1,721,017 research outputs found
Come trasformare i rifiuti dell'ICT in risorsa
Full text linkDal vecchio pc al tablet, dal televisore a tubo catodico all'lcd: l'evoluzione degli strumenti di comunicazione e la loro sostenibilit
L'Accademia ai designer va stretta. La scientificità dei creativi
Full text linkModalità di comunicazione nel mondo accademico del design attraverso paper, workshop e laborator
Design Ethics in socio-technical systems. Addressing the ethics of connected appliance
Full text linkAfter a deep recession in 2009, home appliance manufacturing has evolved quickly, increasing sales and forecasting of a huge spread of Internet of Things connected products. Despite the potential of the IoT as a future scenario for the development of major home appliances, data collected on actual purchases seem to contradict the trend. Manufacturers justify this gap with the consumers' resistance to adopt new technologies and to change their habits. Nevertheless the consumer claims a lack of perceived benefits in connected appliances, showing strong concern about data transfer to third parties. Investigate user needs and focus on the environmental sustainability of products could solve this techno-stress, allowing the user to perceive the benefits. This paper aims to guide companies and designers, through the application of the Systemic Design approach, to change their goals, allowing them to achieve product innovation together with an environmentally conscious product design
New strategies for the refrigerator in the transition towards a circular economy
Full text linkIn the last decade, the values of the traditional economy have been strongly challenged, considering the concept of development of the last century as the main cause of many environmental issues that we are facing today. Recently, new strategies have been introduced to provide a renewed concept of development, including the creation new business models in the context of the circular economy, a greater importance of intangible value, the merging of products and services (de Arruda Torresa, 2017) as successful strategies to oppose the classical economy. Nevertheless, both designers and companies still consider projects as ‘finished’ at some point. In the same way in which, before the introduction of waste regulation, manufacturers paid scant attention to their products’ end-of-life, today many companies seem no longer interested in their products after the sale once they have been sold and the warranty has been expired, i.e. while the product is in use. However, the usage phase impact more in products such as the refrigerator, which is characterised by a long lifespan (according to Bakker at al., 2014 the ‘optimal lifespan’ of new purchases is now estimated around 20 years) and a continuous use (400-1100 KWh/y according to the related energy class).
In this paper, instead, we take into consideration how products could continuously evolve after their implementation (Hansen et al., 2008) and how companies could benefit from them throughout their life cycle, delivering new services while changing their business model completely. This approach leaves room for addressing every step of the traditional life-cycle in a more circular way, shifting the focus on a more complex vision about the product. This scenario could radically change by introducing new business strategies such as reducing product ownership through sharing, remanufacturing activities and so forth, while extending the product lifespan, without the need to rely on outdated strategies such as planned obsolescence or the push on the purchase of more goods.
We adapted some of the strategies of the circular economy listed by Kirchherr et al. (2017) within the standard life cycle of the product, by facing the gap of a certain lack of circular strategies related to the use phase (Figure 1). Hence five strategies have emerged, three of which are suitable for exploring new scenarios based on the concept of flexibility and two strategies based on the idea of predictive maintenance.
Product flexibility
This section provides three non-inclusive examples of exploring new scenarios based on flexibility, empower the user to personalise the object and develop new behaviours of use and consumption.
− Reduce ownership: A first scenario could be the integration of a pay-per-use and sharing strategies that leads the user to reduce the ownership of goods, by paying for the actual product use, saving money when the product is used in a virtuous way. In this paper, an in-depth analysis of scenario is carried out, based on the literature which considers ownership and planned obsolescence as two obsolete strategies.
− Product evolution: Software update is just an example of a product that evolves over time, changing and adapting to technological changes. What if the same concept would be extended to every part of the product and every step of the lifecycle? In this scenario, the user purchases/rent a product and then he/she could transform and shape it according to his/her needs with components and functions that can be integrated.
− Product adaptability: What if the product would change its behaviour according to contextual factors, usage information and the habits of those who use it? In this scenario, the user purchases/rents a product, he/she starts using it and after a while his/her expectations will be delivered, because the product evolves to meet user’s requirements. Equipping products with intelligence makes them adapt and respond to change and remain fit-for-purpose over longer time periods (McAloone and Pigosso, 2017; Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2015). IoT data can be used to improve current products, but also for developing virtual services and sharing economy platforms to support the technical lifetime.
Predictive maintenance
The second part of the paper investigates how to combine IoT data with the design of new products, suitable for addressing other parts of the lifecycle. McAloone and Pigosso (2016) suggested that combining IoT data with participatory tools IoT could be one driver for the success of the circular economy, together with sustainable design/eco-design and Business model innovation. The circular economy can benefit from this intelligence for up-cycling processes, monitoring the condition of individual components or whole product systems. Data about the real use of a product can be collected for a short time, with an object instrumented ad hoc for the experiment or alternatively on the marketable products.
Monitoring experimental products: in the first case, the product or its components can be monitored with experiments, to make their recovery suitable for a second valuable use. The R&D or design team, indeed, could study a prototype and then make projections over time of the expected use to determine when the object should be replaced or updated to obtain the maximum value from it. This could be the case of the following three examples, considering:
• Functional groups of components, i.e. a system of parts grouped by a specific function;
• Essential components, whose breakup will compromise the whole product functioning, eventually leading to replace it;
• Wearing parts, which can be easily replaced. Some relevant indicators should be defined and verified by measuring them through ad hoc experiments on these components, providing a more precise knowledge of the system.
Monitoring the final product: monitoring some parameters of the refrigerator as a form of predictive maintenance could also be performed on real products, to provide added value services throughout the lifecycle. It could be done by introducing a few sensors on the final product that will be delivered to the user, to allow continuous data transmission of the most important indicators. Among the possible outcome, detect failures in advance, notify, inform, communicate are only a few possibilities and it raises the need for learning systems able to recognise patterns, together with a platform on which to share and communicate directly with the user.
These two scenarios have different purposes.
The first deal with instrumented objects used for testing and monitoring objects to intercept the product to the suitable time in which it could be fully exploited, before it reaches its end of life, avoiding the product disassembly by preserving its integrity. The second aims to reconfigure the product to obtain real-time data and intervene promptly, shaping the object behaviour on the user habits and behaviour (i.e. by interacting with the user, facilitating the predictive maintenance, upgrading or replacing parts, improving the product or eventually allowing the product to adapt to changed conditions and learn from users’ usage).
Both scenarios would require analytics to measure and combine data inputs over time (Henne, 2015). The proposed strategies are suitable for both current product-centred economy and a future service-centred one, providing directions for future studies that want to address the extension of the product life cycle, while promoting an efficient use of products. IoT data open a variety of possibilities in monitoring, accessing more precise knowledge of goods and households, useful for design purposes
Packaging Design per il Beverage
Full text linkCinque trend progettuali per un'innovazione funzionale e comunicativa del packaging per il beverage, verso la sostenibilità ambiental
On the meaningfulness of data in product design for lifetime optimization
Full text linkPlanned obsolescence is generally considered as a negative business strategy that induces replacement needs and affects attachment dynamics, as opposed to the goal of elongating product lifetime. At the present, however, an early replacement of long-lasting products is preferred in at least two cases which can be addressed during the design stage i.e. when the cost of maintaining is higher than product benefits and when there are environmental reasons to replace obsolete products. Furthermore, designing meaningful products that help the user in his/her daily activities, while addressing environmental issues, could help affecting attachment even in standardized and utilitarian products, such as home appliances. In this study, the holistic view and the management of the complexity of Systemic Design, combined with the use of the IoT technologies are proposed using the refrigerator as a case study. Acquiring information is considered as a tool for product innovation; the data is divided into (i) static data, related to the product and (ii) dynamic data, which derive from the context of use and interaction with users. The latter can be acquired by investigating the object's daily use and environment, with data acquisition through quantitative tools (sensors) and qualitative ones (feedback, questionnaires, interviews). IoT and data retrieval open a variety of possibilities in monitoring, accessing more precise knowledge of products and households useful for design purposes. This paper seeks to demonstrate how IoT can support and trigger a design transition towards more durable products and components, by focusing on sustainability and simplifying people's lives in daily actions
Systemic Design for the innovation of home appliances The meaningfulness of data in designing sustainable systems
Full text linkThis work addressed the domestic environment considering this context as a complex system characterised by significant impacts in terms of
resource consumption. Within the theoretical framework of Systemic Design (SD), this thesis focused on home appliances, in order to understand how to reduce the impact directly attributable to them, while optimising and simplifying daily tasks for the user. A design methodology towards environmental sustainability has been structured, by focusing on the use of data for design purposes and on creating value for the user through meaningful products. It considers the user, the product and the environment as central topics, by giving them the same relevance and the literature review is structured accordingly, investigating needs and requirements, ethical issues, but also current products and future scenarios. During my experience at TU Delft, I spent six months in the Department of Internet of Things at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering.
Together with computer scientists, we developed a prototype to collect some missing data, establishing the importance of grounding the decision-making on reliable information. IoT and data gathering open a variety of possibilities in monitoring, accessing more precise knowledge of products and households useful for design purposes, up to understand how to fill the gap perceived by the user between needs and solutions. It considered the potential benefits of using IoT indicators to collect missing information about both the product, its use and its operating environment to address critical aspects in the design stage, thus extending products’ lifetime.
This thesis highlighted the importance of building multidisciplinary design teams to investigate different classes of requirements, and the need for flexible tools to cope with complex and evolving requirements, the co-evolution of problem and solutions and investigating open-ended questions. This approach leaves room for addressing every step of the traditional life-cycle in a more circular way, shifting the focus from the life-cycle centrality of the previous century to a more complex vision about the product
The Flavours of Coffee Ground. The coffee waste as accelerator for new local businesses
Full text linkAnnual generation of Spent Coffee Grounds (SCG) is estimated around six million tonnes per year. They currently do not have a commercial value and are disposed of in landfills or as compost.
Systemic Design approach developed by Politecnico di Torino (DAD) wants to provide an holistic vision in which these production are linked together through relationships, output and input, flows of energy and materials, in order to make the SCG recovery activity complex, with almost no waste.
This research studies how to make real and profitable a system that values this waste considering the local condition
Open System in bean cultivation for local economical development
No full textThe agri-food sector uses large amounts of pesticides and agricultural chemicals and it is also characterized by large volumes of output that are often overlooked and discarded as common organic waste, thus underestimating the qualitative potential hidden in it.
The project discussed in this paper employs Systemic Design research method, which is employed for the recovery and re-use of Cuneo Bean supply chain by-products. The research further considers the input and output of each phase within a local production territory.
The energy requirements of the cultivation and industrial processes that lead to the final product were studied and highlighted the quality of waste, in order to enter it as input for other production processes, to ensure a close-to-zero impact. Some later improvements were related to the consumption of water, including irrigation, the use of pesticides and harmful substances, selection and cooking process, as well as the creation of innovative packagings
The outcome of the project was the sustainable production of the PGI Cuneo Bean. This production method involves high levels of innovation and research. The bean is different from competing products, and has a territorial connotation.
The study was accompanied by consumer analysis, in order to discover the product’s ability to meet the needs of consumers. The complex system that emerges is also communicated through marketing and packaging efforts.
The project involved many local SMEs, which integrate very different skills, languages and approaches. Through Systemic Design, the environmental impacts are transformed into opportunities to innovate
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