Support For The Conceptual Design Stage Of Effective And Resource Efficient Offerings

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. Mänskliga aktiviteter i form av produktion och konsumtion har aldrig varit högre. Denna ökning över tid har i många fall lett till miljöproblem som avfall och föroreningar, vilka i sin tur påverkar vår hälsa och levnadssätt. För att möta dessa miljöproblem har olika åtgärder föreslagits, som tekniker för avfallshantering, alternativa affärsmodeller, policy och livscykeldesign, för att nämna några. Fokus i forskningen som presenteras i denna avhandling är på tidiga designaktiviteter, vilka ofta kallas det konceptuella designstadiet och som syftar till att ta fram resurseffektiva erbjudanden. Detta steg behandlas här genom att närmare undersöka designaktiviteterna planering, analys och utvärdering. Designforskare har till stor del stöttat dessa tre aktiviteter med en mängd olika metoder och verktyg. Emellertid visar tidigare forskning att designstöd från akademin har ett lågt upptag i industrin. Syftet med denna forskning är därför att föreslå ett användbart stöd som också är användarvänlig för utövare under det konceptuella designstadiet. För att uppnå detta genomförs forskningen inom tillverkningssektorn i Sverige där deltagande företag uttryckt ett intresse av att samarbeta med akademin avseende resurseffektiva erbjudanden. För att bättre matcha företagens behov med forskning från akademin antas en pragmatisk och tvärvetenskaplig strategi. Denna strategi, tillsammans med litteraturöversikter, semistrukturerade intervjuer, workshops och enkäter visar hur stödet i det konceptuella designstadiet kan bli mer användbart och användarvänlig. Den huvudsakliga forskningsluckan som tas upp här är att kunskap och relaterade färdigheter hos användaren av stödet inte har undersökts tillräckligt. Resultatet ger en beskrivning av kraven på de stöd som användaren behöver, föreslag på metoder och verktyg som baseras på de identifierade kraven och, viktigast av allt, den kunskap och de färdigheter som användaren av stödet behöver ha. Huvudbudskapet är att stöd kan utvidgas från att omfatta metoder och verktyg till att även inkludera behovet av kunskap och färdigheter hos designutövare, det vill säga användarna av supporten. Stödet från den akademiska världen till industrin kan också förstärkas genom att bli ett tvåvägsflöde som med en pragmatisk och tvärvetenskaplig strategi först och främst adresserar användarens behov.

What a company offers its customers has to fulfil several different needs, desires, constraints, which can originate from multiple different sources that affect the offering throughout its life cycle. All these criteria have to come together and be translated into statements that can support the designer’s understanding of the offering’s purpose. This translation is done through a requirements development process to provide a controlled process to define statements that describe what the offering is supposed to fulfil. This research provides insights on key challenges and success factors in requirements development to support the design of effective and resource-efficient offerings. Namely, it identifies crucial sources and aspects to be considered, and a requirements development process demonstrating how to overcome identified challenges. By getting the requirements right from the beginning, sub-optimisation and unnecessary time and risks can be avoided. The consideration of accurate sources and aspects is considered to be one of the most important factors for the successful design of offerings. It is also in the earliest phases of design, that is to say requirements development, where one has the greatest possibility to affect the environmental impact of the offering. What is missing, however, is sufficient and appropriate support in industry on how to do so. The gap between the three areas of effectiveness and resource efficiency, design of integrated offerings, and requirements development has been investigated. Results are based on findings in the literature and in industry, identified primarily by qualitative studies. In the research, 15 different companies have been included through a number of interviews and discussions. Key sources and aspects to consider in the requirements development process are identified along with challenges, and success factors that can be utilised to overcome the identified challenges. This research’s final results include an adapted requirements development process that considers the earlier-mentioned sources and aspect, challenges, and success factors. Such a requirements development process should support the design of effective and resource-efficient offerings.

This licentiate thesis aims to establish the basis for scientifically understanding and supporting the cognitive processes involved in the conceptual design of resource- efficient and effective product-service systems (PSSs). The research carried out is transdisciplinary in nature and includes both prescriptive and descriptive studies. First, the cognitive nature of conceptual PSS designing is investigated. Multiple pre-experimental protocol studies in a laboratory setting are carried out to do so. The cohort of these explorative studies includes experienced industrial practitioners conceptually designing a resource-efficient PSS. These descriptive studies provide quantitative insights into the cognitive effort expended by designers on various design issues and processes during conceptual PSS designing and its potential differences to conceptual product designing. These insights form the basis for future research that can eventually shine light on this complex process with statistically significant empirical results. Second, the essence of extant prescriptive PSS design principles, methods and tools is distilled through a literature analysis and synthesis of the state of the art. Subsequently, important aspects that need to be considered during conceptual PSS designing are consolidated in the form of a PSS design schema. Third, a design navigator named lifecycle-oriented function deployment (LFD) is developed. LFD is essentially a contextual decision-making support tool, developed to guide the conceptual designing of environmentally benign PSSs. This tool informs the designers regarding the potential environmental impacts of specific design parameters of an existing offering. It subsequently guides the designers in the redesign of this existing offering into a PSS with relatively benign environmental impacts. Fourth, the effects of the two proposed prescriptions are tested empirically. True experimental protocol studies are carried out in a laboratory setting to test the effects of the prescriptive PSS design schema on the cognition of PSS designers. LFD is applied in an industrial case study using the action design research method, to support the conceptual redesign of an existing product-centric offering into an environmentally benign PSS. Environmental impacts of the PSS concepts generated using LFD are then evaluated in comparison to that of the existing offering, using simulated lifecycle assessment. A semi-structured interview is carried out to evaluate the utility and usability of LFD, with the company personnel involved in the conceptual redesign process. This licentiate thesis is an effort to effectively design the future research work of the author. This future work will aim to support and establish generalizable scientific knowledge regarding the conceptual designing of resource-efficient and effective PSSs.

The increasing use of natural resources and the pollution it causes calls for new ways of addressing customer needs. Additionally, a more uncertain and complex world also presents new challenges. In this thesis, these new challenges are tackled through inter and transdisciplinary research, which require more interaction across disciplines to tackle complex phenomena. The manner in which companies address customer needs starts from the designing (a multiplestakeholder perspective) of offerings where companies rely on different types of support (guidelines, standards, methods and tools). In this thesis, these offerings, include products, services, systems, and solutions. This plays an important role in the use of natural resources and its impact on the environment. In this Licentiate, I present results to show initial cues on how to design resource-efficient offerings, and more specifically their analysis and evaluation in the early stages of the design process. This type of offerings is suggested to be crucial for the circular economy, which can be understood as a paradigm shift towards sustainability. In this paradigm shift, designing is carried out by taking into account reuse, remanufacture and recycling of products as strategies by multiple stakeholders and companies. Other strategies include providing services, a function or a solution through dematerialization and transmaterialization. The methods used in this research are narrative and systematic literature reviews, thematic analysis and a case study. The results show a lack of interdisciplinary research in the academic literature in subjects relevant to the design of resource-efficient offerings. The results also show a need to clarify what transdisciplinary research entails. Moreover, current practice shows that support used by companies needs to consider several factors for it to be useful, for example, the vision of the company, participation of potential users of the support and everyday operations, among other characteristics. Finally, more practical support coming from academia is necessary to improve its use in industry.

This is the proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Design Computing and Cognition (DCC’18) held at the Polytecnico di Milano in Italy. This volume presents both advances in theory and applications and demonstrates the depth and breadth of design computing and design cognition. Design thinking, the label given to the acts of designing, has become a paradigmatic view that has transcended the discipline of design and is now widely used in business and elsewhere. As a consequence there is an increasing interest in design research. This volume contains papers that represent the state-of-the-art research and developments in design computing and design cognition. This book is of particular interest to researchers, developers and users of advanced computation in design and those who need to gain a better understanding of designing that can be obtained through empirical studies.

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