Consideration of sustainability in product and industrial design courses is becoming more common and relevant within higher education in the UK. However little is known about how widespread the teaching is and what is actually understood as sustainable design with discrepancies in the definitions used in different institutions. Literature highlights that many universities now engage with the tangible environmental aspects of sustainable design, whilst the intangible social aspects are left unaddressed. This thesis explores methods for encouraging and enabling students to address the social aspects within sustainable product design (SPD) education. The first research stage presents the results of a nationwide survey, which investigated how widely SPD is taught, which social aspects are addressed, how SPD is taught and assessed and the attitudes and awareness of it amongst academics. The second research stage presents further research into best practice in SPD through detailed interviews with leading academics in the field. A third research stage built upon the findings from both these studies, and sought to address a perceived weakness in SPD education; the lack of understanding and consideration of the social aspects in sustainable product design in teaching and project outcomes. Three Rethinking Design workshops were developed and tested at five universities in the UK and Ireland. These workshops were designed to introduce students to the wider social aspects of SPD, through the use of audio visual group based workshops. The design of the workshops enabled a learning environment where a deep understanding of the social aspects of Sustainable Product Design could be developed through; group work, discussion and critical reflection, which led to students exploring design thinking responses, suggesting that deep learning, had occurred.

The notion of “you are what you buy” is an updated adage from “you are what you eat”. It makes a connection between our everyday objects and their effect on our lived experience. Looking at our relationships with our things as a type of contract, we must be intentional to shape these object contracts for our own good and health. Instead of our society’s design talents being put toward a consumerist agenda, designers must direct research and development which addresses the effects of our products holistically. Various concepts have emerged in my creative practice which demand a deeper research and development. These are concepts of little interest to the corporate product developer, as they appeal to agendas beyond profit. Just as the slow food movement responds to fast food and “Big Ag”, the concepts of time, gifts, ritual emerge as virtues which demand development in our products. These concepts are not an answer to consumerism. However, they are tastes that have fallen off of our product diet. I point to various works works of art and design, of my own and others, which seek to renew the vastness of our potential experience with everyday objects. Instead of choosing from the corporate offering, we may take a more critical view of design which looks at our holistic experience with our products.

The research reported in this thesis had two aims. To investigate how the variability and complexity of the mobile context of use should be addressed when capturing user needs for mobile products and to explore the role of indirect methods of data capture as tools for eliciting user needs in a form appropriate for informing the scenario based design of mobile products during the. earliest stages of product development. This research presents a novel scenario-based approach to eliciting and representing user needs in a form suitable for informing the earliest exploratory stages of mobile product design. Within this approach scenarios are used to provide snapshots of actual or envisaged product use that can be used to find a starting point for design when there is no clearly defined focus for innovation. Scenarios are organized into sets using scenario tables to structure consideration of key variables within the mobile context of use. These key variables are identified as: mobility, emotion, social relationship and communication purpose. Three user studies were conducted using UK undergraduate students as the study population. Study One explored use of schematic representations ('maps') of each participant's social communications and mobility as tools for eliciting user needs, both in relation to existing mobile product use and in relation to projected use of future mobile product concepts. Study Two used a diary study method to explore existing mobile communications use. Ways of structuring consideration of the mobile context of use were explored and the effectiveness of the diary as a tool for eliciting user needs and for scenario generation was assessed. Study Three extended the diary study approach to include consideration ofthe emotional context of product use and to include pictorial feedback of diary entries to study participants. These personal representations of product use were used to further explore user needs and to prompt participants to generate narratives describing motivations for product use suitable for presentation in scenario form.

The global unsustainable production and consumption patterns in the fashion and textile industry are a prevailing problem. With the rising trend of European brands reshoring their textile manufacturing and upcoming circular economy frameworks from the EU, the Turkish textile industry may face pressures to transform towards circularity in order to remain competitive. To address the research gap concerning prevalent challenges to implement circularity principles in the critical stage of product design, the purpose of this thesis is to explore the barriers to adopting circular product design in the Turkish textile sector from a manufacturers perspective. This study was conducted in Istanbul with eleven textile and apparel manufacturers of different kinds. To reach a nuanced understanding of each perspective, a qualitative research methodology, through semi-structured interviews with factory managers, was used. The empirical findings of barriers are categorised as internal (financial, responsibility, knowledge) and external (country- and industry-specific). Major internal barriers include prioritising profits over circularity, prioritising customer demand over circular design, and unfamiliarity with key concepts. Country-specific external barriers include lack of competent personnel in Turkey and harsh taxation policies. Industry-level barriers include insufficient resources, limited control over fast-fashion demands, and lack of innovative technologies. This thesis contributes to an increased understanding of the scarcely researched topic and enables practitioners to develop efficient policies and business strategies to ease sustainable business development. Future research is suggested to explore drivers and strategies to apply circular product design within the Turkish textile industry. Additionally, further research can be conducted where this study is replicated but from the perspective of brand retailers with procurement operations in Turkey.

Sustainable design is often practiced and assessed through the consideration of three essential areas: economic sustainability, environmental sustainability, and social sustainability. For even the simplest of products, the complexities of these three areas and their trade-offs cause decision making transparency to be lost in most practical situations. Additionally, the models and tools available to consider social sustainability are severely underdeveloped. This thesis is separated into three parts: 1) a design tool to consider all three aspects of sustainability simultaneously, 2) a literature survey to characterize social impact as it relates to products, and 3) interviews with engineering professionals regarding how social impact is currently considered in product design in industry.The existing field of multi-objective optimization offers a natural framework to define and explore a given design space. In chapter 2 of this thesis, a method for defining a products sustainability space (defined by economic, environmental, and social sustainability objectives) is outlined and used to explore the trade-offs within the space, thus offering both the design team and the decision makers a means of better understanding the sustainability trade-offs. This chapter concludes that sustainable product development can indeed benefit from trade-off characterization using multi-objective optimization techniques “ even when using only basic models of sustainability. Interestingly, the unique characteristics of the three essential sustainable development areas lead to an alternative view of some traditional multiobjective optimization concepts, such as weak Pareto optimality. The sustainable redesign of a machine to drill boreholes for water wells is presented as a practical example for method demonstration and discussion. In these efforts it became apparent that the tools for considering social impact were lacking and needed to be further developed.While efforts have been made to identify social impacts, academics, and practitioners still disagree on which phenomena should be included, and few have focused on the impacts of products specifically compared with programs, policies, or other projects. The primary contribution of chapter 3 of this thesis is to integrate scholarship from a wide array of social science and engineering disciplines that categorizes the social phenomena that are affected by products. Specifically, we identify social impacts and processes including population change, family, gender, education, stratification, employment, health and well-being, human rights, networks and communication, conflict and crime, and cultural identity/heritage. These categories are important because they can be used to inform academics and practitioners alike who are interested in creating products that generate positive social benefits for users.Though academic research for identifying and considering the social impact of products is emerging, additional insights can be gained from engineers who design products every day. Chapter 4 explores current practices in industry used by design engineers to consider the social impact of products. 46 individuals from 34 different companies were interviewed to discover what disconnects exist between academia and industry when considering a products social impact. These interviews were also used to discover how social impact might be considered in a design setting moving forward. This is not a study to find the state of the art, but considers the average engineering professionals work to design products in various industries. Social impact assessments (SIA) and social life cycle assessments (SLCA) are two of the most common processes discussed in the literature to evaluate social impact, both generally and in products. Interestingly, these processes did not arise in any discussion in interviews despite respondents affirming that they do consider social impact in product design. Processes used to predict social impact, rather than simply evaluate, were discussed by the respondents and tended to be developed within the company and often related to industry imposed government regulations.The combined work reported in this thesis is a significant step forward in being able to handle the unwieldy nature of social impact in product design in the larger context of sustainability. Not only do these efforts provide a basis upon which future tools can be developed, they are also immediately useful in providing a basic framework upon which to consider the full spectrum of social impact of products during design.

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The folding station is one step of the packing process taking place in the metal tube filling machines. The purpose of this project is to develop and design a folding station for metal tubes. With this aim, a product design process has been created and as a result of the application of a deductive method, ten concepts have been discovered and the most suitable one has been developed later on.

This paper focuses on the aspects of safety for the user of a motorcycle, why and how we ride, and how one can impact the general interest in motorcycles among a younger generation in Sweden today through design and technology. Further it stands to represent my own thoughts on the matter regarding what is the key element of attraction in a motor vehicle among young people today. This paper has worked as the base for my research during my bachelors’ thesis and also includes some of my personal thoughts surrounding my design process which ultimately resulted in a motorcycle concept aimed at the younger generations.

This report aims to discusse how to create more sustainable indoor greenery that can make benefit for people’s health and well-being. The accounts for sustainability in this project has three layers, which are design for people’s sustainable life (people’s health and well-being), design for sustainable indoor greenery and principles of sustainable design. The question I come up with in this project is “what is the sustainable relationship between people and indoor greenery”. The assumption I hope to challenge with my project is how to create a sustainable solution for house planting to bring back the nature into the daily experiences of city inhabitants by product design. As a result, people could have more sustainable and healthier life at home through living with nature in the urban settings. The content of this report demonstrates the whole steps (background and motivation, contexts, research, ideal generation, sketch and prototype, model making and visualization of results) towards the design results supported by theoretical studies.  The relevant studies I mention in this project are biophilic design, permaculture and NASA clean air study, which are related to sustainable indoor greenery and sustainable house planting relatively. The results obtained in this project include one product design - a planter that offers a sustainable way of cultivating health plants at home through reusing water and designing micro forest garden, and one product-based App design proposal - creating a house-planting community, in which people can communicate and support each other with sustainable house-planting tips and knowledge.

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