An Innovation-Based Method for the Design of Sustainable Products

While methods exist to determine the environmental impact of products, these methods are only applicable after design decisions are fully ideated - no viable methods that enable the design of these products in an informed way currently exist. This work discusses the development of an advanced product design methodology that incorporates sustainable design thinking throughout an open-ended product design process, reducing sustainability-as-constraint design and enabling the development of products that are both innovative and environmentally friendly. Sustainable design tools are integrated into a new product design method, including the development and research of customer needs, product opportunity evaluation, concept generation and refinement, and prototyping. The result of this work is a new product development process that enables the design of truly innovative products that are also more environmentally friendly, which can reduce environmental impact due to consumer goods manufacturing and use.