Integrating sustainability into early product design stage is crucial for companies to navigate complexity effectively. Based on a long-term research collaboration with an aerospace product manufacturer, this paper introduces an improved prototype of the Sustainability Criteria and Product Life-Cycle Data Simulation digital decision-support tool for visualising and comparing the sustainability implications of product design concepts. Unlike existing tools, it allows quantitative comparisons in early design stages and is based on overarching socio-ecological sustainability principles and a backcasting perspective. A sustainability merit score for each product design concept is derived from selected indicators and sustainability criteria. The paper also reports on the results from a focus group evaluation study and discusses the value and challenges faced when developing this type of tool, including accuracy, data availability limitations, and the dilemma of indicator weighting. 

This chapter addresses the importance of designing sustainable and circular solutions that can also foster changes in user behaviour. A transition towards sustainability partly depends on consumers changing their behaviours and, in some instances, consuming less. It also requires different types of products that form part of more circular production and consumption systems, or work in emerging “bottom-of-the-pyramid” market contexts, so that human needs can be met with a much lighter ecological footprint. Sustainable product development means that social and ecological sustainability considerations are integrated throughout the design process. By applying strategic thinking, step-wise solutions can be identified that contribute to sustainable development in ways that benefit the own organization, thereby creating positive change and momentum for further action. This holistic approach involves anticipating sustainability-related consequences early in the innovation process, which is critical for minimizing socio-ecological impacts. By focusing on a product’s full life cycle rather than traditional performance metrics, companies can align their development practices with environmental and social responsibilities and cease opportunities on increasingly sustainability-driven markets. For those working in marketing and product development, training to think and act strategically in relation to sustainability is essential to prevent humanity from being overwhelmed by its own consumption.

A roadmap for advancing sustainable and circular designs within the automotive industry is proposed. The emphasis is on the critical role of collaborative ecosystems following the increased transparency and traceability underway in regulations. Emerging Digital Product Passports are central means in Europe’s Green Deal and expects to drive transformation of practices in the automotive ecosystem. The study, conducted by researchers in collaboration with a global truck manufacturer, identifies key areas for action, including data quality, stakeholder value, and communication strategies, to facilitate the circular and sustainable transformation. The vision and actions proposed were refined in workshops with automotive suppliers and service providers. By addressing these challenges, the automotive industry can leverage from data accessibility and accelerate its shift towards sustainability.

Decisions made in early phases of the product innovation process heavily influence the sustainability performance of a product. This study presents a literature review of approaches for assessing product sustainability performance in early phases and identifies and analyses six main challenges and opportunities from a strategic sustainability perspective: (i) finding the right combination between qualitative and quantitative approaches; (ii) avoiding reductionism; (iii) managing trade-offs; (iv) conceptualizing and defining sustainability; (v) thinking strategically; and (vi) considering both negative and positive impacts. The review also found that the terms assess, evaluate, and measure are all used in relation to sustainability performance. Based on an analysis of semantics and etymology, the study describes differences between the terms and how they should be used, arguing that assess and evaluate are more suitable when describing sustainability performance, while measure can be used in relation to indicators that can form part of an assessment or evaluation.

Product development and manufacturing organizations struggle in their sustainability transformation and do not sufficiently contribute to sustainable production and consumption. Design researchers, at the same time, develop and propose a plethora of new and improved design methods that can support the manufacturing industry in such transformation. It is, despite this, well-documented in literature that the industrial adoption of such proposed design methods is challenging. Previous research in the design domain has mainly studied this issue from a process and methodological perspective, whereas previous research in the management domain instead has focused on organizational, and human-behavioral aspects. This poses a research gap for more interdisciplinary research that studies the adoption of design methods from all three perspectives (i.e., process and methodology, organization, and human behavior). Six parallel case studies were carried out with three different product development and manufacturing organizations to collect qualitative empirical data. Glaserian grounded theory was used to analyze the collected data. This resulted in a descriptive framework that captures 53 interdisciplinary factors influencing the adoption of sustainable design practices using new and improved design methods. The descriptive framework is compared to interdisciplinary literature to further clarify and explain the findings, highlighting both practical and theoretical implications. This research provides three main contributions to theory and practice: (1) Two new concepts are introduced and used to explain the empirical findings, which are referred to as the dualism of design methods, and the situational design problem; (2) Nine systemic barriers and eight propositions are formulated, which highlight the need for a paradigm shift in how design is practiced in industry, how cognitive biases inside organizations can lead to a state of pseudo-sustainability, and the need for improved information and data management capabilities in organizations; (3) Sustainable design thinking is proposed as an potential enabler to address several of the main barriers, as it aims to provide a base competence of sustainable design to systematically challenge cognitive biases inside organizations.

This chapter addresses two critical aspects of sustainability integration in product design and development. The first aspect considers the scope and rigor of the approach to identify criteria to guide development of solutions with high sustainability performance, i.e., the depth and detail. The second aspect is the limited implementation of existing sustainable product development approaches in industry, which wants new tools and methods to be quick and easy to use. In three use case applications the approaches to identify leading sustainability criteria are evaluated. The results are discussed to provide guidance for industry and academia in what approach to select depending on design context, as well as directions for future research. 

Introducing new technologies in low-income contexts have potential for positive social impact, and such efforts are made by humanitarian engineering non-govermental organisations (NGOs). The impact can increase if a systemic sustainability perspective is considered in the design process. Sustainability criteria are identified using a literature study combined with an empirical study together with a Swedish NGO. These criteria are synthesized into a simplified Sustainability Fingerprint tool which is evaluated and deemed to be useful when introducing new technologies in low-income contexts. © 2024 Proceedings of the Design Society. All rights reserved.

The sustainable design transition has proven to be a challenging process, in part due to the diverse set of stakeholders, which includes the general public, policymakers, scientific researchers, and businesses. In prior work, the interconnected relationships among systematic drivers and barriers for sustainable design were identified and mapped using a causal loop diagram at a relatively abstract level. To further understand and characterize this complex system, this research aims to identify the relationship strength levels among the variables in the system, as indicated by previous research identified in the literature. In addition, the knowledge maturity levels of these identified relationships are specified to illustrate strengths and gaps in the literature. The findings are used to create a refined system representation that illustrates the power dynamics between systemic driving forces to sustainable design transitions. The results of this work reveal valuable insights about the linkages among the driving forces of sustainable design transitions that can be used as a foundation for further investigation, such as experiments and data analytics that can better quantify these relationships. © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press.

Additive manufacturing has the potential to decrease the climate impact of aviation by providing more light-weight designs. Sustainability is however required to be assessed from a systemic view, including all lifecycle phases, and from a social, ecologic, and economic dimension. This is however challenging in early phase design, where also a large design space need to be explored. A case study is carried out with an aerospace company where two candidate engineering design tools are combined to address this. The integration of these two engineering tools are applied on a Turbine Rear Structure, and shows promising results in enabling a systemic view of sustainability to be integrated and assessed in early phase design space explorations of additive manufactured components. It is recommended that the integration between the two tools is further established and validated. © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press.