Support for the conceptual design stage of effective and resource-efficient offerings : A pragmatic and cross-disciplinary approach
Sammanfattning: Human activities in the form of production and consumption have increased to an all-time high. In many cases, this increase has resulted in environmental problems such as waste and pollution that, in turn, affect our health and way of living. Societies have proposed different measures to address such environmental problems. These range from different waste treatment technologies to alternative business models, policy measures, and lifecycle thinking in the design of products, to mention but a few.In this research, the focus is on supporting early design activities of what is often called the conceptual design stage with the objective to provide effective and resource-efficient offerings. The early design activities considered here are planning, analysis, and evaluation.Design researchers have largely supported these three activities with a variety of methods and tools. However, previous research has shown that design support coming from academia has had a low uptake in industry. In this regard, the aim of this research is to propose not only useful but also usable support for design practitioners during the conceptual design stage.This research is carried out in the manufacturing sector in Sweden, where selected companies expressed an interest in collaborating with academia to address more thoroughly effective and resource-efficient offerings. To better match company needs and research from academia, this research took a pragmatic and cross-disciplinary approach. This research approach, along with literature reviews, semi-structured interviews, workshops, and questionnaires, shows different ways in which support can be made more useful and usable. The main gap addressed here is that the knowledge and the related skills of the user of the support have not been sufficiently explored.The results include requirements of the user of the support, proposed methods and tools derived from the requirements identified, and, most importantly, the knowledge and skills needed by the user of the support.The main message of this research is that support could be expanded from methods and tools to include knowledge and skills needed by design practitioners, the users of support. The flow of support from academia to industry could also be reinforced in a two-way flow through a pragmatic and cross-disciplinary approach to first and foremost address design practitioners’ needs.
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