Print Email Facebook Twitter Extending product life by introducing symbolic meaning: An exploration of design strategies to support subjective well-being Title Extending product life by introducing symbolic meaning: An exploration of design strategies to support subjective well-being Author Marques Ribeiro Da Silva Cas, M. Mugge, R. Desmet, P.M.A. Faculty Industrial Design Engineering Department Industrial Design Date 2015-06-17 Abstract Because products are often discarded while still fully functioning, it may be possible to support durability with design that stimulates a more enduring product-owner relationship. This paper is based on the proposition that one promising approach to support such prolonged relevance is by developing products with a higher predisposition for the attribution of happiness-related symbolic meaning. The study was based on a framework with six types of symbolic product meanings: positive relations with others, personal growth, purpose in life, environmental mastery, autonomy, and selfacceptance. In a pre-study, fifty existing symbolically meaningful products were selected based on these six symbolic meanings. In the main study, seven designers and design researchers analysed these fifty products with the aim to uncover underlying design directions. This resulted in sixteen design directions. The directions can act as a source of inspiration to designers when aiming to design for a long-term meaningful product-owner relationship. Subject symbolic meaningsubjective well-beingpersonal significancedesign strategiesproduct longevity To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:11eb2501-4b7e-439f-9931-f7e52be5600e Publisher Nottingham Trent University: CADBE ISBN 978-0-9576009-9-7 Source Proceedings of the PLATE Conference, Nottingham, UK, 17-19 June 2015 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type conference paper Rights (c) 2015 The Author(s)Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license Files PDF 320792.pdf 293.99 KB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:11eb2501-4b7e-439f-9931-f7e52be5600e/datastream/OBJ/view