Abstract
Product design and development are considered to be essential in the transition toward a circular economy. Circular product design requires strategies and methods that support a holistic and systems approach considering the complete lifecycle of a product. In order to support designers and businesses in going circular, various theoretical frameworks, methods, and strategies for circular design have been conceived in recent years. Yet, the need for more evidence of how to help circular design in practice remains. This study aims to bridge the gap between theory and practice in the field of circular design by proposing a tool to help companies in the decision-making process toward circular product development. The proposed tool was tested during a workshop with an individual company that is dealing with the complexity of diverse product ranges and business units with often conflicting priorities. Workshop participants used the tool to navigate a plethora of circular product design strategies and engaged in active group discussions across business units to identify priorities for their company’s new circular product guidelines. The tool was deemed useful for comprehending the field of circular design practice worldwide, as well as for evaluating the circularity level of the own business. However, the interdependence of design strategies posed some challenges. Various design strategies remained rather abstract, and thus hindered mutual understanding. Therefore, there is room for improvement in terms of further refining the terminology and reexamining the user interface of the tool.
Keywords
circular economy, circular product design, design strategies, design tools
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2023.324
Citation
Van Kaathoven, D.,and Mizuno, D.(2023) Navigating circularity in practice: proposing a decision-making tool for guiding circular product development, in De Sainz Molestina, D., Galluzzo, L., Rizzo, F., Spallazzo, D. (eds.), IASDR 2023: Life-Changing Design, 9-13 October, Milan, Italy. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2023.324
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
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Included in
Navigating circularity in practice: proposing a decision-making tool for guiding circular product development
Product design and development are considered to be essential in the transition toward a circular economy. Circular product design requires strategies and methods that support a holistic and systems approach considering the complete lifecycle of a product. In order to support designers and businesses in going circular, various theoretical frameworks, methods, and strategies for circular design have been conceived in recent years. Yet, the need for more evidence of how to help circular design in practice remains. This study aims to bridge the gap between theory and practice in the field of circular design by proposing a tool to help companies in the decision-making process toward circular product development. The proposed tool was tested during a workshop with an individual company that is dealing with the complexity of diverse product ranges and business units with often conflicting priorities. Workshop participants used the tool to navigate a plethora of circular product design strategies and engaged in active group discussions across business units to identify priorities for their company’s new circular product guidelines. The tool was deemed useful for comprehending the field of circular design practice worldwide, as well as for evaluating the circularity level of the own business. However, the interdependence of design strategies posed some challenges. Various design strategies remained rather abstract, and thus hindered mutual understanding. Therefore, there is room for improvement in terms of further refining the terminology and reexamining the user interface of the tool.