While Sustainable Product–Service Systems (S.PSS) have been applied in various sectors to support environmental goals, limited research has addressed their application in the context of SMD. This study aims to explore how S.PSS can be tailored to support sustainability in the SMD sector. For that, it combines a literature review with a multiple-case analysis of seventeen commercial offerings to develop a conceptual framework refined through six expert interviews. Cases were coded using the classical PSS typology and other sector-specific criteria and subsequently clustered in a polarity diagram to identify designable patterns, underpinning the conceptual framework. The study contributes an S.PSS-SMD framework comprising a sector-tailored classification and sixteen archetypal models, operationalized in an archetypal map with potential opportunities. Theoretically, the study offers a sector-grounded operationalization that extends S.PSS design theory to digital product–service ecosystems. It provides a strategic decision aid for designing business models, service bundles, stakeholder roles, and lifecycle responsibilities to pursue win–win environmental and economic sustainability.