3 A Toolkit for Designing Products and Services …
35
a detailed description see (de los Rios and Charnley 2016; Camacho-Otero et al.
2019).
In 2016, the work to embody this perspective into a design toolkit was initiated.
First, different potentially valuable tool components, covering e.g. analysis of use
and ideation support, were developed. These early versions of the tools were used
as a basis for exploring what content that would be valuable to designers and other
relevant agents.
The initial tools, as well as their subsequent iterations, see Fig. 3.1, have been
explored and evaluated through three main research activities during 2016–2019.
First, workshops were conducted during 2016 and 2017 with designers, product
developers and product managers from six companies (in total four workshops, each
with 6–8 company representatives) to verify the need for the toolkit and to identify the
requirements on it. The workshops were arranged in collaboration with the Swedish
companies Transformator Design and Hultafors Group. The participants were asked
to explore circular consumption design opportunities related to their product and
service offers aided by early versions of the tools. The generated ideas and the
participants’ experiences of using the tools were discussed afterwards, both by the
participants and the workshop organisers, and also analysed by the research team.
Second, refined versions of the tools were tested in workshops with design students
in courses on Sustainable Design at Chalmers University of Technology (altogether
on six occasions during 2017–2019, each with circa 30 students). The tasks were
to gain an understanding of what circular consumption entail for people and come
up with innovative ideas to make circular consumption preferable. The generated
ideas and the tools’ potential to support idea generation in comparison to another
tool which the students had previously used, the Ecodesign strategy wheel (Selvefors
et al. 2018), were discussed afterwards.
Third, refined versions of the tools were also tested by design students in their
master thesis projects (in total by 13 students in seven teams) to identify design
opportunities and suggest design concepts. The thesis projects concerned the design
of a mobile application for sharing (Brezet and van Hemel 1997), a digital platform for sharing assets within the culture sector (Chalandon and Lindborg 2019),
an autonomous delivery droid for collaborative consumption (Lindgren and Trens
2019), a tent for a rental service (Janebäck and Kristiansson 2019), a sofa for a furniture subscription service (Hagman and Wendt 2018), earphones for a rental service
(Rosman 2018), and cars for a sharing service (Philipson and Wallner 2017). The
experiences of the thesis students were monitored throughout their projects and all
students were interviewed retrospectively to gain insight into their use of the tools
and the challenges and implications they had experienced.
Through these activities, insights regarding the tools’ potential value and usability
were gained from both academia and industry and opportunities to improve the tools
were identified. The tools were adjusted accordingly and packaged into the toolkit
proposed in this paper.
35
a detailed description see (de los Rios and Charnley 2016; Camacho-Otero et al.
2019).
In 2016, the work to embody this perspective into a design toolkit was initiated.
First, different potentially valuable tool components, covering e.g. analysis of use
and ideation support, were developed. These early versions of the tools were used
as a basis for exploring what content that would be valuable to designers and other
relevant agents.
The initial tools, as well as their subsequent iterations, see Fig. 3.1, have been
explored and evaluated through three main research activities during 2016–2019.
First, workshops were conducted during 2016 and 2017 with designers, product
developers and product managers from six companies (in total four workshops, each
with 6–8 company representatives) to verify the need for the toolkit and to identify the
requirements on it. The workshops were arranged in collaboration with the Swedish
companies Transformator Design and Hultafors Group. The participants were asked
to explore circular consumption design opportunities related to their product and
service offers aided by early versions of the tools. The generated ideas and the
participants’ experiences of using the tools were discussed afterwards, both by the
participants and the workshop organisers, and also analysed by the research team.
Second, refined versions of the tools were tested in workshops with design students
in courses on Sustainable Design at Chalmers University of Technology (altogether
on six occasions during 2017–2019, each with circa 30 students). The tasks were
to gain an understanding of what circular consumption entail for people and come
up with innovative ideas to make circular consumption preferable. The generated
ideas and the tools’ potential to support idea generation in comparison to another
tool which the students had previously used, the Ecodesign strategy wheel (Selvefors
et al. 2018), were discussed afterwards.
Third, refined versions of the tools were also tested by design students in their
master thesis projects (in total by 13 students in seven teams) to identify design
opportunities and suggest design concepts. The thesis projects concerned the design
of a mobile application for sharing (Brezet and van Hemel 1997), a digital platform for sharing assets within the culture sector (Chalandon and Lindborg 2019),
an autonomous delivery droid for collaborative consumption (Lindgren and Trens
2019), a tent for a rental service (Janebäck and Kristiansson 2019), a sofa for a furniture subscription service (Hagman and Wendt 2018), earphones for a rental service
(Rosman 2018), and cars for a sharing service (Philipson and Wallner 2017). The
experiences of the thesis students were monitored throughout their projects and all
students were interviewed retrospectively to gain insight into their use of the tools
and the challenges and implications they had experienced.
Through these activities, insights regarding the tools’ potential value and usability
were gained from both academia and industry and opportunities to improve the tools
were identified. The tools were adjusted accordingly and packaged into the toolkit
proposed in this paper.