Publication
Consumer goods,
Design professionals, entrepreneurs, design students, design researchers, R&D engineers, marketers, communications professionals
To close the loop on consumer goods, consumers need to return their products. Using the case of smartphones, Flora explains how to shape a valuable discarding experience for consumers.
Thesis Flora Poppelaars (TU Delft)
Within a circular economy, the discard phase focuses on technical aspects such as return logistics. Thereby, the design of consumer goods and the systems around them focuses on selling and using the product. The end-of-life phase from the perspective of the party who has to close the cycle after use - the consumer - gets hardly any attention.
To remedy this, a new field is emerging: Design for Divestment. The field focuses on the question: how do we design a valuable discarding experience for consumers?
Researcher Flora Poppelaars explains what happens in the minds of consumers during this process and goes through the steps of the discard model. In doing so, she explains how this process can be influenced. Based on her studies around smartphone collection, Flora provides design principles to get consumers to return their products after use. Finally, she and Professor Conny Bakker discuss the extent to which the findings can be extended to other products.
The circular economy does not arise by itself. CIRCO (a program of TKI-CLICKNL) focuses on getting a new market moving. CIRCO therefore activates - with the support of the government - entrepreneurs and creative professionals to (re)design products, services and business models in order to then do circular business.
View profile
