Enhancing product value by sustainability-oriented choices in the early phases of engineering design processes

Companies that propose environmental sustainability as the core of their value proposition are called to face many challenges. First, their products have to perform better than antecedents in terms of environmental friendliness. Second, the same products have to be competitive also in terms of other functions, performances or product attributes. Indeed, it is worth noting that resources spent in the development of potentially environmental friendly products that do not substitute alternative products do not contribute to sustainable development at all. Third, all the advantages pursued by new solutions have to be clearly identified and valued by customers. While eco-design classically enables the achievement of the first target, the other two challenges are often overlooked, mistakenly taken for granted or seen as conflicting or incompatible. The present thesis moves from this awareness and its first aim is to open up a new field of research by disclosing so far ignored relationships between environmental sustainability objectives, success and value perception of products and designs. The various research activities conducted to the scope have involved a) the study of successful eco-designed products with the search for best practices; b) the exploration of value perception in potentially sustainable products through the elicitation of preferences and the observation of unconscious behaviors; c) the analysis of people’s ability to recognize and characterize eco-design moves. While the results from the multiple studies represent additional elements of knowledge per se, those have been synthesized in an original way. These findings have been embodied and translated into ten eco-design guidelines to support designers in strategic choices when it comes to introducing environment-related benefits in products to be developed. The guidelines have been tested with a twofold approach, including a general evaluation with eco-design practitioners (from academia and industry) and an experiment oriented to generate new ideas useful for an open innovation contest. The results show that the guidelines are appreciated in terms of relevance, usefulness and applicability. The ideas generated and considered pertinent with the guidelines show a satisfactory trade-off between sustainability, as evaluated by an academic expert in eco-design, and success chances, as evaluated by business expert in the industrial field of the case study. Overall, the thesis shows that environment-related design choices are not neutral in terms of success, and, ultimately, the chances to drive towards sustainable development. In a broader perspective, the findings emphasize the relevance of the capability of communicating product (environmental-related) advantages, contribute to the understanding of social and consumption phenomena such as the value-attitude gap, and demonstrate the relevance of unconscious phenomena in human-product interactions. Within design, the results open up new research directions for creativity and affordances beyond eco-design.