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EXAMINING THE USER EXPERIENCE OF LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT TOOLS AND THEIR ABILITY TO CATER TO ECODESIGN IN EARLY-STAGE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PRACTICE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2021

Tejaswini Chatty ,
Yingkun Qu ,
Hana H. Ba-Sabaa  and
Elizabeth L. Murnane
Tejaswini Chatty*
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College
Yingkun Qu
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College
Hana H. Ba-Sabaa
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College
Elizabeth L. Murnane
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College
*
Chatty, Tejaswini, Dartmouth College, Thayer School of Engineering, United States of America, Tejaswini.Chatty.TH@dartmouth.edu

Abstract

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With the topic of sustainability steadily gaining importance and public awareness, there is growing consensus about the need to incorporate environmental considerations in early stage product development (PD). This makes it imperative for PD practitioners to have access to methods and tools, including life cycle assessment (LCA), that support sustainability integration. This paper evaluates existing LCA tools on their ability to cater to the early-stage PD context, by having users apply the tools in practice and exploring their experiences. We find that the challenges to applying LCA in this context emanate primarily from the shortcomings of the tools themselves. Our evaluation metrics for tool critique are derived from a thematic analysis of user interviews we conducted, refined according to information and interaction design principles from human-computer interaction (HCI). This unique approach helps triangulate insights from users with literature, to produce design recommendations for the development of novel LCA tools tailored to the early PD context.

Keywords

Life Cycle AssessmentEcodesignIntegrated product developmentSustainability
Type
Article
Information
Proceedings of the Design Society , Volume 1: ICED21 , August 2021 , pp. 1441 - 1450
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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