Designing the used: Enhancing the consumer acceptance of refurbished luxury personal care products; a Philips Lumea Prestige case study

Refurbishment is a critical strategy in the circular economy (Bocken et al., 2016). Despite the environmental and financial benefits, refurbished products are not a popular consumer choice (Mugge et al., 2017). Refurbished products are seen as old, used and of low quality, and consumers worry that products are contaminated with traces of a prior...

Faults in consumer products are difficult to diagnose, and design is to blame: A user observation study

The process of fault diagnosis is an essential first step when repairing a product: it determines the condition of the parts and identifies the origin of failure. We report on how product users go through the process of fault diagnosis in consumer products and the influence of design features on this process. Two groups of 12 participants were...

Enhancing Consumer Product Repairability: A case study on vacuum cleaners

The European Commission pointed out in 2015, with “An EU action plan for the Circular Economy”, the importance of energy and resource preservation, by respecting Earth’s resilience and renewability (European Commission, 2015). A transition towards Circular Economy is necessary in this sense to create new sustainable advantages, protecting...

Reuse of EEE consumer products, a potential End-of-Life strategy for CRM's

BACKGROUND Several elements displayed in the 2011 MEErP’s (Methodology for the Ecodesign of Energy-related Products) and JRC’s (European Commission Joint Research Centre) reports which will be used in preparatory studies for measures under the recast of the Ecodesign Directive, indicate that a European list of Critical Raw Materials (CRM’s)...

Managing Product Usability: How companies deal with usability in the development of electronic consumer products

Problem statement: Even though there is a large amount of methods for user-centred design, the usability of electronic consumer products (e.g., portable music players, washing machines and mobile phones) is under pressure. Usability is the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness,...

User cognition in product operation

Daily a large number of everyday consumer products are being used. Unfortunately part of this usage is not successful. One of the causes of failure lies in the cognitive aspects of product use, users do not know how to operate the product or try to use it in a way which is not successful. Ideally, the designer of a product should convey...