Sustainable Design Nexus: integrating user behavior and sustainability assessments into product development processes

Research Project, 2025 – 2028

This project helps product developers integrate user behaviour and sustainability into product & service development. Focusing on household appliances, it combines Design for Sustainable Behaviour, Environmental Systems Analysis, and Industrial Product Development—fields identified as under-integrated in a pre-study. Household appliances are widely used, behaviour-dependent, and resource-intensive, offering opportunities to reduce environmental impacts through behaviour change. The project will 1) analyse user behaviours across acquisition, use, and disposal, 2) integrate behavioural insights into sustainability assessments to evaluate impactful behaviours and design interventions, and 3) develop guidance for embedding sustainable behaviour into product development. In close industry collaboration, it addresses gaps in use-phase representation in sustainability assessments and strengthens quantitative methods in Design for Sustainable Behaviour, applicable beyond household appliances.