Design for Product Care

Abstract

The aim of this PhD project is to understand and enhance consumers’ repair and maintenance activities. We define this behaviour, aimed at prolonging products’ lifetimes, as product care. For designers, it is important to understand consumers’ perspective on product care and to identify reasons why consumers either do or do not take care of their products. Only by doing so, can appropriate products and services be designed in the future. This PhD project first explores current product care behaviour and the individual tendency of persons to take care of their products. Afterwards, suitable design directions to enhance product care are developed and evaluated for multiple product categories. Based on the insights from this PhD project, designers can adjust their design in such a way that care activities are more likely to be executed.