Evaluating sustainability based on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is a complex but purposeful approach with a broad field of application. In order to handle the complexity of the SDGs and achieve flexibility at the same time, this paper introduces a three‐step evaluation system based on the SDGs for the assessment of the sustainability of innovations. It was used to assess four cases of South African frugal innovation with the conclusion that all four examined cases were sustainable, indicating an interrelation between the frugality and the sustainability of an innovation. The framework was reviewed and revised several times and tested successfully and so far has proven to be applicable to a wide spectrum of innovations.

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The humanities and social sciences discovered the field of visual research in the 1990s and proclaimed several “turns” to emphasize the importance of visuality (or the visual mode) and shape the future direction of research: imagic turn, pictorial turn, iconic turn, and visualistic turn. Almost 30 years later, the individual lifeworlds are heavily influenced by the digitalization of technologies and the globalization of material and immaterial goods – products, ideas, and imaginations that rely on certain ways of visual presentation, images, and visual media in general. The individual lifeworlds are increasingly based on digitally mediated visuals and the interaction with as well as the communication using them (often intertwined with direct ways to interact, like touch, speech, or gestures). Visual-based alternatives to commonly used methods like interviews and surveys are discussed, finishing off with an introduction to the methodology of the creative interview, a qualitative instrument to gain and explicate information, and imaginations using respondent-produced sketches and drawings.

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