46
O. Rexfelt and A. Selvefors
Lastly, it needs to be acknowledged that this toolkit only provides some of the
tools that a company could (and maybe should) use to design for product circularity.
Although using the toolkit may result in new insights about users, and novel ideas
that could be attractive to people, one needs to ensure that these ideas are not disadvantageous, e.g. from a business or a sustainability perspective. These perspectives
need to be considered as well, for instance by using other specialised tools to in-depth
explore different business cases and conduct life-cycle analyses.
3.4.2 Implications for Design Practice
In practice, the proposed toolkit has potential to support design processes by aiding
designers and other agents to apply a user perspective on product circularity. As
described by de los Rios and Charnley (2016), a user-centred perspective on circularity entails reflecting on how the company can contribute to the consumers’
processes, and not the other way around. The toolkit has potential to aid such design
work in several ways. It includes an educational tool which helps designers and
other agents to embrace a user perspective on product circularity, explorative tools
that support user needs elicitation, as well as ideation and evaluation tools that support
hands-on design activities with a user focus. The toolkit will hence facilitate usercentred design processes, i.e. development processes that proceeds with the user as
the centre of focus (George 2003), aimed at developing new products and services
for the circular economy.
The use of the toolkit can contribute to new successful designs in two main ways.
First, by grounding the development of new products and services on user insights,
the toolkit will increase the likelihood that the designs will be accepted and adopted
by the target group and decrease the risk of market failure. Second, using the toolkit
will also enable companies to increase their value propositions and provide products
and services fit to compete on a future market where linear consumption has lost its
momentum. Designing products so that they, for instance, become easier for people
to sell on the second-hand market is not a priority among companies today, since it
rarely makes the products more attractive when sold as new. However, in a future
with fierce competition for resources, more people might contemplate how to pass
their products on already before buying them, which in turn can make companies
designing for people’s circular consumption processes more competitive.
3.4.3 Future Work
The proposed toolkit in its current form provides new tools for designers to address
product circularity from a user perspective, and the response so far has been highly
positive from the practitioners and students who have applied it. It is however in need
of additional testing and possibly also further development.
O. Rexfelt and A. Selvefors
Lastly, it needs to be acknowledged that this toolkit only provides some of the
tools that a company could (and maybe should) use to design for product circularity.
Although using the toolkit may result in new insights about users, and novel ideas
that could be attractive to people, one needs to ensure that these ideas are not disadvantageous, e.g. from a business or a sustainability perspective. These perspectives
need to be considered as well, for instance by using other specialised tools to in-depth
explore different business cases and conduct life-cycle analyses.
3.4.2 Implications for Design Practice
In practice, the proposed toolkit has potential to support design processes by aiding
designers and other agents to apply a user perspective on product circularity. As
described by de los Rios and Charnley (2016), a user-centred perspective on circularity entails reflecting on how the company can contribute to the consumers’
processes, and not the other way around. The toolkit has potential to aid such design
work in several ways. It includes an educational tool which helps designers and
other agents to embrace a user perspective on product circularity, explorative tools
that support user needs elicitation, as well as ideation and evaluation tools that support
hands-on design activities with a user focus. The toolkit will hence facilitate usercentred design processes, i.e. development processes that proceeds with the user as
the centre of focus (George 2003), aimed at developing new products and services
for the circular economy.
The use of the toolkit can contribute to new successful designs in two main ways.
First, by grounding the development of new products and services on user insights,
the toolkit will increase the likelihood that the designs will be accepted and adopted
by the target group and decrease the risk of market failure. Second, using the toolkit
will also enable companies to increase their value propositions and provide products
and services fit to compete on a future market where linear consumption has lost its
momentum. Designing products so that they, for instance, become easier for people
to sell on the second-hand market is not a priority among companies today, since it
rarely makes the products more attractive when sold as new. However, in a future
with fierce competition for resources, more people might contemplate how to pass
their products on already before buying them, which in turn can make companies
designing for people’s circular consumption processes more competitive.
3.4.3 Future Work
The proposed toolkit in its current form provides new tools for designers to address
product circularity from a user perspective, and the response so far has been highly
positive from the practitioners and students who have applied it. It is however in need
of additional testing and possibly also further development.