Publication
Title
Design against the plastic soup : the effect of small product designs in sustainable design education
Author
Abstract
Plastics are ubiquitous in our daily life due to their versatile characteristics, however, these excellent characteristics also contributed to the emergence of a gigantic garbage of floating plastics in our ocean, called the plastic soup. Within this research project we investigated the opportunities by design to cope with this wicked problem. The hypothesis is that picking small opportunities in a wicked problem can have a large impact on the related ecosystem. In addition, we also wanted to investigate how design students would deal with the problem to create larger awareness of the designers' impact and responsibility. Although there is no ideal answer to a systemic problem such as the plastic soup, intervening on systems is possible. As the characteristics of a product directly influence the way the entire value chain works, designers have a large responsibility / opportunity to influence the system. An experiment was executed with 69 design students to explore the opportunities. The resulting design concepts were discussed by experts, reasoning towards relationships, needs to elaborate the design practices, and ecodesign education in a circular economy.
Language
English
Source (journal)
Proceedings of the Design Society
Source (book)
22nd International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED19), 5-8 August 2019, Delft, The Netherlands
Publication
2019
ISSN
2220-4342
DOI
10.1017/DSI.2019.327
Volume/pages
1 :1 (2019) , p. 3201-3210
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
Full text (open access)
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Project info
Development and validation of a new framework for the integration of technical and consumer-experience-based materials selection throughout the design process.
Publication type
Subject
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
Record
Identifier
Creation 08.08.2019
Last edited 04.03.2024
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