LCA AND DESIGN THINKING: HOW TO INTEGRATE LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT IN EARLY-STAGE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT?
Year: 2024
Editor: Grierson, Hilary; Bohemia, Erik; Buck, Lyndon
Author: Barros, Mario; Laursen, Linda Nhu
Series: E&PDE
Institution: Aalborg University, Denmark
Page(s): 217 - 222
DOI number: 10.35199/EPDE.2024.37
ISBN: 978-1-912254-200
ISSN: 3005-4753
Abstract
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a comprehensive tool that supports sustainability by assessing products’ environmental impacts. It is both analytical and systemic. However, its integration in the early phases of product development remains challenging for industrial designers. How do industrial designers make sense of it? How do you move from LCA into the early stages of design? Particularly, the clash between the analytical, deductive, delimiting, and multi-criteria parameters of LCA with the divergent abductive reasoning of the fuzzy front end of concept development. In the paper, we present an example of an LCA design course, which was structured to meet the challenge of how to redesign a product. The course serves as an experimental example of integration and conversion from deductive, quantitative, and analytical LCA to an abductive, qualitative, design thinking process of reconceptualization. In this context, we identify patterns in the disparity across the level of design work. Two approaches, in particular, made a difference: 1) when SWOT factors were categorised according to life cycle stages, circular economy stages and/or circular product design methods, then it qualified the transition to mind mapping, 2) when the mind-map unfolded complexity in 4 or more levels, it enabled deeper insights on factors itself, implementation, relationships and trade-offs to other life stages, specific strategies and circular value propositions. In the case of both, the mind map served as a dynamic tool, used throughout concept development, to bridge the problem/solution space, as well as facilitate framing, rather than pre-stage guiding concept development.
Keywords: Life cycle analysis, Product development, pedagogy, industrial design, sustainability