Vicky Lofthouse

Sustainable design education - considering design for behavioural change

Abstract This paper reports on the development and evaluation of ‘design-behaviour’ (www.design-behaviour.co.uk), a web-based resource created to support the teaching of Design for Behavioural Change — a new field of enquiry in sustainable design research. The paper presents a brief introduction to sustainable design teaching in the Department of Design and Technology at Loughborough University. It goes on to outline the project methodology used to develop a web-based resource to centralise and disseminate teaching material on the subject of Design for Behavioural Change for a design and engineering audience. Selected findings from a literature review are introduced and the results of a pilot study (through which the authors explored how this subject could be taught to industrial/product design students) are discussed. The paper explains how the resource was developed and presents the results of an evaluative user questionnaire. It concludes with an outline of improvements made in response to feedback received and a discussion of further developments planned.

Designing for designers-ecodesign tools to inform and inspire

It has been widely recognised that design has the potential to play a valuable role in the development of environmentally superior products and in response to this a wide range of ecodesign tools have been developed. Despite this, ecodesign literature indicates that designers do not have the right mechanisms to support the integration of ecodesign into early product development. Research has suggested that many tools fail because they do not focus on design, but are aimed at strategic management or retrospective analysis. A study has highlighted that many of the tools currently available and much of the information they provide is inappropriate to the needs of designers in terms of the content they provide, the language they use, their presentation style and their style of access. This paper presents the findings from a collaborative research project, building on the results of a doctoral thesis that began to identify the requirements that designers have of ecodesign tools. The follow on project uses these findings to develop a more appropriate tool for supporting practical ecodesign activities. The research illustrates the importance of using an holistic approach in the development of tools, identifying that a combination of guidance, education and information, along with well considered content, an appropriate presentation style and an appropriate means of access are all critical to the success of tools of this nature.

Ecodesign Integration: Putting the Co into Ecodesign

Since the 1960’s industrial-design focused books, by authors such as Packard (1963) and Papanek (1971) have pioneered the need for a new agenda from the design profession by openly questioning the morality of affluent lifestyles and designing for obsolescence. Despite these efforts, the first response to environmental needs by industry was reactive and driven by legislation rather than design. Legislative requirements initially only addressed end-of-pipe problems, such as capping smoke stacks, then later called for ‘cleaner manufacturing’ from factories. Further research then recognised that for ecodesign to be successful, it needed to be considered earlier in the product development process (PDP). Attention shifted to design engineering. It was recognised that to be effective, ecodesign must be an integral part of the PDP and focus on the environmental impact of the whole life cycle of a product. In response to this, the most proactive companies started to develop solutions to aid design for disassembly, recycling and remanufacture.

A new way of understanding the customer for fibre manufacturers

Purpose – This paper describes the novel approach taken in a collaborative research project that aimed to investigate new ways of understanding the customer, for Derby‐based fibre manufacturer, Tencel Limited. The overall aim of the research described in this paper, was to help identify and establish a significant retail programme with a major UK store group for Tencel limited.Design/methodology/approach – In an iterative process, the target customer for the focus groups was identified, the main aims of the process were discussed, the test garments were identified and the empathic design tools were adapted. The team developed a programme of activities that would capture customer focused information on these critical issues.Findings – Using the Grove techniques helped to make the project transparent and inclusive, and enabled the whole team to be involved in the decision‐making process. Using these techniques have provided Tencel with a non‐scientific way of understanding how their end customer perceives t...

Exploring decision tradeoffs in sustainable design

Sustainable design involves three essential areas: economic sustainability, environmental sustainability, and social sustainability. For even the simplest of products, the complexities of these three areas and their tradeoffs cause decision-making transparency to be lost in most practical situations. The existing field of multiobjective optimization offers a natural framework to explore the tradeoffs in the sustainability space (defined by economic, environmental, and social sustainability issues), thus offering both the designer and the decision makers a means of understanding the sustainability tradeoffs. To facilitate this, a decision making approach that capitalizes on the principles and power of multiobjective optimization is presented. This paper concludes that sustainable development can indeed benefit from tradeoff characterization using multiobjective optimization techniques — even when using only basic models of sustainability. Interestingly, the unique characteristics of the three essential sustainable development areas lead to an alternative view of some traditional multiobjective optimization concepts, such as weak Pareto optimality. The sustainable engineering design of a hypodermic needle is presented as a simple hypothetical example for method demonstration and discussion.Copyright

Human-Centred Design of Products And Services for the Circular Economy – A Review

Abstract This paper aims to broaden the circular economy discussion by emphasizing the role of people. The paper combines core circular economy literature and user-centred design seed literature with illustrative case studies, to consider the positioning of design within a circular economy. The article observes that design is considered predominantly in positivist terms within a field dominated by management, engineering, ecological and environmental science literature. Conceptualizing the designer’s opportunity within the circular economy would benefit from integration of knowledge from the social sciences (sociology of consumption, consumer psychology, cultural studies, inter alia). The current orientation overlooks design as a ‘radical humanist’ paradigm and this has implications for how people are considered (from ‘users-as-subjects’ to ‘people-as-participants’) raising ethical questions about design practice within divergent circular economy framings. The article lays a basis for further research and theory-building for a fuller conceptualization of the designer’s opportunity within the circular economy.

The look of rough: Visual and tactile perceptions of cosmetically aged materials

The aesthetics of material performance within design is typically only considered up to the point of sale, a false end state in which the ‘newness’ of the product is protected by the hermetic packaging in which it is sold. Beyond this, the ‘ageing’ of a material is thought of only in terms of utility or easily measured technical parameters such as durability or toughness, and rarely reflects upon, or accounts for, the user’s experiential relationship with the material. Here, we explore changes in tactile and visual perceptions when sample materials have been artificially aged through the application of a taxonomy of damage observed from real world products. This paper argues that to expand our current knowledge in material culture and to assist in providing a more nuanced understanding of the user’s long-term relationship with materials, we, as designers, need to observe, record and reflect upon attitudinal reactions to aged and used materials.

Carbon footprinting for design education

The use of Carbon Footprinting as a metric for gauging the sustainability of products has gained momentum in the past five to ten years. As such it needs to be introduced to design students studying sustainable design modules, despite the recognised limitations of the approach. Following the completion of the literature review, a teaching package comprising an introductory lecture, the new carbon footprinting tool – ‘Dirty Carbon’ and a practical workshop were developed. The new tool was assessed with design students against an industry leader called ‘Sustainable Minds’. Students (n=42) were provided with contextual information on what a carbon footprinting is by attending the lecture, then taught how to use the two tools and asked to perform a full carbon footprint analysis of a product using both tools within a workshop setting. The outputs from the project showed that Dirty Carbon outperformed the market leader in a teaching context. Further testing through end of semester exams demonstrated that the new teaching package had contributed to a high level of knowledge attainment regarding carbon footprinting.