Circular design through co-creation: Exploring perspectives and future directions for design in a circular economy

Doktorsavhandling, 2023

In the efforts to stimulate sustainable development, the circular economy aims to establish ‘closed-loop’ flows of resources in a way that enables businesses and society to reap benefits from maintaining products, components and materials at their highest utility and value, while simultaneously reducing the generation of waste. Designing for a circular economy will require designers to, more than ever, anticipate how artifacts function and change over time and conceptualise the entire lifecycle (including the design, production, use and end-of-life phase) in a coherent and holistic way. This implies that design efforts, to an increasing extent, will have to address the interaction and collaboration between companies and other stakeholders that need to work together to enable the extended utilisation and recirculation of resources. To date, there have been few studies examining the implications of the circular economy for the practice of design.

Therefore, the thesis investigates the implications of the circular economy concept for designers and design practice, and further examines the role of stakeholder collaboration and co-creation in supporting design for a circular economy. The findings indicate that the circular economy is a multi-faceted challenge that expands the scope of design projects, drives the integration of new knowledge areas in the design process, affects the role of designers and agencies in practice, and demands further interdisciplinary collaboration and co-creation. A challenge for designers in the context of circular design is to purposefully plan when, how, and to what extent stakeholders are involved in the design process. In this regard, co-creation approaches are found to be important to enable joint learning about circularity, identify opportunities for shared value creation in the context of the circular economy, and promote collaboration throughout supply chains and industries. Generative toolkits such as the card-based design tool ‘Cards for Circularity’ presented in this thesis can help to stage discussions on circular strategies, align perspectives in a multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder context to foster better collaborative practices, and support a holistic view on circular-oriented innovation by distinguishing the relevant parameters in circular systems.

To conclude, the findings of this thesis contribute to a better understanding of how the concept of a circular economy is implemented across design practice and identifies pathways to further advance circular design. The thesis is relevant for design practitioners, researchers, and curricula for the growth of circular design theory and the development of appropriate design methods, tools, and guidelines.