Justin Matejka
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Where Next?: Exploring Opportunity Areas and Tool Functions for Sustainable Product Design

Nicole B. Damen, Ye Wang, Justin Matejka, Christine Toh
January 2022 · International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC)
Where Next?: Exploring Opportunity Areas and Tool Functions for Sustainable Product Design

Abstract

Shifts in policy and consumers’ awareness have raised the importance of sustainability in product design, inspiring the development of tools that support more sustainable design. However, such tools are not adopted as quickly as expected. To understand what tools designers consider useful, we explored how much control designers perceive over existing design strategies, and how much impact they think these strategies have. We used a survey (n = 42) and follow-up interviews (n = 12) to ask hardware product design professionals what areas they see opportunities in, and what functions they look for in tools. The findings reveal that designers perceive impact and control differently in different opportunity areas, so to increase the likelihood of adoption, tools should incorporate features that reflect those differences. Designers report the least control over aspects related to manufacturing, and also rate these as having low impact on sustainability. In contrast, designers attribute high control and impact to aspects related to their design practice and their organizations’ business model, which are tightly linked. To address these issues, designers pointed towards tools that improve information transparency, support decision-making, predict results, share knowledge, and discover user needs. Regardless of how much control designers have, they care about tools and strategies that are highly impactful.

DOI PDF

Figures

FIGURE 1. The opportunity areas that designers discussed when ex- plaining their groupings for control and impact. The size of the circle corresponds to the number of times this opportunity area was mentioned, while the axis indicate how often this opportunity area was mentioned in relation to how much control (horizontal x-axis) and impact (vertical y-axis).
FIGURE 2. Types of tool functions participants suggested to assist sustainable design efforts. The size of the circle corresponds to the num- ber of times this type of function was mentioned, while the axis indicate how often this type of function was mentioned in response to tooling to increase control (horizontal x-axis) and impact (vertical y-axis).

BibTeX

@proceedings{10.1115/DETC2022-89638,
    author = {Damen, Nicole B. and Wang, Ye and Matejka, Justin and Toh, Christine},
    title = {Where Next?: Exploring Opportunity Areas and Tool Functions for Sustainable Product Design},
    volume = {Volume 6: 34th International Conference on Design Theory and Methodology (DTM)},
    series = {International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference},
    pages = {V006T06A007},
    year = {2022},
    month = {08},
    abstract = {Shifts in policy and consumers’ awareness have raised the importance of sustainability in product design, inspiring the development of tools that support more sustainable design. However, such tools are not adopted as quickly as expected. To understand what tools designers consider useful, we explored how much control designers perceive over existing design strategies, and how much impact they think these strategies have. We used a survey (n = 42) and follow-up interviews (n = 12) to ask hardware product design professionals what areas they see opportunities in, and what functions they look for in tools. The findings reveal that designers perceive impact and control differently in different opportunity areas, so to increase the likelihood of adoption, tools should incorporate features that reflect those differences. Designers report the least control over aspects related to manufacturing, and also rate these as having low impact on sustainability. In contrast, designers attribute high control and impact to aspects related to their design practice and their organizations’ business model, which are tightly linked. To address these issues, designers pointed towards tools that improve information transparency, support decision-making, predict results, share knowledge, and discover user needs. Regardless of how much control designers have, they care about tools and strategies that are highly impactful.},
    doi = {10.1115/DETC2022-89638},
    url = {https://doi.org/10.1115/DETC2022-89638},
    eprint = {https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IDETC-CIE/proceedings-pdf/IDETC-CIE2022/86267/V006T06A007/6943412/v006t06a007-detc2022-89638.pdf},
}