This conference paper discusses new methods of organising industrial design process knowledge and more holistic approaches to implementing more efficient and sustainable ways of manufacturing, using and disposing of vehicles and products.
The paper exposes the need for a creative developmental tool and method, which from a systems approach adopts the rules and logic of the physical biosphere in order to increase the designer’s potential for embracing sustainable product development. The use of trophic structures and the combination of knowledge from biology, economics, thermodynamics and business are implemented in the proposed new method of simulating sustainable product development from the project’s outset. This will provide guidelines that the car industry could use to achieve an ideal state for ecological, economical and social sustainability. The research focused on how to ensure a future with less resource scarcity and greenhouse effects which would otherwise imply more significant changes to the established economic, social and environmental systems.
Research involved a wide review of related literature ranging from the exploitation of natural resources and current economic structures, to product development processes, to devise a tool that will guide the way for sustainable innovation in the automotive industry. As a result, an integral evaluation method incorporating ecological, economic and social measurements has been devised to inform manufacturers and allow them to design, produce and distribute vehicles, and put them into use with the lowest ecological impact.
Through this paper, jointly written by Conti with Martinez (whose PhD was co-supervised by Conti) and English, £10K of Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF 2011–15) was raised through Northumbria University Research and Business Services. This allowed the development of a Web-based App to enable designers to be more socially responsible by creating early design concepts to be measured in terms of sustainability and life-cycle impact.