Industrial design education and the circular economy: experiences from UNSW Sydney

摘要: Since the 1970s the industrial design profession has been criticized for promoting wasteful consumption through such irresponsible practices as ‘designing for the dump’, fad-driven obsolescence, unnecessary gadgets, over-packaging, short-lived products, and so on. Most manufactured products still follow a ‘cradle-to-grave’or ‘linear-economy’lifecycle. This paper seeks to examine how the tide could be reversed by educating young designers to be more conscious of their agency in promoting sustainable consumption via their innovative design ideas. Submissions of third year UNSW Industrial Design students in response to a ‘Circular Economy Challenge’studio brief written by the author have been analyzed, alongside their reflections on experiencing such a design challenge. The students were tasked to design a tangible product that would enhance or enable a ‘collaborative consumption’or ‘sustainable product service system’, such that community members are encouraged or empowered into adopting more environmentally beneficial and socially responsible consumption behaviors. Their design proposals should be system innovations that shift the focus from the design of physical products for private ownership to that of an integrated mix of products and services for publicly shared access. Submissions received from students were highly varied, ranging from amenities and facilities for community members or for the general public; some free-of-charge and some pay-per-use; some fully-automated and some requiring personnel to operate and maintain the service; and some were systems which required returnable containers and refilling …