Industrial adoption of design methods: Guiding sustainable design and collaboration in the manufacturing industry

Doctoral thesis, 2026

The manufacturing industry has played an important role in technological advances and in introducing new products that meet a wide range of societal needs. However, these new products also come with a cost. Their production and use, for example, contribute to increased greenhouse gas emissions, resource consumption, waste generation, and social issues related to, e.g., material sourcing across the value chain. In parallel, society at large is facing a multitude of complex challenges, including poverty, climate change, resource scarcity, biodiversity loss, and inequality. In turn, this calls for a sustainability transition across several levels, including the global economy, policies, and business models, thereby also influencing how we should and can produce and consume products.

At the same time, design has also been identified as an important driver in ensuring sustainability is considered from the beginning in the products we produce and use, since a significant part of the product's impact is determined during the early design phases. Moreover, over the years, design researchers have therefore proposed several new design methods to help companies integrate sustainability early in their design processes. However, the industrial adoption of such design methods has proven difficult for several reasons, ranging from access to data to clarifying their value and bridging the gap between theory and industrial practice. If this were not difficult enough, it is also well known that people, in general, can be hesitant to change and occasionally need to be actively convinced to do so. Previous research has found that close collaboration is often key, as it, for example, fosters ownership and creates a sense of urgency.

This research has therefore explored how design researchers and industry stakeholders can collaborate more closely to improve the industrial adoption process. Through several research studies conducted with actors in the Swedish manufacturing industry, four key contributions are proposed in this thesis: (i) 53 key barriers and enablers that influence industrial adoption, which should be considered during the development of new design methods: (ii) A conceptual model that supports clarifying why some these key barriers arise, and what roles design methods have in a sustainability transition; (iii) An adoption approach that can guide design researchers and industry stakeholders in how to collaborate and bridge the gap between theory and industrial practice: (iv) An interactive assessment method that promotes the sharing and management of sustainability information and data among collaborating actors early in the design process. Together, these form a framework for industrial adoption of new design methods that guide sustainable design and collaboration in the manufacturing industry.