Every second Wednesday, the Circular Industries Talks are organised at the Circular Industries Hub. On Wednesday April 19, Renske van den Berge presented at the Circular Industries Talks. Renske van den Berge is a PhD student at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. In this article we reflect on her talk. Curious for more? Take a look at the recording at the bottom of this page.
Keeping products’ value high: An exploration of lifetime extension strategies to stimulate sustainable consumer behavior via (product) design
How to encourage sustainable consumer behavior via design?
These are the main takeaways from Renske van den Berge’s talk:
- To postpone replacements, a product’s value needs to remain as high as possible throughout its lifetime.
- A product's value is defined by its functional, emotional, epistemic, social, and conditional values.
- Strategies to extend product lifetimes are to stimulate product attachment, sustain product aesthetics, stimulate product care/maintenance, and enable upgradeability.
- Design for repair is also about guiding consumers in their repair experience.
- Design interventions such as a fault indication can increase consumers’ repair ability (i.e., through an increased repair “can-do”- mentality).
- Modular designs increase the likelihood to repair, but for modular designs to stimulate DIY (do-it-yourself) repairs, facilitating and guiding cues are needed.
Curious about the whole story? Listen to Renske van den Berge, about lifetime extension strategies in the Circular Industry talks.
The Circular Industries talks
The goal of the Circular Industries talks is to share knowledge across Leiden, Delft and Erasmus and to complement and deepen the knowledge already available within the Circular Industries Hub. The talks are organized on Wednesday morning from 10:00 to 11:00. The talks are online (Microsoft Teams).
Cover image credits: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/10/smarter-living/how-to-make-your-phone-last-longer.html