Sharing the Load

2014 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Muireann McMahon ◽  
Tracy Bhamra
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
Product Design ◽  
Sustainable Design ◽  
Design Practice ◽  
Pedagogical Innovation ◽  
Building Capacity ◽  
Sustainable Future ◽  
International Collaborative

Today there is an impetus on professional designers to practice in a responsible and ‘sustainable' manner, with equal emphasis on society, economy and environment (Fletcher & Dewberry, 2002). This is an enormous challenge as the competencies needed to develop these types of holistic solutions are extremely complex. This chapter describes a Pedagogical Innovation in the discipline of Product Design regarding the important role international collaborative projects can play in introducing these competencies into design practice. Iterative cycles of Action Research describe three such projects. A brief over-view of the project logistics is followed by an analysis of the participant experiences. The findings show that building capacity for sustainable design, through collaboration, is not a simple or ‘one size fits all' approach. The research learning advises on how future projects should be structured and delivered and how the competencies acquired could bring about a change in designers behaviours towards a more sustainable future.

scholarly journals Preparing the way for mainstream sustainable product design

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vicky Lofthouse
Keyword(s):  
Product Design ◽  
Design Thinking ◽  
Sustainable Design ◽  
Educational Setting ◽  
Actual Situation ◽  
Design Practice ◽  
Sustainable Product Design ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
Sustainable Product ◽  
Design Students

This paper proposes that there is a need to prepare undergraduate design students to be responsible practitioners when they enter the workplace. The multi-faceted approach adopted by the Design School at Loughborough University to achieve this is presented. The paper outlines and reflects on the differences between the idealistic environment provided within an educational setting and the actual situation in the design industry, where there is little evidence of mainstream sustainable design practice. The paper concludes that it is valuable to provide students with a range of skills that support sustainable design thinking, even if they are not currently required by the design industry because doing so turns the students into informed individuals with the potential to lead the next generation of design practitioners.

scholarly journals Emotionally Sustainable Design Toolbox: A Card-Based Design Tool for Designing Products with an Extended Life Based on the User’s Emotional Needs

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (18) ◽  
pp. 10152
Author(s):  
Jianfeng Wu ◽  
Chuchu Jin ◽  
Lekai Zhang ◽  
Li Zhang ◽  
Ming Li ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
Product Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Sustainable Design ◽  
New Products ◽  
Design Tool ◽  
Emotional Attachment ◽  
Design Practice ◽  
Emotional Needs ◽  
Product Lifecycle

Emotionally sustainable design helps users to develop an emotional attachment to a product and motivates them to continue using it, thus extending the product lifecycle, minimizing the need for new products and achieving product sustainability. However, the existing relevant design principles are still very scattered, and they could not effectively guide the emotionally sustainable design practice in a systematic way. We proposed an emotionally sustainable design (ESD) toolbox for product design based on the literature review and expert argumentation. The toolbox consists of seven themes and 20 principles under the three levels of emotional design. The usability of the ESD toolbox was then validated through design practice for the teapot product. The result shows that the ESD toolbox improved the efficiency of the sustainable design process and was helpful to the product’s sustainability.

Building capacity in consumer-run organizations through action research

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Brown ◽  
M. Shepherd ◽  
S. Wituk ◽  
A. Commer ◽  
V. Collins ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
Building Capacity

Personal, political, professional

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Niki WALLACE
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
The Political ◽  
Reflective Practices ◽  
Design Practice ◽  
Participant Engagement ◽  
Auto Ethnography

It is widely agreed that in order to contribute to transitions towards sustainability, both practitioners and design itself must also transition. This paper presents findings from the first two years of transition in my Australian-based design practice. The paper explores what this transition has required of me personally, politically, and professionally, and draws on cases from my PhD. The PhD and paper are both part of an analytic auto-ethnography of my practice’s transition from ‘making greener things’ towards design for transitions. The projects discussed use ethnography, action research and reflective practices in their temporal approaches. This paper explores how slower methods such as transition design and autonomous design can extend the political reach of a design practice and discusses sacrifice and the financial stabilisation that comes from enveloping old practices within the new. The analysis presented here also reflects on my experiences practicing design for transitions and on data collected through participant engagement.

scholarly journals A commentary on “First-hand experience of accessible information”

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 88-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Buell
Keyword(s):  
Learning Disabilities ◽  
Product Design ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Initial Product ◽  
Building Capacity ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Accessible Information ◽  
Constructing Knowledge ◽  
Attention To Detail

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a commentary on Mander's paper on people with learning disabilities’ first-hand experience of accessible information. Design/methodology/approach – The commentary reflects on some of the findings presented by Mander and builds on these, with particular emphasis on what it means to understand information. Findings – Everything from initial product design to building capacity and constructing knowledge requires expertise and attention to detail. Originality/value – There are no easy fix solutions to achieving understanding of information for people who have learning disabilities.

Application Research of Design Ethics in the Product Design

2012 ◽  
Vol 271-272 ◽  
pp. 787-790
Author(s):  
Rong Biao Yu
Keyword(s):  
Product Design ◽  
Market Research ◽  
Structure Design ◽  
Design Practice ◽  
Application Research ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Design Ethics ◽  
The People ◽  
Product Function ◽  
Computer Aided

Through the analysis of design ethics principle and content, the design concept of humanism, sustainable development and harmonious are applied to the Touch mouse product design practice, and analyzed the its positive significance in market research, product design positioning, concept sketches design, computer aided industrial design and shell structure design, effectively avoid the appear of various product function, complex modelling, large energy consumption and pollution mode, so as to design a fashion practical and green environmental protection Touch type new mouse, and provide a high quality IT products for consumers. Finally, the goal of balance and harmony between the people, resources and environment is realized.

A Form Generation System Based on Design Thinking Patterns

2011 ◽  
Vol 201-203 ◽  
pp. 1147-1150
Author(s):  
Teng Wen Chang ◽  
Sei Wo Winger Tseng
Keyword(s):  
Complex System ◽  
Focus Group ◽  
Product Design ◽  
Design Thinking ◽  
Experimental System ◽  
Design System ◽  
Design Practice ◽  
Generation System ◽  
Practical Situation ◽  
Form Generation

Generative design system is a complex system that often focus on the technical and complex details thus away from building a system from the product designer’s thinking patterns. In addition, by focusing on the mechanism, the system is hard to construct and difficult to use for practical situation. Horizontal/vertical design thinking patterns are often used in product design practice, thus how designers make decision affect the generation reasoning. With the cognitive design researches on design thinking patterns, two research stages (experiment and implementation) are conducted and policy/generation rules are discovered during the experiment with 30 5-year design experts as focus group. An experimental system called thinking pattern-based generation system, a.l.a. ThinkGen is developed for testing the hypothesis.

A Modular Design Approach to Support Sustainable Design

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cari R. Bryant ◽  
Karthik L. Sivaramakrishnan ◽  
Michael Van Wie ◽  
Robert B. Stone ◽  
Daniel A. McAdams
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Product Design ◽  
Modular Design ◽  
Sustainable Design ◽  
Consumer Products ◽  
Design Approach ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Conceptual Design Phase ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Pair Wise Comparison

This paper presents a redesign method supporting sustainable design of products. The method correlates product modularity with various life cycle directions at the conceptual stage of design. In the case of product redesign, the modular design approach allows designers to focus on increasing the sustainability of a product in terms of recyclability, disassembly and reduction of resource usage at the conceptual stage. By stepping back to the conceptual design phase and analyzing the product free from its current embodiment solutions, the scope of redesign and the potential product improvement increases. At this stage of design, the comprehension of the relationship between the various life cycle aspects of the product and the product design is essential. The elimination preference index (EPI) metric, calculated by pair-wise comparison of various factors governing the product design, quantifies the effect of redesign alternatives on product sustainability. The method is applied to the redesign of twelve small-scale consumer products, of which one example is presented here. In all cases, the redesigned products exhibited enhancement in modularity and part count reduction.

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