Prometheus Missing: Critical Materials and Product Design

Critical Materials are strategically important to societies, businesses and economies. They are essential to maintain and improve our quality of life. The world however faces problems of critical material supply, but these concerns are not translated into product design activity, even though current policy and history suggests that product...

Design for Well-Being: An Approach for Understanding Users' Lives in Design for Development

Many of the Design for Development outcomes which are unsuited to the users and their environment are based on poorly defined needs and preferences. Product designers are trained to take the user perspective into account, but they are not specifically trained to conduct ethnographic research. Thereby, they have limited time and resources to...

Nature-Inspired Design: Strategies for Sustainable Product Development

Product designers can apply different strategies, methods, and tools for sustainable product development. Nature-Inspired Design Strategies (NIDS) offer designers a distinct class of strategies that use ‘nature’ as a guiding source of knowledge and inspiration for addressing sustainability. Biomimicry and Cradle to Cradle, two Nature-Inspired...

From “Made in China” to “Created in China”: Development of ICT-enabled medical device and system for rural China

Health problems are a major concern for rural Chinese people. One of the causes is shortages of medical resources, such as medical equipment and skilled medical staff. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is usually seen as a useful tool, by which medical resources in urban areas can be accessed for rural areas. Design and development...

Meanings of Materials

This book is about meanings we attribute to materials of the objects around us. Materials convey meanings: they look traditional, they express luxury, they are associated with factories, or they conjure up one’s childhood. How do materials obtain these meanings? How do they interact with other elements of product design in expressing certain...

Selecting materials in product design

This thesis exists of several studies and design steps that resulted in a new material selection technique for user-centred design, which is supported by tools. The tools use examples of materials in products and stimulate the discussions about the user-interaction aspects of those materials desired in a new product. The sensorial properties of...