Design Process for Sustainability: The Implications of User Observations for Emerging Post-use Product Design Solutions

Post-use design thinking is an approach for sustainability which enables a product to be reused in a new context after completing its initial use. People tend to re-use objects intuitively when they find the potential to re-contextualize them regardless of designer’s intention. If a designer proposes an object for re-use, she/he should also be aware of the local knowledge in terms of people’s needs, experiences and preferences related to post-use behaviours. Post-use design solutions would be well accepted and implemented if the user knowledge informs the early stages of product design and development process. This study aims to explore how the user observations inform the post-use dimensions and design solutions, and how that information is incorporated into the idea generation phase of the design process. To investigate this further, an undergraduate design project with an emphasis on post-use design thinking has been selected as the scope of this study.