3 A Toolkit for Designing Products and Services …
47
Additional testing will be conducted to explore the tools’ usefulness, user friendliness, their fit with companies’ current design processes and other tools in use, and
their potential to contribute to new innovative designs fit for circular consumption.
Activities to test the tools will be carried out with representatives from industry in
upcoming research projects but also with design students.
In addition to further testing, future work will also include exploring if any additional tools are required in order to cover additional aspects relevant from a user
perspective, which are not already covered by the proposed five tools. This work
should, among other activities, include studying people’s consumption processes in
more depth to gain insights into other aspects that are relevant to address when aiming
to design products and services fit for circular consumption.
3.5 Concluding Remarks
This paper introduces the Use2Use design toolkit which should be seen as complementary to previously suggested tools for circular design. In contrast to other tools,
the proposed toolkit and its five tools provides support to explore circular design
opportunities from a user perspective. The toolkit will specifically aid designers and
other agents to embrace a Use2Use mindset, to explore user needs, to pinpoint relevant consumption-related design challenges, and to identify new design opportunities
to support circular consumption.
Acknowledgements The toolkit presented in this paper has been developed by the authors.
This would not have been possible without the valuable contributions of a number of people:
Helena Strömberg and Sara Renström at Chalmers University of Technology; Stina Behrens, Kajsa
Davidsson and Maria Bergström at the service design firm Transformator Design (today the business design studio itch); and Daniel Ekfjorden with colleagues at Hultafors Group. The authors
would also like to thank the students and company representatives that have taken part in testing
the different versions of the tools and provided valuable feedback.
The toolkit was developed as part of a research project supported by the Kamprad Family
Foundation. The funding body was not involved in the conduct of the research or in the preparation
of the article.
References
Almefelt L, Rexfelt O (2017) A tool for assessing customers’ barriers for consuming remanufactured
products. In: Proceedings of the 21st international conference on engineering design (ICED
17) Vol 1: Resource sensitive design, design research applications and case studies. Vancouver,
Canada, 21–25 August 2017
Bakker C, den Hollander M, Van Hinte E, Zljlstra Y (2014) Products that last: product design for
circular business models. TU Delft Library, Delft, The Netherlands
Bocken NM, de Pauw I, Bakker C, van der Grinten B (2016) Product design and business model
strategies for a circular economy. J Ind Prod Eng 33(5):308–320
47
Additional testing will be conducted to explore the tools’ usefulness, user friendliness, their fit with companies’ current design processes and other tools in use, and
their potential to contribute to new innovative designs fit for circular consumption.
Activities to test the tools will be carried out with representatives from industry in
upcoming research projects but also with design students.
In addition to further testing, future work will also include exploring if any additional tools are required in order to cover additional aspects relevant from a user
perspective, which are not already covered by the proposed five tools. This work
should, among other activities, include studying people’s consumption processes in
more depth to gain insights into other aspects that are relevant to address when aiming
to design products and services fit for circular consumption.
3.5 Concluding Remarks
This paper introduces the Use2Use design toolkit which should be seen as complementary to previously suggested tools for circular design. In contrast to other tools,
the proposed toolkit and its five tools provides support to explore circular design
opportunities from a user perspective. The toolkit will specifically aid designers and
other agents to embrace a Use2Use mindset, to explore user needs, to pinpoint relevant consumption-related design challenges, and to identify new design opportunities
to support circular consumption.
Acknowledgements The toolkit presented in this paper has been developed by the authors.
This would not have been possible without the valuable contributions of a number of people:
Helena Strömberg and Sara Renström at Chalmers University of Technology; Stina Behrens, Kajsa
Davidsson and Maria Bergström at the service design firm Transformator Design (today the business design studio itch); and Daniel Ekfjorden with colleagues at Hultafors Group. The authors
would also like to thank the students and company representatives that have taken part in testing
the different versions of the tools and provided valuable feedback.
The toolkit was developed as part of a research project supported by the Kamprad Family
Foundation. The funding body was not involved in the conduct of the research or in the preparation
of the article.
References
Almefelt L, Rexfelt O (2017) A tool for assessing customers’ barriers for consuming remanufactured
products. In: Proceedings of the 21st international conference on engineering design (ICED
17) Vol 1: Resource sensitive design, design research applications and case studies. Vancouver,
Canada, 21–25 August 2017
Bakker C, den Hollander M, Van Hinte E, Zljlstra Y (2014) Products that last: product design for
circular business models. TU Delft Library, Delft, The Netherlands
Bocken NM, de Pauw I, Bakker C, van der Grinten B (2016) Product design and business model
strategies for a circular economy. J Ind Prod Eng 33(5):308–320